Travel Technology - buying a Vista PC... installing Linux / BSD on old machine - ?s

I am going to replace the home PC (3 yrs old; 2.x gighertz + 1 gig of ram + still plenty of hdd space) with a tricked out Vista box within the next few weeks. I plan to get a KVM switch and install Linux or BSD on the old machine. So my dilemma is: which linux or BSD ditro should I install? My requirements & nice-to-haves are listed below:

Requirements:
stable OS
good catalog of available freeware utilities
must be compatible with Firefox and OpenOffice
slick GUI capabilities
ability to remotely log in to the GUI (similar to how I use Remote Desktop to access XP machines)
decent support for USB devices

Nice-to-have:
ability to use as print server
ability to use as file server (and allow other pcs to map to its drives)

Which distro would you recommend and why?

Slackware Linux (http://www.slackware.com/) is my distro of choice these days. I really love the customizability and quick upgradeability of Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org), but it takes a long time to set up. Slackware is nearly as customizable and upgradeable as Gentoo but it's very quick to set up.

You don't mention how much experience you have with Linux based systems? For (semi) starters I'd go with Ubuntu.

As for the KVM; save yourself some money and install Synergy:

http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/

There are easy to read install guides for Ubuntu and Synergy and it can be installed through the package manager.

As for your other wishes, virtually every distro will do that.

You don't mention how much experience you have with Linux based systems? For (semi) starters I'd go with Ubuntu.

I am pretty much a n00b w/r/t linux installations. In a past life, I used Solaris & vi a fair bit (pine was far & away my fav email program), but I never installed a non-MSFT OS.

As for the KVM; save yourself some money and install Synergy:

http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/

There are easy to read install guides for Ubuntu and Synergy and it can be installed through the package manager.

As for your other wishes, virtually every distro will do that.

I appreciate the advice on Synergy, but I don't want to clutter the office with a second monitor (which Synergy seems to require). Some reasonable 4-port KVM switches can be purchased for <$100, including cables to connect 2 machines.

If you are new to Linux, Ubuntu is your friend. If you're a masochist like me give Gentoo a whirl!

I'd strongly recommend against BSD...various reasons, but the availability of current binaries and libraries can be a challenge...even with ports...

I like OpenSuse a lot...and I know a lot of people have problems with the Novel / Microsoft situation, but remember that OpenSuSE maintains its own OSS code base. OpenSuSE, in my opinion, is more complete, even with a base install, than ubuntu.

Ubuntu is very pretty, and pretty darned easy to use. But you'd be hard press to tell any difference with OpenSuSE.

In the end, its largely personal preference. I think you wouldn't go wrong with Ubutntu at all... I think Fedora Core 6 is impressive, but a tad bloated for older hardware. Centos is a great for a 'server' style platform...

My only caveat with Ubuntu is that you should be prepaired to install additional packages, such as VLC for video or Thunderbird for email after the base install. That being said, its pretty trival to install that stuff...

Yea -- SuSE is good too :p

Yea -- SuSE is good too :p

Plus...when you realize that you like linux better, SuSE has even cooler visual effects than Vista ! :D

I guess I'm a die hard .. I'm still running Fedora (now Core 6).

I have three headless linux boxes here. Once you do the initial install, you won't generally need keyboards/monitors on these systems. (assuming you can tell the BIOS to not check for a missing keyboard at boot time or not stop if there's a keyboard error). You can use vnc to connect from the windows PC (install Tightvnc on your windows box, activate the vnc server on your linux box). At least with Fedora, after some initial learning about yum, rpm, packages, etc, upgrades from release to release are very easy to do using yum and you don't need heads to do them.

I have a spare (old) ps2 keyboard and mouse in my office and a monitor with two inputs in case I ever need a console to get them booted up. Honestly, I can't remember the last time I needed to connect them to one of the linux boxes. The filesystems are all logging filesystems, so there's very little chance of file system damage even in the event of a power failure.

-David

Add another ^ for Ubuntu here, since it's easy enough to migrate it to stock Debian if you so choose. Though Ubuntu will generally meet the needs of a desktop user better than Debian ever will :p

Yeah. I just started with Fedora myself. Complete nuB but hey. It works well for me and with KDE very easy to allow remote access from my friends to help me when I get in trouble.

Speaking as someone who's been mucking about with Linux since the initial builds (back when Slackware WAS the only distro!), I would also join the folks recommending Ubuntu as a distro for the new Linux user. (I've also found that, driver-wise, Ubuntu seems to be a bit better-behaved than some other distros.)

If you go the Ubuntu route, you *will* want to get a tool called Automatix (http://www.getautomatix.com) which has an installer for Thunderbird, VNC, etc. as well as codecs for video and audio that can't be shipped with Ubuntu proper (due to DMCA restrictions, some software being freeware but not open software (the big ones here being Google Earth and Skype), etc.

OpenSuSE is also not bad at all--I used to be a diehard SuSE fan until the "commercial" fork of SuSE got so huge the distribution covered *multiple* DVDs :D OpenSuSE is close to how SuSE was before the commercial fork got bloated to heck, and is a good compromise between usability and power. (Of note, SuSE is *still* pretty much the big distro for commercial use in Europe, much as RedHat/Fedora Core has tended to be the big commercial distro here--though a *lot* of that thunder is now being stolen by Debian-based Linuxes like Debian itself, Ubuntu, Mephis, etc.)

BSD...most of the people I know using BSD are using it for dedicated servers, and servers and firewalls is really what xBSD-based OS's are best for; for workstations, you'll seriously be better off with a user-friendly version of Linux like Ubuntu or OpenSuSE. As others have noted, programs are not necessarily cross-compatible and there is actually more development support nowadays for Linux in general. (The ONE big exception to this is MacOS X, which is actually a BSD derivative with a non-open window manager; yes, you can compile and run ports of BSD-runnable applications on MacOS X. However, 99 44/100% of the folks using Macs aren't running it because it's the world's prettiest flavour of Unix out there! :D)

Now, the next question--once you pick a flavour of Linux, what window manager do you want? Ubuntu ships with Gnome, many other commercial distros ship with KDE. You can install the toolkits to use KDE stuff on Gnome and vice versa, though (and Ubuntu IS quite intelligent about this); there's also a KDE version of Ubuntu called Kubuntu you can use if you want to standardise on one window manager. (There *is* more support for KDE out there than there is for Gnome because most commercial distros (outside of Debian-based ones) use KDE, so that may influence your decision.)

As others have noted, you can actually make Linux *very* pretty (as pretty as MacOS X, in fact)--this is done by the window manager add-ons Compiz and Beryl (Beryl is the newer version of Compiz) that allow you to do Mass Prettiness to your display that tend to make Windows Vista users green with envy :D. You don't *have* to do this, but you can if you want. One of the beautiful things about Linux is that you can pretty much choose what you want. :D Gnome and KDE both are pretty mature, slick window managers/GUIs.

One thing I WOULD recommend, especially if you are brand new to this--get the live-CDs for Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Fedora Core, and OpenSuSE and run them on the target PC to see which works best and which you like the appearance of the best. (Some distros have their own quirks, and you might find that things run better under one distro rather than another.)

Thanks to all for the excellent info in the replies. Now if I could just get the .gov to get off their arses and depositing my tax refund, will be ready to do the Vista & Linux adventures!

Any thoughts on the relative merits of running Linux as a dual boot option versus running with VM Ware? Out IT people suggest the latter since they said that it makes it easier to use things like wireless and VPNs which they say can operate on the Windows side and the Linux on the virtual machine can find. That said, when they set it up it doesnt seem to be able to find the wireless or the VPN. Im considering starting over and going the dual boot route which I have used before successfully. Thanks for any suggestions.

If you need to switch back and forth often, then you should use VMware (or an alternative). If you are going to leave the machine up in Linux most of the time, then do that. I wouldn't do VMmare just to get around driver issues - you should be able to solve them natively with a bit of help from google or a support mailing list.

Note: if you have recent hardware (with virtualization support), then you might want to give Fedora or Suse with kernel 2.6.20 & KVM a try.

I am currently using Slackware.

I like the old SuSE and used Gentoo for a while (would not recommend that for a newer user).

OpenBSD is also a favorite of mine along with OS X ;-)

If you need to switch back and forth often, then you should use VMware (or an alternative). If you are going to leave the machine up in Linux most of the time, then do that. I wouldn't do VMmare just to get around driver issues - you should be able to solve them natively with a bit of help from google or a support mailing list.

Note: if you have recent hardware (with virtualization support), then you might want to give Fedora or Suse with kernel 2.6.20 & KVM a try.

I might want to go back and forth a bit. How would I know if I have hardware that supports visualization? Thanks.

I might want to go back and forth a bit. How would I know if I have hardware that supports visualization? Thanks.

That's virtualization.

Intel: not sure - most of the dual core does - if you have something from around when it first came out, you have to get the processor model and stepping (there's a download from intel which can read the info from the chip). The product info page at intel.com would then tell you the processor's features.

Amd: I believe that all socket AM2 chips (desktop) and "F" (server) have the extensions.