OK people. I am about to fire up a PC running a really old version of FreeBSD. I am going to clean this system off and put :inux on it.

Why would I wipe out FreeBSD in lieu of Linux? Good Question... I am moving the FreeBSD system to one of my Ultra 10's. While Linux does run well on a Sparc, there are canned Project Clients for x86 based Linux and most Linux Packages are written for Intel.

I don't want to build a Sparc/Linux client and have to build a Intel/FreeBSD Client too. Yes I know there are FreeBSD Clients out there.. Humor me here.. I am not ditching FreeBSD. I also teach Unix to the uneducated and I have a need for all of them.

The PC is a Dual Processor 500MHZ PIII. 256MB RAM

I want recommendations for a version linux to run on this system. I have my opinions, but I want to be fair.. Later today I will tally up the vote and download the image of the winner.



[EDIT] This system will be headless so I guess you can say it will be a low-end server [ENDEDIT]

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I'd rather speak my mind because it hurts too much to bite my tongue.

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...
The PC is a Dual Processor 500MHZ PIII. 256MB RAM (Sparc)

OK, I'll put in a vote for Mandriva (aka Mandrake) Linux.

Cheers,
Martin

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I would prefer Gentoo ;-)

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Debian Sarge

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As you may know already,
I would go for Debian Sarge if it is a server (or cruncher) and you have to rely on it.

If it is going to be a cutting edge desktop system with all the bells and whistles, I would go for Gentoo stage 1.

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I had a bad experience with Debian as a child... It told me I had to install a 2 year old version of mysql until I was able to eventually beat it into submission and tell it that yes, I really DO want a more recent version.

I vote Gentoo. It lets me do whatever the heck I want without all the work :)

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I vote Fedora Core 3.

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I vote for debian sarge. I've been using sarge on my production servers for more than a year now without any problems (hooray, it's ben released as stable recently).

Being more command-line guy, I find it quite nice for desktop too ... but I guess standards shouldn't be set based on my behaviour :)

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Metod ...

I would also vote for Debian "sarge", although you may want to go with the new "testing" version which I believe is named etch. I've always found the testing version to be stable enough.

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I voted FC3 but did not notice you had 256MB RAM. FC3 needs 384 min for a gui desktop (Gnome etc). So with 256Meg its command line only. Still......FC3 is very good and FC4 release next week is supposed to be even better.

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I would also vote for Debian "sarge", although you may want to go with the new "testing" version which I believe is named etch. I've always found the testing version to be stable enough.

The Debian testing version is usually like 2 years old. (Think how long Sarge has been marked as 'testing')

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I would also vote for Debian "sarge", although you may want to go with the new "testing" version which I believe is named etch. I've always found the testing version to be stable enough.

The Debian testing version is usually like 2 years old. (Think how long Sarge has been marked as 'testing')

You're right, it's that Zen attitude of "it will be ready when it is ready." I think they got sarge down to 40-something bugs (all so non-critical that I doubt anyone could be bothered by them) in a total distribution size of 15,000+ packages... Well that and the apparent bureaucracy of their system.

I like debian for it's stability, not it's cutting edge nature. :)

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As an alternative, I'll throw CentOS into the pot - it's a RHEL4 clone so should also be very stable whilst also being fairly up to date.

Ned

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#Texit

Don't blame me, I voted for Johnson(L) in 2016.

Truth is dangerous... especially when it challenges those in power.

I would also vote for Debian "sarge", although you may want to go with the new "testing" version which I believe is named etch. I've always found the testing version to be stable enough.

The Debian testing version is usually like 2 years old. (Think how long Sarge has been marked as 'testing')

You're right, it's that Zen attitude of "it will be ready when it is ready." I think they got sarge down to 40-something bugs (all so non-critical that I doubt anyone could be bothered by them) in a total distribution size of 15,000+ packages... Well that and the apparent bureaucracy of their system.

I like debian for it's stability, not it's cutting edge nature. :)

ME too. And the Watchumacallit-get feature that makes it a lot easier to install updates.

Provided it recognizes your D-Link DWL-520 card which it didn't so I'm stuck using Windows Xylophone Person.

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Slackware, fully customizable, and stable as a slab of granite.

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It is a sad sad day when someone takes your spoon away from you...

I am now using FC3 and I like it. Its stable, it has found all of my hardware on 4 different machines and the user interface is intuitive.
I have loaded the optimized client on some of them and the results are great.

I would also like to know which version is the best but I think that its a pain to keep trying different OS's, so I find one that is good enough and I stick with it

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I voted FC3 but did not notice you had 256MB RAM. FC3 needs 384 min for a gui desktop (Gnome etc). So with 256Meg its command line only. Still......FC3 is very good and FC4 release next week is supposed to be even better.

That's not wholly true - I ran FC3 with 256MB RAM right from the time it was released (November 2004, I think) to a couple of days back when I upgraded to 768MB. I used Gnome and I never felt that the system was lagging. The only thing is that you cannot open boincmgr (yes, there is a boincmgr for Linux) or else you would start swapping in about 5 minutes. Open a terminal and run BOINC command-line and everything is fine. XFCE as the desktop environment would work even better.

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Well you need to continue reading.. The system is HEADLESS.. no monitor, no keyboard.

I'll leave the poll open till Monday. :)

Thanks so far..

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I'd rather speak my mind because it hurts too much to bite my tongue.

American Spirit BBQ Proudly Serving those that courageously defend freedom.

My linux boxs all run gentoo. They are all headless bar one. If you know a bit about Linux then I would say go for Slackware or Gentoo.

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