Re: I'm switching over to Linux, got some q's
 

yes, and debian unstable is what you wan't. there are very good guides on how to install knopixx (which _is_ debian) to hard disk and configure it to be exactly normal debian system, apart from beeing allready installed and setup ;), but going from scratch should be not prob for you anyways.

Cheers memed

Re: I'm switching over to Linux, got some q's
 

Hi PMB,

nice essay about the BSD branches :), if i may add some things if you don't mind:

- there are 4 BSD's, don't leave out the BSDI, yet commercial it's a BSD, not soley FreeBSD with a different License.
- the license is the biggest difference between FreeBSD and GNU (inkluding Linux): GNU enforces the GPL (i.e. all resulting codes is gpl and must be publish free of charge, no linking to GPL libs for non-gpl apps) where as FreeBSD codes is free! no naggles, i can take it, modifiy it, compile it and sell it, and thats it the biggest point for FreeBSD
- NetBSD is a nice multiplatform stuff, but as important as irix ;) [my Amiga won't serve anything real]
-OpenBSD lacks "personal trust", allthoug it has the bests concepts it shows too many problems in realisation, this is the problem of reinwenting the wheel to often. it is save, but for 2 reasons:it is a fixed default install, linux is just a kernel second it lacks allmos any usabilit. and not to underestimate for a volunteer suported development: Mr DeRaadt is simply not a "communicative" person
- my mind remebers the AT&T part slightly different: the university developed a public domain unix, to save license cost from AT&T, which also had stopped active development and only cashed in on source licenses from customers who needed to fix their mainframe servers using the AT&T source.
this also lead to a court trial AT&T vs. BSD which took a long time, during which the BSD source was semi public and a lot of students started to rewrite the tools AT&T claimed to have copyrights on. basicaly the court hearing resulted in free replacements, and in the US all public finaced software once was public domain, with source in this case.
at the point the bsd unix was starting to get rid of most big license issues,AT&T and the Regents from the Unversity of Berkley made a strange deal which lead to the fact that the Regent can allow people to use AT&T copyrighted code without further notice and restriction, but this only applies to that 4.4lite release. The birth of FreeBSD, the only had to rewrite the rest where of to go with a real free OS.

-FreeBSD is the best of breeds in programm execution, no question about that. It has no competitor for generall I/O performance on standard hardware. just imagine the world biggest FTP site (ftp.cdrom.com) runs FBSD, and some years ago they had to switch hardware, because the cpu could not address enough ram for the database :P, the 2xPPro200 could only handle 4GB of memory range.
- oh and the driver stuff for linux, well if you have a HW list on a static html page, thats good for selecting server hardware, but for real life operating need's you need linux, it's 20% drivers (the ones in the kernel, not marked experimental) which are mature outnumber any other free operating systems.



but nothing you wrote is wrong =)

Re: I'm switching over to Linux, got some q's
 

Back on topic now, no offense to PMB(BSD has a future just like linux does).

Debian is not really considered to be a minimalist or power user distro, but it CAN be. It does give enough options in the setup program to really limit the programs that get installed. Its a very good start, better that redhat, but i'd recommend you not spend way to much time trying to make it perfect, because Slackware is a mush more "standard" distro as you may call it. It deosn't use any of those .rpm or any other packaging file types floating around the net, and the developers are really good in limiting the software that gets pre-installed. The major distro's are 5+ cd's because they have 50 different apps that do the same damn thing. Like all the VI clones and BASH replacements, i mean WTF!?!?!

Re: I'm switching over to Linux, got some q's
 

"debian unstable" ? You mean the latest version, not the stable release? Why?

Yes, I noticed that knoppix is debian, so I plan on starting with knoppix because in theory I can play around with it easilly using different hardware configurations and settings - at least that's my current plan.

I still have my left eye on BSD as there's some strong arguments in its favor that have been made.

Re: I'm switching over to Linux, got some q's
 

Hi,

debian unstable vs. debian stable is like FreeBSD current vs. release.

one is the up-to-date system the other the mature safe way. in debian stable you won't have much new hardware, you will have old software (no GCC 3.x afaik) but it is stable. [period]

so unstable just means it's an evolving system, not a fixed running service. any user should go unstable, this does not mean to install all latest crap, but have the chioce to do so.

cheers

Re: I'm switching over to Linux, got some q's
 

Has anyone tried using Linux as a file sharing server for Windows desktops?

I wonder how reliable it is, what are the problems if any, and what the performance is like compared to using a Windows server. In short, should I consider doing such a thing or not?

I have a nice fault tolerant server that does nothing but file serving and acts as a Windows terminal server on occasion. What I'm thinking of doing, is installing Linux on this server, and using one of my desktop machines for terminal server sessions. All the windows desktops would use the Linux server for file serving. That way I'd be making the most out of the best machine I have because most of my apps will be moved from Windows over to Linux.

Re: I'm switching over to Linux, got some q's
 

Linux not, but OpenBSD yes...

My OpenBSD "server" is a file and application sharing server for Windows desktops, NT domain controller, NT domain logon server, roaming user profiles server, it also does internet connection sharing, Minitel sharing (Minitel is a french services network for low-end terminals which was a direct concurrent for internet in the 80s, but still some services in France are only available through Minitel), fax server, DNS proxy, firewall, printing server, and I'm currently wondering if I could not put a HTTP server on it as well that would host a certain site of which the idea to put it online has been roaming in circles in my mind for a long time already.

I have just upgraded it to OpenBSD 3.4 (I finished with the NT domain controller setup yesterday) but before this, I had not rebooted it for MONTHS. I swear only the power shortages brought it down for limited periods of time. Rock solid. Always did its work, and it always did it well.

Since the upgrade, the machine is now a Pentium 133 with 48 Mbytes of EDO RAM and a 15Gb HDD. Before the upgrade, the machine was a Pentium 90 with 32 Mbytes of SIMM RAM and a 1.2Gb HDD (without the X-Windows server, the OS takes less than 200 Mb).

Although I defy any penguin on this planet to achieve such a level of robustness, I imagine a well-configured Linux would come close, and I'm pretty sure it will replace advantageously any Microsoft server.

*edit*
For Windows services on UNIX machines, check out
http://www.samba.org
http://us1.samba.org/samba/ftp/docs/...PDC-HOWTO.html (outdated but interesting)
http://ps-ax.com/samba-fq.html (outdated too, not many recent docs on the new Samba 3.0.0)

Re: I'm switching over to Linux, got some q's
 

cool OpenBSD stuff PMB,
i did'not get that NT domain controler stuff to work as expected on linux so i gave up. but my linux-floppy-router can easily beat 2 month, it now runns for 7 moth, only interruped by a poweroutage which took langer than 2 hours, but it's only 486/66 with 16 mb ram, 2 nic's and a floppy drive running a very mature 2.0 kernel (redhat base b.t.w. *g*)

my linux main server dies aprox 1x a month, in bad weather sometimes even once a day, but i think thats ok, until now i found no os which would do better for the purpose of a single server for _all_ needs.

cheers memed

Re: I'm switching over to Linux, got some q's
 

I guess the short answer is "yes you can safely replace Windows as a file server", at least in the case of OpenBSD.

As for the hardware mentioned, this is rather funny for me. I have some old computers headed for the scrap heap that are way better than the ones you guys mention. There's just no use trying to run the Windows 2K or higher on machines like that. You need a minimum of 128 MB and over 1 GIG in HD space. Guess I should hang on to them for running Linux or BSD.

*edit*

I now am browsing the net with knoppix linux! I'm using the latest "unstable" release and it is working great so far. The whole things boots up from a 700 mb cd. Now comes the hard part - learning how to configure and make us of all this stuff.

Re: I'm switching over to Linux, got some q's
 

Future users be warned about using 486s.
It takes about an hour to configure and compile any given application.
Other than that they are ok, just not for the impatient.

Cpu: 486 dx2 66
Mem: 28mb
HD: 2gb
OS: OpenBSD 3.4