I have just replaced a 1000Megahertz AMD Athlon computer with a new computer. I have a never used package containing the complete Redhat Linux operating system 5.2. Would it be feasable to format the hard drive on this old computer (has a 40 gig hard drive and 3 sticks of 128 MB 168 pin SDRAM) to use to learn Linux on? Or would it be wiser to obtain a more uptodate version of Linux? If so, which one? Also, this old computer (a Gateway with a bus clock of 100 megahertz) has a CDROM, and IOMEGA ZIP drive, a 3 1/4 inch floppy and USB. Can these be used with Linux? Thanks for any advice and/or recommedations.
Don't use Red Hat 5.2 just because you have the CD; even RH9 is outdated enough that it not longer receives updates, so RH5 is right out. After RH9, Red Hat split the distro up into a testing branch with a short support cycle, called "Fedora Core", and a professional, officially-supported version called "Red Hat Enterprise Linux", or RHEL. RHEL has a much, much longer support cycle, but at the cost of packages being a bit older than other Linux distributions. RHEL is not free, per se, but since it's open source you can still get it for free in various forms. One shining example is CentOS, or "Community Enterprise Operating System". CentOS is simply a repackage of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but with their proprietary logos removed. So if you want to run the enterprise flavor of Red Hat, CentOS is the way to go. If you want bleeding-edge of Red Hat, try the latest Fedora Core, though it is not as stable (to Linux standards, anyway). For other good OS'es, I use CentOS on my servers, though I am using Debian "Etch" on my desktop. My wife's system runs an older version of Mandrake Linux. A lot of new Linux users like the Ubuntu family, such as Kubuntu for a desktop OS. It's easy to get up and running, though some of the underlying concepts have been dumbed down in *ubuntu, so it may not be the best learning distro for you.
no, that system would be fine with RH5.2, but i personally wouldn't put it anywhere near the internet, to use the internet you would be better of with a distro like Kubuntu (Kubuntu should run on that system, although you would be better with 512Mb RAM rather than 384Mb[ot]personally i use and love Kubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake, and everything that worked in XP now works in Kubuntu, but i don't have any antivirus or firewall software & no scanning for spyware[/ot]BTW: once you go penguin you'll never want to run Windows again (and you'll save money)
Kubuntu should run fine, as would debian Etch or other newer distros. It won't fly, but you'll be pleased to know it will definitely be usable. I ran mandriva 2006 on Athlon 900Mhz with only 128mb RAM. It was running KDE, and while slow it wasn't too bad. Even if you did use RH 5.2, I don't think you'd have any security issues if you connected it to the internet (unlike Windows).
So is CentOS, Debian, and many, many others. So it all depends on what you want to do with your OS. For a general-purpose desktop, Debian "Etch" or Kubuntu would be a good choice. For a Server, Debian "Sarge" or CentOS would be a better option. Also, for a learner distro, I'd try Debian or CentOS.
I have a similar specification system as you Rodney, which I use as my second computer. It's got a Pentium 3 1.0GHz CPU and 384MB of RAM. It runs Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) flawlessly. The system rarely uses more then 150MB RAM idle and about 300MB with load. I use Kubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) on my main computer because it's a long term support release. It will be supported for 3 years on the desktop and 5 years on the server. Edgy Eft and the releases prior to Dapper Drake are only supported for 18 months. Ubuntu's upcoming release, Feisty Fawn, will be supported for 18 months. Linux supports a wide range of hardware and your ZIP drive, CD-ROM and USB should 'work-out-of-the-box'. Most USB storage devices 'Just Work' and most printers are supported.
Thanks for the above comments. I will not try to use the old Redhat. I have poured over some to the various linux versions available and am currently contemplating Ubuntu. I downloaded Ubuntu 6.10 but have not been able to use it. From the verbage on the web, I thought that if you burned it to a CDROM you would have a liveCD. Evidently I was wrong as I can not figure out how to use it or how to instal it. Most probably my total ignorance of what is required, any suggestions?
You just need to download the iso, burn it to CD and then reboot. You'll end up in a Live environment as of version 6.10 (older versions had separate liveCD and install CDs). when inside the live CD, you can start an installation program which will install it to your hard disk.
Watch out that many times there are different isos for live-cd and install ones (other times you can just "burn" the iso image to the hard drive). Maybe you can check in the distro you want to install. If you feel KDE is running too slow in your PC maybe you can try GNOME (the archi rival of KDE). I think is simplier but a little bit lighter on the RAM and CPU. I guess in the end every linux user try both ones and choose the prefered one In this case you can check with Ubuntu or Kubuntu (or even Xubuntu if the others are to slow, but I don't think this is the case).
