From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ian Haver Subject: Re: Most "HAM" friendly distro ? Date: Sat, 07 Jan 2006 09:11:58 +0000 Message-ID: <43BF85DE.1040806@btinternet.com> References: <9923fd660601041708j1e117e97y45acaa37baec1867@mail.gmail.com> <000001c61197$80f08ca0$3849a8c0@lan.w1nr.net> <9923fd660601041921i423fa899s69d1fbe46e41a180@mail.gmail.com> <20060105070708.GA31150@cloud.net.au> <20060106232708.GA24355@cloud.net.au> <3FEF9BDB-83F9-4B61-97E3-ED546A92A02B@oz.net> Reply-To: g6vey@btinternet.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <3FEF9BDB-83F9-4B61-97E3-ED546A92A02B@oz.net> Sender: linux-hams-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" To: linux-hams@vger.kernel.org Hi all. If i can just add my two pennies worth on the distro wars. I originally run RedHat 4.0 many years back with just a console and jnos. If was fast and fab. Then I wanted to write a letter, errm wheres the equivillent of M$ Word. there isnt one. It also become more apparent that this linux i had found in mid 90`s was quite a tool. Anyway to cut a long story short i dont go for a ham distro because most distro`s run ham apps with very little mods/tweeking. Instead i went for the more glossy workstation/desktop type and then have the fun and excitement of getting the ham bits to work on it. Theres enough of us so called experienced linux operators out there to guide the newbies now, so theres not really a massive problem anymore. Lets face it its not hard to install any of the recent distributions now. Maybe getting a few hardware issues can be a heart ache but by enlarge linux goes onto pc hardware pretty well these days. In my experience, listening to a few newbies in my BBS area they are trying to install SUSE10 or Mandrakes latest on a Pentium I clocked at 166Mhz wich had been running dos/win95. It isnt going to work properly. I try to explain that they wouldnt run XP on it so it will struggle with the later kernels and resources needed to make the system run smoothly in linux. The sooner these linux vendors stop selling Linux spec as in 386/486 upwards the better. It should really be X86 architechture with min 1G proccessor and at least 256M Ram for those who require good desktop applications. Forthose who just want a console with no GUI then thats a different matter. Although i was caught out there as well. One of my ham friends wanted a basic console mode ax25 interface between his lan machines and his packet. What better, run linux with all the ax25 bits and then with his windoze based lan machines he can access the outside world. He did this on a P I 166 with 32M RAM. It worked very well for him until one day he rung me and told me it had all gone very slow, when i got there i found out he had worked out how to install packages and had installed the entire KDE suite. He also managed to change the run level to 5. so hey he had a GUI as well but it was really slow and as a result his retry rates had doubled in his packet setup. So with all the woffle above i can only recommend from experience. Run a good fast machine with plenty of Ram. Pick a Distibution which fruits with apps, you dont need to install them, but at least you can later. Run Linux for at least a week if not two and learn how the linux operates especially its file structure and permissions. Then have a play with ham radio. Because hopefully by then, you would have learned how to edit and manipulate files. You would have learned how to delete or rename files and more so how to restart parts of linux without rebooting the whole machine. I find in the ham world with Linux, give them a few days to learn or they will soon be going back to windows with a grumpy face slagging off Linux at every convenience. Best Regards All Ian G6VEY SYSOP GB7YFS Author Xarpm_plus http://radiolinux.co.uk