M mom just got a new computer, so I inherited her old computer. I'm planning on installing Linux and running Aache on it and trying to gain experience in hosting. I was just wondering which version of linux is best for a web host, ie KDE, freeBSD etc.
I don't have a budget though, so I want to go with something that is free (which I've heard is one of the joys of Linux)
Well, if the goal is for you to learn, I suggest Slackware. Its a wonderful learning distro. Its very simple and standardized.
Plus, it'll run on REALLY old machines.
also KDE isnt linux, its just a graphical user interface
but yeah slackware is pretty good, i was running it on my pentium 1, no need to throw those p1's out!
-bolero
Originally posted by Fissy@Dec 6 2003, 08:54 PMvector linux: slackware for really pants machines.
what does that sentence mean? 
lol my pants have no crap on them. i have had redhat 5.1 running on a 486, 66mhz with apache and samba running on it a few years ago and it worked fine and fast! now if you have a cable modem i suggest going to redhat.com and downloading linux 9. i prefer redhat. they also have a new project called fedora. my dad is trying to buy himself a dvd-r so he can download it for me. i will say how good it is once he's done.
edit: i just wanted to say that i never tried apache on linux 9 but i hear it'sfaster than on 5.1 and i deleted my linux partition and replaced it with longhorn.
I dont think Redhat 9 is available for download, the new version is out, FEDORA 1.0. Plus, redhat 9 is ancient in the linux world.
Grab the latest Slackware and install that.
Very stable on older machines.
I used Slack9 on a Celeron 266 w/ 32kb of cache as a web, ftp, sql, nfs server and development box before I got my new server and it felt like it was a much faster machine then it really was.
I also recommend building Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc. from the source. It will be much faster and won't include stuff you won't need. For this I recommend ApacheToolbox (http://apachetoolbox.com/). I have used this to setup lots of web server when I worked for webhosting company.
Also check out Webmin. (http://www.webmin.com). This helps ALOT in setting up Apache, SQL, and FTP servers.
For updates and an installer for Slack similar to Debian's apt-get, get swaret. That way you won't get hit by nasty bugs and exploits.
You also may want to recompile your kernel so you get only what you need. Grab the sources from kernel.org
Good Luck 
thanks for all your help, just realized i didn't state the speed
AMD K6 @ 475 mhz
96 Megabytes of Ram
is that fast enough to run most distros?
That will be able to run any non-i686 distro. Very few distros are actually i686 optimized, so yes, it can run almost all distros.
pick up 256MB of ram and that will be a great linux box!
Yeah, go get a RAM upgrade and go get RedHat 7 or 8 ( 
). They work well for server-based tasks.
That will run Slackware perfect.
I think the only 'i686-only' distro is SoL (Server optimized Linux)
I've ran Slack and Debian on my old k6 before I destroyed the mobo with a hammer.
i recommend sloaris...but im obsessed with UNIX so dont pay attention to me
speaking of Sun, Star Office 7 Suite is a very nice program. I have 2 versions of it, one for my SuSE linux partition and the other for this.
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