choosing a distro and version

[Ed Barnes]

Ral and list, thanks for all your quick and interesting responses since I
joined this list.

To update, I changed my mind and downloaded the isoes for Red Hat 7.2 so
will now use it as opposed to using 7.0 which I said I would do in a
previous message.

Ral, I found your partitioning ideas very helpful.

If anyone's wondering, I chose Red Hat over Debian or Slackware due to the
fact I know more Red Hat users locally and I figure that this will be
advantageous.
I also figure that considering that Red Hat has a reputation for being one
of the easier distroes for newbies to get going that it's best for me to
start with this one.

Now on to the partitions.
I have quoted selectively to make my message easier to follow.

/dev/hda 2.0 gig

/dev/hda1 swap 256 mbytes
As the box only has 64 mb of ram in it and I remember reading somewhere that
swap partitions should be two times ram, is this correct, and has swap file
sizing conventions changed as Linux releases have.
Also, is the usage of a swap partition under Linux similar to the usage of a
swap file under Windows NT/2000 with regard to what each does respectively.
Reason I ask this is that it would logically follow if my conclusions are
correct that the larger the swap file the better the chances one would have
for speeding up the boxes performance.

/dev/hda2 root 1.5 gbytes

/dev/hda3 /var remaining mbytes
I also read that by default that mail and ftp and web files are placed here
so wouldn't it be a bit better to subtract a little from the root partition
and donate that space to /var.

Due to the fact that I would be the only real user and any other users
created would be for experimentation purposes limiting the requirement of a
real large /home partition.
wouldn't it be better if I placed the swap partition on /dev/hdb.

Then, /dev/hda would have more room to dedicate to route and var partitions?

Any and all thoughts welcome.
Thanks much all.

By the time I get my machine up with the number of questions and senarios
I'm throwing toward you folks for evaluation and guidance if you ever run
into me somewhere I'll have alot of coffee and or beer to buy as an
expression of gratitude.

Talk to all later.

Ed

----- Original Message -----
From: "Raul A. Gallegos" <raul at asmodean.net>
To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2002 1:19 PM
Subject: Re: choosing a distro and version


Hi there.  You can be sure we don't get tired of new list members.  At
least I don't.  Anyway, as to your question on which distro to start off
with my approach was like this:

Slackware, Debian, Redhat, in that order.  With Slackware I had to do
the most configuring to personalize it.  I like it though and can learn
the best that way so that is why I went that route.  Debian was my
second style of distro to learn and it has an awesome package manager
called apt which to me is the best so far compared to all the other
distros.  Redhat is widely used and is very good as well and does do a
lot of nice things for you and can be very easy for the newby.  Again,
depending on how you like to learn and how you like things being done
automatically will make a difference on which one you go with first.

Your ideas on partitioning the hard drives are pretty good.  If you have
2 physical drives what I would suggest is the following:

/dev/hda 2.0 gig
/dev/hda1 swap 256 mbytes
/dev/hda2 root 1.5 gbytes
/dev/hda3 /var remaining mbytes

/dev/hdb 1.66 gig
/dev/hdb1 /home

But again, depending on what you want to do it may vary.

I have a linux server with 2 nics in it.  eth0 the outside nic is the
one that has the outside Internet connection.  My dsl in this case.
eth1 is the inside one and I have a dhcp server on this so that I can
plug in my laptop which I use at work and at home without having to
change network settings.  I also have 2 other computers inside the
network as well as my girlfriend's windows box.  All of them are on the
private network with no need for firewalling software since I use
iptables on the server itself.

Hope all this helps and if you do have questions feel free to write me.

--
If you are good, you will be assigned all the work.  If you are real
good, you will get out of it.
Raul A. Gallegos - http://www.asmodean.net

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