On Monday 12 December 2005 09:33 am, SOTL wrote:
>> On Sunday 11 December 2005 01:41 pm, jeff wrote:
> > Just curious, but if all you wanted was a MySQL server, why not try
> > Debian?
>
> !) I do not have a copy of Debian.
> 2) Debian is hard to install.
Debian has gotten a lot better with the last two releases. It isn't hard to
install with the last installer scripts. You have a menu with basic general
package options very similar to the Mandrake menu, and the option to select
individual apps. Just take the basics, and fine tune with apt or synaptic
after it is done. After spending some time with Debian, I find it easier
than a SuSe install now. Diskdrake in Mandrake rocks though. I wish that
the other distros would add that.
> 3) I have copies of Mandrake 9.1, 9.2, 10.1, SuSE 8.2, 9.1, and 10.0
Point taken. :)
> 4.) It takes hours to download a distribution so why should I spend hours
> downloading something that is hard to setup when I already have an
> equivalent program that is easy to set up and all I have to do is plop
> the old CD in the CD reader and install.
You don't have to download the whole sarge set of over a dozen cd's if you
have a fast connection. Just get the netinstall iso, which is only about
108MB.
I did essentially the same configuration as yours (ingress mail filtering,
mysql, and webmin because it runs headless) a couple of weeks ago on a
400MHz pc with 128MB of RAM. It took about 25 minutes to d/l and burn the
iso, and around an hour to install with the packages that I wanted. But, as
mentioned, that only applies if you have broadband. That same installation
would take days over dialup.
>
> But!
>
> And here is the real reason I had no idea if the equipment was
> operational or not. The computer was an unknown to me. So by using CD
> that are known to me to work I loose one potential problem area.
>
> If you have ever tried to install a distribution of Linux you are
> unfamiliar with, which in the past has given you problems, with NO
> specifications on the equipment, and with equipment that you do not have
> the slightest idea of will work or not, and whose current operating
> system [Win 98] refuses to go on line so you that you have NO faith in
> the functionality of the equipment and had major issue then at that point
> you will really understand why.
Been there, done that. ;) I would suggest keeping a live cd (Knoppix or
similar) on hand for testing hardware that is not known to be working. It
is a lot faster and easier than installing a full distro only to find that
that the hardware doesn't work or isn't supported.
Jeff
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