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What will the next ask slashdot be?
What is a good OS?
What is a good computer?
Why not go to a site that deals with newbie's wait that's slashdot now. Never mind
I give up slashdot is doomed to be what it is now, and no one can change that..... shitty.

I know the asking party mentioned the power requirements of an old (or, I guess, new) PC as a NAT/Router/etc., but the power drain ain't too bad (unless you leave a monitor on for this server...). Besides, not only can you easily set up (see the How-Tos at Linux Documentation Project) a server to do NAT (great for multiple boxes sharing a "one connection only" xDSL/Cable modem connection), DHCP, cipe tunneling to secured office computers, but also to enable a web server (it's actually a last-hope backup server to one of our production systems), SSH "telenet" server for remote access, FTP daemon. With a little care a simple PC will give you tremendous network services that far surpass the capabilities of these network devices. And the investment in terms of $$$s may be much less (in time, more, but what's the fun of not learning?).

I have 5 computers connected to the internet in my in-home LAN right now. My router/firewall/gateway is a 166MHZ linux box running redhat 6.0. I've been running this setup for about two years, upgrading as necessary. Using IP masquerading this is all very simple and with IP Chains, you can setup any firewall rules you want. I recently installed redhat 7.1 and it has a firewall wizard type thing that makes this all even easier! Take an old box and put linux on it, you won't be dissappointed.

1) noga.de is no longer maintained; legos.sourceforge.net is the canonical site now.
2) For a complete reference of all available free alternatives for Mindstorms on Linux, check the Lego Mini-HOWTO at the LDP. For more details on legOS and Forth (two of the most mature alternatives) check out Extreme Mindstorms. [shameless plugs, both]
3) There is, of yet, no way to run legOS or most of the other alternative environments on Mindstorms 2.0 from Linux because there are, ATM, no tools to control the USB towers that are standard with 2.0.
Thanks...
Luis Villa (legOS maintainer)

I've not had these problems in the least since the Font Deuglification HOWTO appeared on the scene. See the
FDU for details.

www.linuxiso.org ISO images of install CDs for various distributions
www.linuxnewbies.org A good start in Linux
www.linuxdoc.org The Linux Documentation Project


As for writing your own drivers, you probably won't need to do that... unless you have something really specialized or something you purchased on Mars. If the drivers for the device didn't come with whatever distribution you choose, you can probably find somewhere on the web where someone else needed to use that same device under Linux and has already written a driver for it (which you can just download and install).

Finally, for your first time in Linux you might want to go out and buy distribution CDs rather than download. This gets you three benefits: No waiting for your 56k modem to disconnect you 498 megs into the download (I think this must be part of Murphy's law), dead tree manuals (You can probably find everything you need online, but there is something comforting about documentation that you can still get to even if you mess up the computer), and support (many distributions have tech support offerings).

Have fun and good luck!

I am relatively young to the scene myself, but let's take a walk down memory lane say six years ago. Back in those days the Linux Howto's, especially the Installation Howto, were essentially Slackware Howto's. (The book I used to figure out how to install Linux was essentially the Howto's printed out.) My PC's BIOS from that era did not support booting from an ATAPI CD Rom drive. Hard drives were much smaller but the EIDE ones were coming up against a succession of limits, limits in where a kernel could be located and still be seen by a bootloader. For Linux there was a well-defined path introducing newbies: you installed and created a custom bootdisk. Linux installation instructions also told how to edit the kernel for the bootdisk floppy to change the root partition location.

From my newbie perspective, this was installation Nirvana! I didn't have to worry about LILO if I didn't want to. From the perspective of other people sharing the PC I used, other than taking up hard drive space, they didn't have to know Linux existed. And Linux could be installed in an extended partition not just a primary partition. Keep in mind that hard drives were a lot smaller then, so for dual-boot setups it was nice to be able to dedicate some more room for the Windows C: drive. And not only that but since everyone did the custom bootdisk compiling as a rite of passage, people could compile bootdisks to help others if the default floppy didn't have the right drivers.

Now from what I have read of the FreeBSD community's thoughts, they couldn't care less about such concerns. The ISP I used back then was hosted on a collection of FreeBSD boxes, abandoning a more monolothic solution with an SGI server, because the ISP's lead technical person knew how to do it. FreeBSD is more like an industrial consortium as far as the core developers go, and at least at that time there was a huge emphasis on stuff related to running ISPs. From their perspective it was laughable to devote much effort to support the most unreliable medium of all, a floppy, for custom booting a machine. And someone like an ISP wouldn't be using EIDE, they'd be using SCSI. 528MB limit, "get some real hardware, kid" I'd imagine they'd think. And they'd have their internal network and their own procedures for mass replicating setups to many machines.

Six years later I think we can see everyone got what they wanted. The Linux community developed critical mass and got wildly popular with newbies. The FreeBSD community was left alone by the newbies they didn't want to deal with.

if you have your KDE clock set to blink and show seconds etc, that kind of bandwidth will chew up your LAN in no time.

and as soon as you start web browsing you can kiss your LAN good bye if you have lots of clients on the same LAN.

Try Redhat 7.1 and/or Mandrake 8.0 out first. Make sure to create a /home partition during install if you just have one machine to use linux on. This will allow you to keep any work / files you have generated when you go to install a different distribution.

Head over to the HOWTO Index and peruse through any HOWTO's that interest you.

Open a terminal, and type 'man man' :)

After your comfortable using linux, or on a separate "test" machine try installing Debian 2.2 r3 and/or Slackware 8.0. You will now have some experience using linux and this will give you a chance to check out the more "advanced" distributions.

Ok, to know what is really going on try out linux from scratch

Seems like there are a million "how to setup linux" guides out there now, but I found this site here, TrinityOS to be very helpful years ago, and it still is.

Oh yeah, here is a great deal from Cheapbytes where I bought my first linux cd.

• MONDO Pack Edition 28 for $17.95.
• includes all 5 Redhat 7.1 cds, Mandrake 8, Slackware 8, and StormLinux 2000.
• Debian 2.2r3 3 CD set for $9.

As for distribution, I have used only Debian and RedHat. Both are fine systems but have their differences. Debian tends to be a rock solid, has several thousand packages in it, easy to update, etc. However, the release cycle is very slow. For example the current Debian stable, mostly has more than a year old software in it.

On the other hand, RedHat has a faster release schedule. It has less packages than Debian but they are much more up to date than in Debian. The RedHat releases that end on 7.0 tend to be buggier than .1 releases, and .2 releases tend to be bugger than the .2 releases.

For the reasons above, I tend to stay away from RedHat versions that end on .0 and prefer to use them only on the desktop systems. On the critical servers I prefer to use Debian because of stability and because I don't really care about "coolness" features like gnome, etc for server use.

Now, what makes Linux difficult? First, there is partitioning your hard drive and installing file systems in preparation for the install. This makes many users really nervous. But here's the reality. If you started with a blank hard drive and installed Windows from scratch, you'd still have to set up the file system on the hard drive during the install. You might not have to *partition* the drive, but you don't have to do that with some of the Linux distributions if you are running them without a dual-boot situation. Don't want to go through the trouble of installing it yourself? Do what most people do with Windows -- buy a machine with the OS preinstalled. While rare, you can find machines with Linux preinstalled.

Look, there's a far simpler way of installing Linux without bothering with partitions or any of that UMSDOS crap; I was feeling REALLY bored a while back and I stumbled upon a fascinating HOWTO. You know the BeOS trick of making a virtual 'partition' out of a 400MB file on your Windows drive? Linux can do that. The HOWTO is here but here's the gist of it - you boot linux with root=/dev/loop0, and supply it with an initrd. The linuxrc on this initrd mounts the Windows partition and then calls losetup to tie /dev/loop0 to the 400MB 'partition' (typically it would also set up loop1 as a swap but one could always just use a swap file). Linuxrc then terminates and the kernel mounts /dev/loop0 as root, and moves the initrd onto /initrd. Provided you defragment your DOS partition beforehand this is probably going to be roughly as efficient as a partition and a heck of a lot less dangerous. The HOWTO is dated 1999, how come no-one's put this into a distro? Perhaps I should add it to Debian or something... ;)

The DMCA has to go, but clueless, uninformed rambling only helps the other side.

(On that note: has anyone written an anti-DMCA advocacy FAQ? We need some guidelines in order to present a unified front to the politicians and media. The Linux Advocacy mini-HOWTO is a terrific example of the type of document meant to keep advocacy focused and rational, and has been quite successful.)

Sorry, but this is more basic than that - geared more toward Windows users who would like to understand how to get around. Methinks you could benefit more from the HOWTOS

Goatse.cx has an excellent, nearly complete collection of HOW-TOs and even full-blown guides on just about anything related for Linux. Certainly worth more of my time than working for money to buy an overpriced O'Reilly book.

--

Read the LILO mini-HowTo, section How Can I Uninstall LILO?.

Of course, this will only work if you can boot into Linux with your Linux floppy boot disk. (You did create one during Linux installation, didn't you? Use Mandrake 8 next time. It actually puts LILO on the floppy.) From the console, just type in a single line from the HowTo to restore the data that LILO had overwritten.

The problem now is that you have to use the floppy boot disk every time you want to boot into Linux. However, this isn't so bad considering you just salvaged your Windows system.

Links:
http://www.littlewhitedog.com/reviews_other_00011. asp
http://lists.linux-india.org/lists/linux-delhi/200 105/msg00179.html
or the handy mini-howto
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Linux+NT-Loader .html

bm :)-~

This book is a good ref for device drivers. Also see the Linux Doc Guide Linux Kernel Module Programming Guide by Ori Pomerantz for another angle on the device driver/module topic. Helps to see different examples to understand some of the topics.
O'reilly also has another book "Understanding The Linux Kernel" that is fairly up to date. They have links to the website to show the changes in going to 2.4 as well.

I dunno... at least on the competition front, I've been sending in diffs to HOWTOs that have typos or errors in them. I don't tend to do that with most books, because I assume it's been corrected anyway...

And you neglected that, while the FDL may or may not be good business, it's definitely good documentation -- remember, not all documentation comes from O'Reilly...

(Okay, the really good stuff does. But the HOWTOs have been indispensible at my job, cutting learn-this and learn-that times in half, at least.)

Remember, publically created documentation has a place, too.

-grendel drago

I wonder if the Linux Documentation Project will be getting together with or releasing (as DocBook, etc.) any of O'Reilly's free books.

(I believe that the LDP's efforts are not nearly inclusive enough -- there's a lot of quality documentation out there; why not bring it all under one roof?) <-- Anyone who sees a conspiracy here: the maintainer has final say over the control of a document, unless it's left unmaintained for several years, in which case an overhaul crew may be needed.

It's just that it would be nice if there was a huge, huge source for Linux documentation. The LDP is a good start, but it could be so much more...

Eh, just a thought.

-grendel drago

LDP = Linux Documentation Project

LSB = Linux Standard Base

How about it, Mr. Dell?

I'll gladly admit that I didn't come up with this one myself, but it is kinda sweet. The author says he wouldn't recommend using it on anything less than a P400 (on which it still "results in noticeable delays in the appearance of the prompt"). If that's not hardcore enough, count me out...

Mine fiddles with my Xterm's title bar so it says "Terminal (user@host)". Great so you don't try to "sudo halt" your server by accident.

I was going to post it here, but the /. lameness filter flags it as random characters. It's from the BASH Prompt HOWTO, section 5, slightly modified.

Greg

Mine fiddles with my Xterm's title bar so it says "Terminal (user@host)". Great so you don't try to "sudo halt" your server by accident.

I was going to post it here, but the /. lameness filter flags it as random characters. It's from the BASH Prompt HOWTO, section 5, slightly modified.

Greg

Mine looks sorta like this, with some color added:

I have a pretty nasty script that hacks it together. I wrote it after reading the Bash Prompt HOWTO and visiting a Bash themes site that has since been haxx0red. There are more good example prompts, though, at this site. Here's my script, base 64 encoded (sorry, but uuencoding is not conducive to slashposting):

here...

Don't forget to read trough the HOWTO if you really want to know what you're doing

Mine is:


PS1="$TITLEBAR\
$GRAY[\
$COLVAR\u$GRAY@$LIGHT_BLUE\h$GRAY:$BROWN\W\
$GRAY]\
$COLVAR\\$ $LIGHT_GRAY"


You have to define the $COLOURS first of course...

Look at the Font Deuglification HOWTO.

The IBM Microdrive is a CF form factor hard drive with sizes from 350MB to 1GB. Maybe that's what you found in your pocket?

Or maybe it was a USB hard drive?

Or maybe, since it has onboard ethernet, you could just have it nfs mount its root directory?

Wow, must have been hard to write the article when you have stuff like this, In Issue 27 of the Linux Gazette even.

Other sources:
Diskless HOWTO
XDMCP HOWTO
XDM-Xterm Mini-HOWTO
Linux Terminal Server Project

I'm suprised it made it past the Linux Gazette Editors actually, considering it was in Issue 27! You've got one year of HS left, but I suggest you try harder in college or someone will call you on plagiarism. I admit however that I didn't actually read the artice, as I'm not likely to find any new information.

Wow, must have been hard to write the article when you have stuff like this, In Issue 27 of the Linux Gazette even.

Other sources:
Diskless HOWTO
XDMCP HOWTO
XDM-Xterm Mini-HOWTO
Linux Terminal Server Project

I'm suprised it made it past the Linux Gazette Editors actually, considering it was in Issue 27! You've got one year of HS left, but I suggest you try harder in college or someone will call you on plagiarism. I admit however that I didn't actually read the artice, as I'm not likely to find any new information.

Wow, must have been hard to write the article when you have stuff like this, In Issue 27 of the Linux Gazette even.

Other sources:
Diskless HOWTO
XDMCP HOWTO
XDM-Xterm Mini-HOWTO
Linux Terminal Server Project

I'm suprised it made it past the Linux Gazette Editors actually, considering it was in Issue 27! You've got one year of HS left, but I suggest you try harder in college or someone will call you on plagiarism. I admit however that I didn't actually read the artice, as I'm not likely to find any new information.

IMHO, read some HOWTO's, this service is completely redundant. Below is a little addendum to the previous post: - Protect your PC from malicious hackers: Recompile the kernel with all security options, deactivate all unneccessary services like telnetd or ftpd.
ipchains will do nicely
- Prevent Websites from tracking your activities: Use mozilla or conqueror with cookies disabled, or set a per-site cookie policy. Use a proxy to disguise your IP if you have broadband with static IP.
for broadband and dialup: safeweb
- Secure your passwords and personal information: One word: Encription. Encript the data in your file system.
An encrypted filesystem is very secure but not for mortals.
- Block unwanted ads and speed up browsing: Use mozilla with a per-syte image policy. reject everithing that comes from doubleclick.net.
just edit your hosts file and add some entries from hostsforlinux

Check the Linux VPN HOWTO for details.

Is right here:
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/VCR-HOWTO.html

All you need is a cheapo $50 winTV card and the patience to get it all set up.

Other alternatives include using bttv-grab and mpeg2encode, rather than vcr and avifle+divx as outlined in the howto. I have yet to get it all working quite the way I want it to, but I expect it will be done in a week or two.

Looks like you slashdotted yourself. I think that could be a first.

(Somewhat on topic):

If it is an X-terminal, what's the holdup? Isn't there a coax/twinax/rj45 port on the back? That, some sort of 'Ctrl-Esc' or something to get into the configuration menu, and this HOWTO and maybe this HOWTO and this HOWTO might offer some info. I'm sure that if you went out and actually bought or glommed on to an X Terminal, you might have a clue, but others reading this /. might not.

Looks like you slashdotted yourself. I think that could be a first.

(Somewhat on topic):

If it is an X-terminal, what's the holdup? Isn't there a coax/twinax/rj45 port on the back? That, some sort of 'Ctrl-Esc' or something to get into the configuration menu, and this HOWTO and maybe this HOWTO and this HOWTO might offer some info. I'm sure that if you went out and actually bought or glommed on to an X Terminal, you might have a clue, but others reading this /. might not.

Looks like you slashdotted yourself. I think that could be a first.

(Somewhat on topic):

If it is an X-terminal, what's the holdup? Isn't there a coax/twinax/rj45 port on the back? That, some sort of 'Ctrl-Esc' or something to get into the configuration menu, and this HOWTO and maybe this HOWTO and this HOWTO might offer some info. I'm sure that if you went out and actually bought or glommed on to an X Terminal, you might have a clue, but others reading this /. might not.

256M ram - $40

• Radeon (Windows solution) comes with TV on demand software that is free to use thanks to the Guide Plus+(TM) TV listings broadcast in North America.
• Hauppauge WinTV-PVR
• ShowShifter - a Windows-based software package for ATI, Hauppauge, and Matrox capture cards.
• SnapStream (as previously mentioned by someone else
• The Linux solutions can be found at VCR-HOWTO or linuxtv.org

I'm sorry, I have ZERO sympathy for the guy who wants to dial in to set his clock yet not pay for TiVo service.

First thing is if you set up a shell on your TiVo, you can connect from another PC and set your time manually. You never need to dial TiVo again.

Second, come on. The guy *KNEW* that TiVo expects a subscription. How can he rationally expect TiVo to be a viable company without subscriptions?

Third, if he wants TiVo-like functionality, he could have saved a bit on his $400 investment. Buy an ATI Radeon All-in-Wonder or a Hauppauge card. There are others as well.

• The Radeon (Windows solution) comes with TV on demand software - Radeon features - that are free to use thanks to the Guide Plus+(TM) TV listings broadcast in North America.
  
  
• the Hauppauge (Windows solution) - Hauppauge WinTV-PVR - even boasts about burning a show to CDR for watching on your DVD player - something TiVO CANNOT do.
  
  
• ShowShifter - a Windows-based software package for ATI, Hauppauge, and Matrox capture cards.
  
  
• The Linux solution can be found at VCR-HOWTO or linuxtv.org

I think this would be a good time to link to The Linux Security HOWTO: What to Do During and After a Breakin , as well as of course the Linux Security HOWTO itself . Don't just read it. Implement it.

I think this would be a good time to link to The Linux Security HOWTO: What to Do During and After a Breakin , as well as of course the Linux Security HOWTO itself . Don't just read it. Implement it.

Mike

Mike

Converting MBR System Disks for 64-bit Windows Whistler

Partition Manager Help

LILO

LILO mini-HOWTO

Multi-Booting with LILO

Multiple Boot Advice for x86

The Ultimate Windows Whistler News

Usability comparison: Windows Whistler vs. Gnome 1.2, KDE 2.0, Mandrake Update

Well, this DB2-lovin hippie thinks that a good start would be the DB2 for Linux HOWTO, at least for installation and basic configuration issues.

Check out the "XFree86 Font Deuglification HOWTO"

It led to an huge improvement the fonts on my desktop.

-Bruce

Regarding Linux running on more than 4 processors, it does actually run with more than 4, and more than 16. Slashdot ran this article awhile back: http://slashdot.org/articles/00/09/27/1825242.shtm l about a 31 processor Alpha EV67 machine. The reader comments also had a link to this document http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/BogoMips-1.html #ss1.3 about the highest known BogoMips values.

Install the Windows TTF fonts if you have them. With them Konqueror looks fine. Also, take a look at the Font Deuglification mini HOWTO at http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/FDU/index.html.

That's the worst way to stop gdm from starting I've ever seen recommended. Here comes the right way:
(You're root)
The default runlevel is given in /etc/inittab, like this:
"id:2:initdefault:" The number is the runlevel your machine boots into.
Now do
rm /etc/rc2.d/S??gdm (where ?? is some number)
(If the default runlevel is 3, use rc3.d) This prevents gdm from running when entering runlevel 2 or 3, respectively.
On debian try "man update-rc.d". On RedHat there is some tool whose name I don't know. With KDE try ksysvinit (I think that's the name) for a GUI tool. Read section 6 of the From-PowerUp-To-Bash-Prompt-HOWTO, probably at file:///usr/doc/HOWTO/en-html/From-PowerUp-To-Bash -Prompt-HOWTO-6.html or at the LDP . In general, if a stable debian system does things to your config files you are doing something wrong. Debian is very nice in this regard (and in others), compared to other dists. Also look in /usr/share/doc/sysvinit/ (location on debian).

And there is no filesystem on linux as cool as VxFS.

I dunno, I kinda prefer AIX LVM myself.. and there _is_ a LVM HOWTO available for Linux.. It's still not as stable as I'd like, and I don't know if you can boot off it yet (though doing rootdisk stuff in VxFS is so sucks as compared to native in HP or IBM :p), but it's cool.

Journeling means that every write is repeated a second time. Logging only writes once. Gee what is the slowest operation on RAID-5 ummmmm...WRITING maybe.

The usual responses: huge batt-backed ECC cache, use raw device (new to Linux but available in other vendors' LVM implementations), lazy JFS write algorithms and tuning JFS watermarks. Besides, what DBA/sysadmin in h(is|er) right mind is going to build a performance-critical disk subsystem on anything besides a RAID 0+1?

<peeve> Sun needs to get off its ass and give a working LVM system away for free. Disksuite is too kludgey and it's not good enough. This may happen when LVM for Linux reaches stability. Or not.</peeve>

Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)

There is a recent Linux Ecology HOWTO at the indicated link.

However, a quick read indicates that it does not seem to include some of the suggestions already posted here, so some of you gurus may want to write the maintainer with suggestions.

--