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[Motorheader]

I am going to be moving straight to Linux in the near future. I am going to be keeping small Windows XP Pro (now there's an oxymoron) partition for apps that only exist there (PCAnywhere to be exact). Here is what has been done up to this point:

- Downloaded latest stable Debian using Jigdo and all 7 discs have been made, but haven't installed it yet.

- Downloaded and isntalled Mandrake multiple times and found it to be the easiest installation encountered as of late - in particular the partitioning tool.

- Downloaded Collegelinux (Slackware based). It intrigued me because of its small installation and appeared to have much of the functionality that would be used right off the bat by me and my family.

The fact that Mandrake has made it known that it is having financial problems makes me a bit leary of it for the long haul. Collegelinux has me intrigued because of the fact it is supported by a learning institution. Debian is where I may end up - I took a look at it a while back when I ran Corel Linux.

Now if it wasn't for PCAnyWhere, I would make a clean jump right off the bat. Is there any Linux app that has similar capability of PCAnywhere?

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

VNC works great, IMO debian is the most well put together linux distro as far as having the most amount of functionality with the least amount of flakiness, although the installer is not exactly a work of art.

 

[Wolf00]

FYI. Mandrake isn't just having financial problems anymore, they've filed for bankrupcy. Here is the story: http://www.ofb.biz/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=192

 

[Motorheader]

Originally posted by: Wolf00
FYI. Mandrake isn't just having financial problems anymore, they've filed for bankrupcy. Here is the story: http://www.ofb.biz/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=192

Well, that answers one question.

 

[mikecel79]

I second VNC. We use it at work to remote control our machines. It's free and works fairly well.

 

[kevinthenerd]

Originally posted by: mikecel79
I second VNC. We use it at work to remote control our machines. It's free and works fairly well.

I love it. Last spring in college I used to use it to connect to my Win98 machine from my iBook when I was too lazy to get out of bed. I also used it to connect from the library (Airport wireless on my iBook) to my Red Hat Linux computer in order to run applications I didn't have with me on my iBook.

I don't believe the connection is encrypted. If security is an issue, I suggest using an SSH connection to forward the appropriate ports. Repost if this is an issue.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Originally posted by: Motorheader

Originally posted by: Wolf00FYI. Mandrake isn't just having financial problems anymore, they've filed for bankrupcy. Here is the story: http://www.ofb.biz/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=192

Well, that answers one question.

March 25th, 2003 - Mandrake Linux 9.1 (Bamboo) released.

April 11th, 2003 - Mandrake Linux 9.1 (Bamboo) for PPC (Mac) released.

April 22nd, 2003 - Mandrake Linux Corporate Server 2.1 for the AMD Opteron processor released.

They aren't gone yet.

 

[Wolf00]

Originally posted by: AnonymouseUser


March 25th, 2003 - Mandrake Linux 9.1 (Bamboo) released.

April 11th, 2003 - Mandrake Linux 9.1 (Bamboo) for PPC (Mac) released.

April 22nd, 2003 - Mandrake Linux Corporate Server 2.1 for the AMD Opteron processor released.

They aren't gone yet.

I didn't say they were gone, just that they'd filed for bankrupcy. I've actually read that Mandrake is planning on doing some re-orging and will be coming out of bankrupcy. They filed for bankrupcy to get rid of some of their idiotic investors and the people that came up with the method that they used to distrubute stock. I personally like Mandrake. I haven't used it in a while cuz I just haven't had the time, but I've actually been planning on installing 9.1 in the near future.

To address the VNC, I also use and love VNC. I'm a network administrator for a group within my company of about 100 users all running Windows 2000 or XP. With VNC installed on each computer, if anybody has a problem, I can connect to their computer and see the exact error they are getting as well as either fix the problem myself or walk them through it while watching what they are doing. Since you can use any web browser that supports java, it's a life saver.

 

[drag]

Mandrake is ok. They are french, so going bankrupt their is probably like airlines going bankrupt in the US. Meaning, they aren't going anywere

 

[Motorheader]

Originally posted by: drag
Mandrake is ok. They are french, so going bankrupt their is probably like airlines going bankrupt in the US. Meaning, they aren't going anywere

That's funny.

Found another distro that I am seriously looking at right now - Gentoo.

It sounds like VNC may be the answer here. It would also be good to get rid of the last remaining Symantec product that these folks are running.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Just a little advice, please don't fall into the BS that "gentoo is so much faster than xyz because it's compiled with optimizations". I don't use gentoo so I don't know what sucks and what doesn't suck about it, but that single reason is what I always hear people spouting off about as the single greatest reason to use gentoo, and it's false.

 

[chsh1ca]

IMO, for a simpler distro to switch to/from, RedHat is the best I've played with (I don't like the way Mandrake does some things) so far, but I haven't tried anything newer than 7.3 since I'm an avid Slack user. Slackware has its kinks, and unless you are really certain you know what you're doing, I wouldn't suggest you use it as your first distribution. IMO, Redhat is the best distribution to go with for starting out. It's a good workstation distribution, IMO.

As for PCAnywhere type apps for linux, there's the various VNC-derived apps (I like TightVNC for some of its features), and there's a couple other apps out there if you troll Sourceforge. IMO, VNC is the best though.

 

[Motorheader]

Originally posted by: chsh1ca
IMO, for a simpler distro to switch to/from, RedHat is the best I've played with (I don't like the way Mandrake does some things) so far, but I haven't tried anything newer than 7.3 since I'm an avid Slack user. Slackware has its kinks, and unless you are really certain you know what you're doing, I wouldn't suggest you use it as your first distribution. IMO, Redhat is the best distribution to go with for starting out. It's a good workstation distribution, IMO.

As for PCAnywhere type apps for linux, there's the various VNC-derived apps (I like TightVNC for some of its features), and there's a couple other apps out there if you troll Sourceforge. IMO, VNC is the best though.

Regarding RedHat based distro... Does anyone have any working knowledge or opinion of Tummy/Krud distro?

Thanks

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: Motorheader

Originally posted by: chsh1ca
IMO, for a simpler distro to switch to/from, RedHat is the best I've played with (I don't like the way Mandrake does some things) so far, but I haven't tried anything newer than 7.3 since I'm an avid Slack user. Slackware has its kinks, and unless you are really certain you know what you're doing, I wouldn't suggest you use it as your first distribution. IMO, Redhat is the best distribution to go with for starting out. It's a good workstation distribution, IMO.

As for PCAnywhere type apps for linux, there's the various VNC-derived apps (I like TightVNC for some of its features), and there's a couple other apps out there if you troll Sourceforge. IMO, VNC is the best though.

Regarding RedHat based distro... Does anyone have any working knowledge or opinion of Tummy/Krud distro?

Thanks

I've never heard of them before

EDIT: Hmmmmm........

 

[Silent1]

yeah another vote for vnc, works really well.

 

[Motorheader]

Originally posted by: Silent1
yeah another vote for vnc, works really well.

I'm glad I posted this.

 

[elzmaddy]

Another vote for Red Hat 9 and vnc. You won't be dissapointed

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: elzmaddy
Another vote for Red Hat 9 and vnc. You won't be dissapointed

I was disappointed with redhat

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey

Originally posted by: elzmaddy
Another vote for Red Hat 9 and vnc. You won't be dissapointed

I was disappointed with redhat

Me too

 

[drag]

Redhat was actually pretty nice (ver. 9.0) to me when I tested it on my home computer, (1.13 T-bird, 365MB ram, and Geforce2 GTS-v), But when i installed it on my parent's home computer it ran like a turd, very slow. However when nvidia released the non-rpm installer for it's drivers, I was able to install the drivers and it worked out ok. (pentium3 800, 128MB, geforce2 440)

However I do realy like Suse's eval disk, So if it wasn't for the fact that I am a inncessent tweaker when it comes to my OS, I'd probably would be using that. (I currently use SLackware 9)


Gentoo is a great OS. It's for power-users and for people into having the latest and greatest that linux software developers have to offer. Their is a slight performance increase, but not usually something you will notice, unfortuanatly. It's great though simply because the portage system. As you install programs and stuff, the installer will adjust the configuration/makefiles to your specifications, like for example do you want the app compiled with artsd as a dependancy, or to use PAM authentification or not. I like that alot. Little things like that are nice and not applicable to a "normal" distro.

However, if you do not own a fast machine and/or don't have a lot of time to mess around with your machine, then it is probably not worth it. Another downside is that even though it takes away the pain of dealing with dependancies to a good extent, you are probably going to end up using quite a bit of software that is not well tested when it comes to certian configurations and relationships, so bugs and stability become a issue when compared to excelent distros such as debian. Kinda like using windows, but not nearly as bad.

 

[Spyro]

Kinda like using windows, but not nearly as bad.

Stability is one of Linux's strong points, scrificing it in order to have the "latest & greatest" really isn't worth it, IMHO, but the customizability is nice though.

 

[Motorheader]

Been a while - but here is where I am:

- Tried to install CollegeLinux and the install gacked on the Promise Ultra100 controller. Supposed to be addressed in the next release.
- Tried to install Mandrake 9.1 - it appeared to be going fine, but the damn installation time kept creeping up(over 6 hours) and I never let it complete.
- Tried to install Debian - friggin Lilo POS and multiple boots from disk 5 then disk 1 because of the Promise Ultra100 controller. And why beyond me would my Intel NIC not be installed by default. Great learning experience though, I guess.:disgust: I got done with the load and got the "OK" from Debian to reboot. After that, I didn't even get a bootloader prompt, just a screen filled with scrolling 1's and 0's.

- Finally got out my RedHat 7.3 disks and damnit if that wasn't the smoothest of them all. The cfdisk util I was using in Debian taught me alot about partitioning in Linux, so the Druid utility was pretty stratightforward. Installation time from CD1 to the end was 30 minutes at the most, and I took all packages other than Laptop and Server utilities.

I've run the up2date utility and everything is running smooth right now.

 

[Spyro]

There was a lengthy thread here, not to long ago about getting the promise100 controller working with debian. Glad you got started though

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: Motorheader
And why beyond me would my Intel NIC not be installed by default.

Because debian assumes you know about your hardware and know how to look for the appropriate kernel modules when it tells you to. Did you even read the install guide first or did you just blindly jump in?

Great learning experience though, I guess.:disgust: I got done with the load and got the "OK" from Debian to reboot.

I can't imagine you learn all that much from just running the installer.

After that, I didn't even get a bootloader prompt, just a screen filled with scrolling 1's and 0's.

Nice

 

[Flatline]

You can (on 'nix anyway) use TightVNC with encryption; here's a quote from their features page

"Automatic SSH tunneling on Unix. The Unix version of TightVNC viewer can tunnel connections via SSH automatically using a local SSH/OpenSSH client installation (provided that an SSH/OpenSSH server is running on the server as well)."

http://www.tightvnc.com/intro.html