[thelist] nice easy Unix distro installation?

[David Siedband]

I'd recommend FreeBSD [1].  I've found it to be the most approachable 
of the freely available unices.  Installation is straightforward, and 
the ports tree resolves dependencies to in a manner to similar to the 
package based linux distros.

If you're interested in linux, consider having a look at Debian [2].  
I've found it to be the most sustainable linux distro as far as being 
able to do continuous upgrades without backing up and starting over.  
I've also had a better experience with debian's package management 
system (apt) than with SuSE or Mandrake, particularly when running 
combinations of package and source based apps.

An easy way to evaluate Debian is to check out Knoppix [3] or Gnoppix 
[4].  These are live-cd based Debian variants that use the KDE and 
Gnome desktop environments respectively.  You can boot into a live 
system from a cd without touching your hard drive.  You can even 
install from one of these cds and use it as the basis for your Debian 
system.

HTH
--
David

[1] http://www.freebsd.org/
[2] http://www.debian.org/
[3] http://www.knoppix.org/
[4] http://www.gnoppix.org/


On Aug 29, 2004, at 12:26 PM, Roger H. wrote:
> I have been googling, but I was wondering if you folks have any 
> suggestions
> for a downloadable unix distro, for an old system I want to set up as 
> my
> pretend server. Something I can install MySQL, PHP, etc. Hopefully 
> something
> I could just burn on to a cd, and load to the dino computer.