May 8, 2007
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Linux Tech Support
I have a situation. Two really.
First of all, I love Red Hat/Fedora Core. I don’t know why I’m so dedicated to it because I’ve never had much luck with it, but then again, I haven’t had a dedicated bad ass machine to run Linux on either.
I’ve inherited an old HP Celeron box. I meant to check the specs before I left for work this morning, but I want to say it’s in the 2.X Ghz range. Currently it only has 128 Megs, but I can upgrade it to 1 GB for $76.
So I have two questions for the gurus out there like ehowton, drax0r, and princessleia2. First of all, I would like to run a Linux OS on x86 architecture. I don’t mind having naught but CLI, but I would be nice to have a GUI to get some things done quickly. I’ve not tried any other distros. I did have a bad experience installing Mandrake a few years ago. It looks too simple. What is the “best” x86 Linux distro that has a small footprint, few OS specific commands and a GUI that doesn’t take a mammoth to run. I’d like use this box to run Apache as well as serve as a file server. That brings me to my next topic…
As many of you know, Black Widow died from a fried motherboard. (In four years I hadn’t come up with a better name for her and I still don’t have a name for my new laptop. Maybe I’ll just pull a Strong Bad and call it Lappy.) The point is, I bought USB enclosures for both of the drives. I am going to use Sync Toy to sync the folders between the two drives and create a comprehensive back up upon the initial sync. I will do incremental back ups each time I sync. My plan was to either leave one of the drives (a 160 IDE drive) at work or hook it up to the HP Linux server so I can have access to all of my data at work and leave the other (300 SATA which will remain NTFS) sitting on my desk and for travel. At first I thought about making the 160 a FAT 32 drive so I could hook it up to a Linux box as well as Windows (for syncing and traveling.) I’m assuming that OS X understands FAT 32 as well.
I don’t like the drawback to having a FAT 32 drive. The sectors are too slow, there is no redundancy and no journaling. I considered using ext3 or whatever Linux is up to now, but then I wouldn’t be able to sync it with the other drive via Windows. I was wondering if anyone knew of a file system that Windows can read/write but would be just as accessible for Linux or, have the bugs been worked out with Linux such that reading and writing to NTFS is no longer an issue?
Comments (7)
You know… I was born in the 70s and had an Atarti. I even remember when PCs came out. Our first was an Apple. I was in college when the internet became public…… but I have NO idea what you just said : )
Thanks for making me feel old (j/k)
ryc: I can’t remember…I may have been playing around on xanga and come across your page by accident.
My posting habits are horrible, I know! I’m averaging one a month when it use to be hard to JUST post one a day! My laziness has stepped up to a whole new level!! I’ll try to get on the ball, but I can’t make any promises! Keep yours coming for the both of us, will ya??
Hmm…I wish my hubby was here. He is an IT Support Specialist. He’s the first one they call on in HHC to fix anything related to computers. He’s simply a genius
Unfortunately, he’s simply deployed as well…
I on the other hand, am almost completely illiterate when it comes to PCs.
lol
Hmmm… you could throw money at it and buy one of those x-serve raid thingys. I mean, a LOT of money. I don’t have any solution but theory.
But if I had a sister, I probably would have done her if the she was hot. I always wondered as a child if I could “hook something up” with my cousin.
Im glad she grew to be morbidly obese.
But if I got OFF my ass, then I definitely wouldn’t be posting!! I’d be… well, whatever it IS that people do when they’re off their ass, haha! MAKE UP YOUR MIND, MAN!
RYC – don’t sound too convinced -or convincing - man, my puter probs would be sooo simple for you, comparatively – the rest of life, i’m guessing, not-so-much – for us both – really ought to, when on your ass, give a call…