looking to get into unix

enathan1085 · #1 April 30th, 2004, 03:08 AM

hey i'm running a TiPowerbook 15'' with OS 10.3.3 i wanted to familiarize myself with Unix b/c i want to use it on my powerbook. one of my programmer friends told me to download a unix OS onto my older Pentium 2 just to figure out how it works and to play around with it since there is nothing important on the older computer so it wouldn't matter if i screwed something up horribly. what i wanted to know was if anybody had a specific (preferrably free) Unix server that could run on a (lesse if i remember) 633Mhz P2 with prolly 32 MB ram and an 8 gig HD (at most). i just want to get relatively good with the Unix OS before i open up the ominous X11 terminal on my powerbook.

MacMuppet · #2 April 30th, 2004, 05:29 AM

Don't fear the reaper - I mean the Terminal, man.
I'm just starting out with it myself, but have been hgappily tapping commands into it. All you need is some instructions - I've got "TerminalBasics.pdf" - can't remember where I got it from but it was probably O'Reilly or somwehere similar. I haven't yet managed to break my computer, so its not that fraught with peril....

Theres some useful stuff here:

http://www.oreillynet.com/
http://www.onlamp.com/bsd/
http://www.bsd.org/
http://www.freebsd.org/
http://www.netbsd.org/
http://www.openbsd.org/
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...ook/index.html

OK those are mostly pure Unix links, but they might be useful. I'm still an absolute novice, but have lost my fear, which is the first step.

macmasta · #3 April 30th, 2004, 08:23 AM

There are several distributions for Unix and Linux.

Your best bet would probably be to go for a Linux distro . . .

I suggest you Debian which you can download here.

As soon as you have downloaded the disc images, just burn them to CD and boot your P2 from the first CD. Afterwards just go through the installation.
If you got problems during the installation, just use this installation manual.

Lycander · #4 April 30th, 2004, 09:28 AM

Actually if you're new and inexperienced, another easy way to "dive in" and not worry about messing up is: use a LiveCD. Since macmasta suggested Debian I'll suggest Morphix. www.morphix.org

It's basically a Debian distro, Morphix is a direct decendent of Knoppix actually. You download a CD image, burn it to disc, then boot it. The difference is, rather than installing the OS, you just run the whole thing off of RAM and CD-ROM. It doesn't touch your hard drive at all, so if you get sick of it, reboot and take the CD out and everything is back to normal.

scruffy · #5 April 30th, 2004, 10:30 AM

Basically, your choices are a Linux distro - debian was mentioned, that's probably a pretty good bet - or a BSD. I like NetBSD, but if you're going to run on x86, FreeBSD might be easier.

FreeBSD is also the free unix with the most in common with OS X, since OS X is based on FreeBSD.

nixgeek · #6 April 30th, 2004, 01:23 PM

Don't forget that OS X is a UNIX operating system as well. If you pull up a terminal, you should be able to do anything that you might be able to do on a Linux/BSD/Solaris box. Each of them are similar to one another to a certain extent in how you use it. Difference you might encounter might be in how certain commands are called as well as devices.

I'm used to the Bash shell when it comes to using the command line (thanks to my Linux background), but each person has their preference of shell to use for executing UNIX commands.

pds · #7 May 1st, 2004, 02:35 AM

Linuxiso.org is a good place to get any (all?) different linux iso's (debian is there as is mandrake and suse).

The config you mention will run Linux, but you probably want more ram if you are want it to run well. Even if you're only going to fool around with the gui or with xwindows stuff. Mandrake 9.2 complained when we put it on our 32 meg machine.

Also you may need to look at the video card. We had s3 4 meg cards and it wouldn't let us use KDE. Gnome ran ok on those cards with 64 megs of ram.

You want to get familiar with Linux, which means the CLI, but the interplay between the CLI and the gui is part of that familiarity too.

nixgeek · #8 May 1st, 2004, 08:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pds

Linuxiso.org is a good place to get any (all?) different linux iso's (debian is there as is mandrake and suse).

The config you mention will run Linux, but you probably want more ram if you are want it to run well. Even if you're only going to fool around with the gui or with xwindows stuff. Mandrake 9.2 complained when we put it on our 32 meg machine.

Also you may need to look at the video card. We had s3 4 meg cards and it wouldn't let us use KDE. Gnome ran ok on those cards with 64 megs of ram.

You want to get familiar with Linux, which means the CLI, but the interplay between the CLI and the gui is part of that familiarity too.

Though it might not be the best GUI for a newbie (though I could be wrong), the minimalistic window managers, along with probably nautilus or some other file manager as...um...your file manager.

IceWM is pretty good. There's also FluxBox, BlackBox, Window Maker, and millions of others that don't use up memory like KDE and Gnome do. Check out this site for more information on window managers and desktop environments available for Linux/*NIX.

Mind you, most of these are already included with many distros, so you won't have to go too far. I've used linux with fluxbox as a window manager on a 5x86 PR-133 (not a Pentium) with only 32 megs and it handled it ok. It wasn't lightning fast, but it was still functional.