I posted a while back about installing Linux on my laptop's second hard drive. I never got it completely configured the way I would have liked, so I took it off. Now I want to try a different route.

I've always wanted to test my building skills on computers, so this is a perfect opportunity. I want to build a bare-basic tower with just the essentials to run an all the latest Linux distros out there. Now I know there aren't many of you out there that run Linux, but I'm looking for a few baseline requirements to build this machine as cheaply as possible. I'm gonna try to keep it around $200, b/c I've already got a monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

Also, if any of you have an old tower lying around that has at least a newer PIII or older P4, let me know... I'm interested!!!

 

What do you want to do with it? If it is just a webserver I am running an old 266mhz and it is fast as can be! Linux requires very little processor power unless you are running Oracle or some other resource intensive server software. I do have some higher performance linux boxes also that run pIII but I couldn't build em for $200. If you want to use it as your everyday desktop put a little more money in it and go with a PIII or AMD.

Start with an inexpensive mobo such as the budget mobos from ASUS. If it doesn't have onboard video buy a cheap video card since linux isn't usually used for games or graphics an expensive card is a waste. I run 256mb ram in my webserver and desktop.

Finally, don't skimp on the powersupply. The ones that come with inexpensive cases usually fail or cause problems.

Let me know what you are planning to build and if you need any parts. I don't have a case but I have boxes of misc. parts.

What distro of Linux do you want to use?

 

Mike -

I've found some pretty decent machines on eBay for around $200. Most of them are either Dell or Gateway but their specs are typically like this:

• PIII @ ~1GHz
• 512 Mb RAM
• 20 Gig HD
• CD/RW & Floppy
• No OS (probably why they're so cheap)

I know I probably couldn't build one for that cheap unless I scrounged and scrounged for the best deals. I'm probably just gonna go with one of these towers and save the building for when I get ready to replace my main PC.

As for the distro, I haven't fully decided yet. I've got Mandrake 10.1 burned to CD already. I might try out SUSE and RedHat later out of curiosity. Right now I just wanna get a feel for the system, and figure out how to install and remove programs.

 

My main home PC is an old Dell GX1 I bought from a company I used to work for that went out of business. Has a Celeron CPU, 450mhz i think. I have added some more RAM & a bigger hard drive. Running Gentoo with KDE it is almost as fast as my late model HP with XP on it, just crashes a lot less & no virus/spyware concerns. It can handle some Gimp imaging work with no trouble, and that's about all I do at home. If you don't have a lot of processor intensive stuff to do you can get away with a much older box for linux.

 

check Dells site, they had P4 servers for $300 or less!!
I don't recommend Red Hat just because they only support enterprise distro. Fedora or Suse are great distros. If you want to run a desktop environment it doesn't get any easier than Suse.

 

I just bought this sucker:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...ME:B:EOAB:US:6

I figure that was a pretty good deal for a machine that isn't that old, plenty of RAM, and an adequate hard drive.

I couldn't have built one for near that cheap.

I'm also probably going to partition the hard drive 3 times to where I can install SUSE and Mandrake, then have a partition for my files.

 

Very nice, I think you'll like it, that's a lot better than what I have & I'm pretty happy. Good idea on running multiple distros with a seperate partition for your files. You'll want another small partition for your swap file, probably 1gb since it has 512mb ram. Anyone know if each distro will want it's on swap partition, or can each distro share the same one? I would think they should be able to share.

 

I was wondering that myself.... I'll prob check here on and off and do a little research and see if I can find the answer.

 

http://www.linuxcompatible.org/thread30700-1.html

It is possible. Only thing you've gotta worry about is the bootloader being overwritten by installing another distro. Apparently, that'll make the first distro "vanish".

What I will probably try to do is install Mandrake 10.1 and edit LILO and add the other distro (SUSE) somehow. I'll have to research this first.

 

I bet you could make a copy of the LILO config file after the first install, let the second distro overwrite it, then just add the couple of lines from the first config into the second. Let us know how this works out for you, i just got a spare 60gig drive & might want to do something similar.

 

You bet. I'm kinda worried how my 20 gig drive is gonna hold up space wise. I might need to invest in a bigger drive before long.

 

Just out of curiosity what are you planning on doing with this computer? Good luck with the multiple distro installs. I have gone this route before it ain't easy but it can be done.

Your setup should work just fine.

 

I'm just trying to learn how to use Linux... and I want to be able to fubar things up without worrying about my XP machine, which runs flawlessly. I just want to learn another system.

 

Once you get it up and running here are some things to learn with.

web server
multiple users
DHCP
Samba (so you can share files with windows box)
FTP
SSH
mySQL

If you just want to use it for browsing the web though, just set up the GUI and you are done.

 

I'm eventually going to learn all of that stuff... but one thing at a time. Right now I'll be overjoyed if I can get the bootloader configured properly.

 

Looked at some of the similar PC's on ebay, & i think you got a really nice deal! 4 of the 5 PC's I use at work suck compared to that, I'm tempted to buy 4 & try to sneak them in.

Oh, and getting the monitor. vid card, sound etc running right should be a good intro.

 

Well, I got the machine up and running with Mandrake 10.1. I'm using Konqueror as my web browser for now until I can figure out how to install and remove programs safely. Slowely but surely...