Linux Suggestions Sought -

I'm resurrecting an old pc, a Celeron something with 768 megs of ram. It currently has four harddrives but I'm going to put a new 160GB drive in there ($29 ) to replace 2 or 3 of them. The machine has Windows 2000 on it but it was a pretty unstable system. I also ran SUSE 9.1 (or thereabouts) on it without any problems. My plan is to install SUSE 9.3 on the new drive. I only need this as a backup server and for the new media that seems to be miraculously descending from Vraja lately. I've always like SUSE the most out of any of the distros I've tried and I don't really want to go with anything else right now.

So with that out of the way: any suggestions regarding recommended software or configuration to make it useful as both backup system (where I store backups) and a backup system in the sense that it would function as a decent replacement for my Windows XP system? (I use tbird and firefox so most of my usage is covered right there and easily transferable.)

1. Use x.org xserver, if available on SuSE
2. Install samba for easy filesharing to windows. The default config file (/etc/samba/smb.conf.example usually) has an entry for setting up/exporting home dirs. Do this.
3. Install SSH. Prob installed by default, but double check.
4. Use KDE or Gnome. Install both if you have the space, although technically you only need the libraries to run an app. Ie, under KDE, you need the gtk libraries to run a Gnome app. Personally, I usually install both.
5. OpenOffice Beta 2 is good.

What else do you need? Unless its very specific, most XP apps can be replicated under Linux....

Thx, DC. Looks like some good advice. I had hoped to get this going over the weekend but we needed some emergency tree felling as we had a couple of giant trees overhanging the house that we rotten. One had a huge crack through the base that opened up an inch each time the wind picked up. Quite amazing to see a guy (not me!) 60-70 feet in the air with a chainsaw, but I digress...

I use openoffice beta 2 now, but mainly for the dbase compatibility. I did use if for a while for everything but went back to using Excel just out of convenience. My one sorting trick in Excel was enough to do it.

My work mainly involves email, browser, text editor, FTP, and a little ssh. Can you recommend a good text editor that has color syntax highlighting? If it supports cliptext libraries, that'd be a huge plus. I use Editplus now for all of my coding and WS_FTP pro.

Not if you connect it to the net. I turn SSH off on all my clients hosting accounts, well actually they get a stripped down java version that is pretty helpfull but on then can they access thru a control panel first as opposed to just gawking into it via command line from a client.

I use this text editor, its free version is just as good, at lest my student version is:

http://notetab.com/

It even runs on a flash drive and I believe has libraries..see it attached, just drop it in your program files or like I said on a usb.

Another one thats even better especially for syntax highlighting is CuteHTML

Brajamani

Pssst: "Linux suggestions"

FWIW: I've used Notetab and loved it's scripting function but it doesn't have color syntax highlighting. Meant to be in their next major release but they've been saying that for a couple of years at least.

? Huh? SSH has a great security track record, and is just about the best way to remote access your box. You can do several things to make it more secure; turn off root access, turn off X11 forwarding, increase the key encryption, and turn off SSH protocol 1. In fact, many of these are the defaults. I ONLY use SSH on some internet boxes, and its very stable. How many times has an ssh -> my desktop with 'killall X' saved me from an X11 lockup?

Plus, when braja has all kinds of problems with his Linux box, he can just PM me to ssh into it & fix it

Of course it makes sense to turn off SSH for your average shared hosting client who doesn't have a clue about what command line is and who is a potential hazard there. However as far as I understood, Braja isn't working on a server for a shared hosting environment.

I once reset all ownership on a web server during some late night session doing a recursive chown. I'd copied several sites over from another server and was working on them in a local home directory but accidentally used "/home" and whopped the entire box. Ouch. Quite soon after I asked Madhava if he was interested in maintaining the box.