Linux OS is hot and predicted to be a 15 Billion dollar market or around there in the next few years, my old friend Mushroom, a member here introduced me to this (well I read about it before but never took action) and I subscribed to the OS and was able to download everything for 30 days. www.mepis.com Since I am on dial up the download for "Simply Mepis 3.3" was over 95 hours, so I emailed them and told them to send me the CD, which they did, it boots from the CD so you do not have to format your HD to try it. Well I have been on their forum over there discussing how to install it to one of my spare hard drives and looks like I am about ready to do just that. I moved all my files off of the old drive, defragged it and am going to format the drive and install "Simply Mepis 3.3 Linux OS" on that drive without disturbing the Windows OS on the main drive. The members over at the "Mepis forum" told me that I would then have a splash screen when I start up so I could then choose what OS I wanted to work in (see thread below that discusses the installation of the Mepis Linux OS). http://www.mepislovers.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=4974&start=0#forumpost36354 Still have not installed Mepis on the other drive yet but will let you guys know what is up in this thread. One of the main things that Mushroom told me about was the ability for Mepis to pick up files from a lost Windows Hard Drive (FAT was bad I guess and Windows could not read it any longer) that I think M$ anti-spyware screwed up in the first place. Well, it worked, the MEPIS OS can read those files that Windows can not read anymore, so this IS a great OS and I am impressed with it. Thank you Mushrooom!
anthonycea your welcome I do not use Mepis myself as my main OS, but have used it enought to know it is as good as it gets for a Live CD that can also be installed on the hard drive with a great selection of programs for the home user and more. Also it can also be up-dated/upgraded/expanded using apt-get with ease. If SuSE was not around I would most likely be running Mepis as my main OS.
Out of interest, how does this compare performance wise to other versions of linux? I have a spare box (Or 5) that I've been meaning to install linux on for quite a while now but I haven't got round to it as of yet. This looks like an interesting option but I just want to make sure that it's the right thing to go for. I want to be using the boxes to be hosting smallish sites... (So will be running Apache)... Any suggestions? Cheers
This is a PC OS, but you may get help over on the linux forum linked in this thread SE. This is not a server OS but for the desktop, if you have a spare box to try it on just follow the same path outlined in this thread but it is not for a server.
What would your suggestion be for a linux server OS be then? As you can tell, I'm all windows and pretty new to linux
I have heard of folks using old PC's to serve websites, but that is a new thread you can start over in the server administration forum, leave a link to it here maybe you will get some attention. Sounds like something a lot of folks would be interested in, but most are just paying the $5.00 a month to a hosting company. Would be interesting to learn how to serve your own sites from home for a lot of folks. JD could help you, he seems to be the server guru here.
I'll start a thread... But you're right... You can easily serve small sites behind a DSL connsction... It's a hell of a lot cheaper than paying hundreds of hosts to do it for you.
Simply Mepis is set up as an end user distro not for power users For a noobie and a power user I would recomend the latest version of SuSE Pro I have 9 machines set up with SuSE 9.2 pro, 3 of them as servers. 9.3 is due out mid april and I would recomend getting the boxed set or less than $100 US which also includes about 1000 pages of manuals and 90 days of installation support. Note most newer distros require a minnum of 128MB of Ram. anthonycea read some where that you are still on dialup. Have you been able to connect to the internet using mepis? Why I ask is that that is the bigest single issue when installing a Linux distro on a old windows box with a modem. There are 100's of cheap winmodems out there and not all will work.
No I have not installed it to the hard drive yet, but if I have an issue I may have to get a DSL connection, thanks for your ongoing help Mushroom.
Came across this yesterday and as it refers to Mepis, here it is. The rest: http://thelinuxbox.org/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1113176154&archive=&start_from=&ucat=18&