hello, my name is
nathan pitman.

Get yourself a copy of the latest version of Fedora (or insert chosen distro pref here). When you set it up go through the installer and everything is pretty much handled automatically for you.

Note when you are asked for which packages you would like if you go through them you should be able to install from the CD/DVD all the necessary server packages you need.

However, if you need the absolute latest versions of anything you may need to omit this step and install from source or from a package.

For simplicity and to learn from, I would recommend installing PHP/MySQL etc off the CD/DVD as it will get you up and running quicker.

Another tip is to install all of the programming libraries and compiler stuff at the beginning so when you get into building packages later you won’t be missing loads of dependencies.

One more thing when I got started on Linux I kept a journal of commands I used as I learnt them. This came in quite handy when I forgot how to do something at the command line.

Good luck!

I downloaded the latest stable release of Debian last night over BitTorrent… this weekend I might give it a whirl…

I’ve installed MandrakeLinux 10.1 (I know, I know… I just downloaded FreeBSD!) and succeeded to install Apache, PHP, and mySQL (and some wireless drivers so I can actually get a connection). However, my luck ran out when I tried to install/use phpMyAdmin and failed. I gave up.

I’m going to try and do this whole shebang once more in the coming weeks.

Mark, well it’s a kinda english, but there’s a fair amount of technical geek speak thrown in for good measure to make those who aren’t technically inclined think that we’re all real clever. :)

Does anyone actually speak English in this post?!?!

Net install sounds like an attractive option… I have a decent connection and yes I only need a minimal set of components; Apache, PHP, MySQL… Thanks for the tips Peter.

Not to get in a flamewar about distro’s / Just Another Opinion: I like Debian.

The Woody version has been used as server software for several years now, and has proven itself. Install is pretty easy, as you shouldn’t have to compile anything. Unless you want to of course.

In the installer, you are given the option to install everything needed to run a graphical environment, or not. Which saves your machine alot of RAM. And since you won’t be using the pc after you’ve got the environment set up, I think this is you’re best choice.

If your net connection is capable, there are loads of local mirrors to do a net-install. The only real difference here is that your source is the internet, instead of your CD/DVD-drive. This saves you from burning cd’s and downloading all those packages you don’t need.

For me net-install is a big convenience because my ISP hosts one of Debian’s mirrors, so net-install runs at my max download speed.

Whatever your choice, good luck! I’ll be joining you soon, I’ve just finished gathering all required hardware and another router-connection. And I’m sick of running Apache, PHP, Ruby, Perl, MySQL and all that on Windows.

Links:

Debian’s homepage

Downloading with BitTorrent

net-install

ps. Have no idea what version of Textile is used on these comments, but unordered lists don’t seem to be part of it. Pity :(

Last note: You could consider FREESCO, and ignore it’s purpose of routing/networking. it runs in 8 MB RAM :)

“I guess you have to not be put off too easily if you hit any issues early on!”

Damn right. You will hit lots of problems early on. But the best advice I can give is just stick with it—you’ll soon learn how to deal with them and there are lots of very clever people out there who are willing to help you out for the good of the flock :)

(Penguin flock, that is)

I recently installed Fedora on a machine at home and am quite happy with it.

Setup was super easy, too.

Nooo don’t use Gentoo! : )

I thought there might be some polarisation to choices of distro!

Anyway these days hardware incompatibilities are a lot less common unless it’s cutting edge hardware you’re talking about.

I had a interesting experience with my own first install. After the primary installation, X server died and I was left with a black screen. I then had to reconfigure X from the command line. The issue was that version of the driver for my ATi card on the installation disk was not quite right. After updating the driver all was well.

I guess you have to not be put off too easily if you hit any issues early on!

Nathan: it’s not the distro which works with the hardware, it’s the kernel. So that should be a non-issue in terms of distro choice. However, it’s really unlikely to be a problem unless you have really weird hardware—and they’re Dells, so unlikely to be weird. What hardware is it? You could probably just do a Google (adding on “linux driver” to the search) for the hardware.

Jonathan, thanks for the pointers. One concern I do have with any distro is whether I can ascertain if it will work with the hardware prior to embarking on installation?

Also, in terms of your question about differences between distros, it’s mainly just the packages, config tools, and particularly the package manager.

Every Linux has an /etc, every Linux has a /bin/bash, so the things that vary are generally:

* Builds of packages—each distro has their own set of “officially” built packages

* Config locations, like Stuart said. Config is stored in /etc, but whereas Fedora has its httpd config in /etc/httpd/httpd.conf, Gentoo has it in /etc/apache2/conf/apache2.conf.

* Patchsets—especially for the kernel, different distros apply different patches. ie. security patches.

* Philosophy—Another thing I didn’t like about Fedora was their policy of “Absolutely no non-free software. Ever.” This was annoying because you had to go out of your way to install Java, or Flash, or whatever. That just wastes time.

* Communities—community support is important, especially when you’re new. Some communities are better than others. Again, I’ve found Gentoo to be quite good from this perspective. But Fedora’s community is alright too.

Hope that helps : )

Yea, we have Samba running on our linux server at Mirashade and that works just fine.

Noooo don’t use Fedora. Well, you could… Fedora is piss easy to install, but after I moved to Gentoo I never looked back…

Actually, when I used Fedora I couldn’t even get their version of httpd to work; I had to install LAMPP instead, which I didn’t like because LAMPP insists on using bleeding edge releases, so MySQL kept producing database dumps that nobody else could use.

Aaaanyway, Gentoo is much more fun, the package manager (that’s the thing that looks after the software) is WAAAAY better than RPM (Redhat Package Management—what Fedora, Red Hat, Mandrake, etc. use) and people think you’re totally hardcore because you installed Linux from a command line. Oh, and people usually get quite impressed if they see stuff compiling too. Just make sure you have a grey on black console rather than black on white because that looks more impressive ; ).

I don’t spend my life trying to look clever… honest.

I guess the disadvantage of Gentoo is you’re jumping pretty much straight into the deep end, and it takes quite a while to install. But you can use binaries for the install which cuts out a lot of time. For updates, I run Gentoo Linux Cron Update every night which works nicely.

Never tried the mapped drive thing though… I think you’d use Samba for that, but I’m not sure.

Yep, Distro == Distribution.

For my development server I use Redhat 9, the last of the free versions of Red hat before they became Fedora.

Fedora’s pretty good, stable and perfectly suited to the development server, it also has better package management compared to RedHat 9.

I wouldn’t think you’d notice that much difference betweeen distros in terms of running a server. My own experience has been with Fedora and Red Hat so I can’t really comment on the others.

Main differences I have come across would be subtle variations in paths to config files etc.

Best bet is to get stuck in with whatever distro you decide you like the sound of and go from there.

For the uninitiated ‘distro’ is ‘distribution’ right? If I don’t really require a GUI what’s the best option… and what are the differences between different distros?

The two distros I turn to when I need to install linux are Ubuntu and Gentoo.

Gentoo is great if you have time and need to really fine tune your installation. Gentoo can be the perfect distro, but you really need to have a load of time free to get it installed properly. My first Gentoo installation took 43 hours…

Ubuntu is fantastically easy to get up and running – even on modern laptops (the bane of most linux distros in my experience). It’s also very powerful as it’s based on Debian. The package system is good for installing stuff quickly.