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Thread: secure linux for inet

  1. #1
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    Question secure linux for inet

    I just got a new old(nice oxymoron, eh?) Intel p133/64mb
    with 5 gigs HDD and a cable connection(10/100).

    I'm thinking of devoting the p133 to internet and I need
    some help in choosing a *nix OS. It doesn't need to be
    anything too fancy, basic browsing(not text based though!),
    email, irc. But the focus is on security and smooth running
    on the hardware. Also I'd like to use it to learn *nix
    basics and networking.

    Maybe if it gets interesting I'll put up an inet-BBS and see
    what happens.

    Any suggestions? Immunix any good?

  2. #2
    Senior Member problemchild's Avatar
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    It depends. Do you have any experience with *nix?

    First-timers should almost always go with Red Hat, Mandrake, or SuSE until they learn the ropes. Kind of like Linux training wheels. However, if you really want a distro that emphasizes correctness and security, you might look at Debian, Gentoo, or Slackware. Those will give you the richest learning experience, but will also give you the most fits if you aren't reasonably good with *nix.
    Do what you want with the girl, but leave me alone!

  3. #3
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    You can download Mandrake for i586 here:

    http://www.linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=29

    And a pretty good gui browser that dosn't need gnome or kde here:

    http://browser.arachne.cz/linux_install.shtml
    Bukhari:V3B48N826 “The Prophet said, ‘Isn’t the witness of a woman equal to half of that of a man?’ The women said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘This is because of the deficiency of a woman’s mind.’”

  4. #4
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    Thanks ppl. So far Arachne looks good, I'll do a test
    drive with it...

    Yup, looks like I should get Mandrake for my AMD1200
    and maybe start a project with Gentoo on the p133.
    Gentoo looks like something I'll be spending evenings
    with learning new stuff on. (yea, maybe get a couple
    more of those gray hairs too...)

  5. #5
    Senior Member problemchild's Avatar
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    Gentoo would be a good choice for the P133 if only because everything is compiled from source and you can pass "USE=" flags to the compiler to strip out functionality you don't need. That will make it really lean and mean on a slower system.

    Of course, it will take you about 3 days to build the system on a 133.
    Do what you want with the girl, but leave me alone!

  6. #6
    I am currently running RH Linux on a 133 pentium and it runs fine. I have had no problems with it and Ip tables are nice on it (if you are looking for firewall). Gentoo is very nice also..
    If you would like to take a while to build your own linux distro, check out $LFS
    .::nataS is WaTchiNg::.

  7. #7
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    Thanks for the tips, I'm getting Red Hat 7.3 for the p133
    and Mandrake for the 8.2. Maybe I'll move onto the
    more configurable distros after I feel comfortable with
    these. So much to do and so little time..

    By the way LFS was on www.linuxfromscratch.org
    instead of .com.

  8. #8
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    I have Mandrake 8.2 running on a P133 with 64 MByte. It runs fine, but is a bit slow. Shut down all unneeded services, and disable Harddrake and Kudzu on boot. That will speed up the boot process. IceWM is a nice window manager and is about four times as fast as KDE on the P133.

    I figure any slow boot times on an older computer is more than made up for by not having to reboot several times a day.
    Paradise ain\'t all it\'s cracked up to be.

  9. #9
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    Hmm, strange stuff, I got the newest Mandrake and Red Hat
    and trying to install them I got the strangest problems. (note:
    I have installed 7.0. Mandrake and some other distros before
    with success)

    Red Hat gets installed on the p133 ok but on boot has an error
    about mount points. I have /, /usr and swap partitions with the-
    se mounts.

    So I tried installing them on my Amd1200 and got abnormal prog-
    ram terminations on both.

    Finally I tried Red Hat on my p300 and got errors about BIOS archi-
    tecture unrecognizable! It said that it could install, but there could
    be problems with FAT partitions. I'd like to keep Whiner98 here, so
    I didn't want to go ahead with that... This is a fairly common Award
    BIOS and I've installed Mandrake 7.0. on this comp before.

    Any ideas on how to start investigating and fixing these strange
    problems?? Any manual links would sound good now...

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