Suggestions for a backup computer

[Soda_Popinsky]

Use it for forensics! Find hard drives and forensicsize 'em! Thats what I would do if I still had my old box. Get knoppix STD and mess with it's utilities.

[Lansing_Banda]

I'm gonna butt in here for a second:

It doesn't matter what version of linux you use. There is not that much difference in them aside from packaging and installation; K. I use Mandrake becaues it installs quick and easy.

Go with The_killer's idea. First, install mandrake w/ very little on it except for the servers. Don't install any X server because that will just suck your ram and you don't need it to learn how to set up the servers. Basically, make it into a router w/ iptables, a webpage server w/ apache, a DNS server with whatever you want, a DHCP server, an SSH server, samba file server, and whatever else down the road.

Learn how to turn on only the services you need and learn to lock them down.
Learn the command line and be able to freely navigate it and do everything you need to.
Learn Vi, laTex, and add some programming languages on there if you want and learn how to compile them.
Recompile your kernal a few times and add stuff to it and recompile it again.
Learn how to set up cron jobs.
Learn how to install *.RPMS and from source.
Learn tar and gunzip.
Later, you can set up the Blackbox or Fluxbox window managers.
Learn everything else.

After this, format and try with another OS (BSD, UNIX, Win2k, another Linux)

Crap, just do stuff.