I need help choosing a version of Linux

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Hi again!

I work with these Windows based thin clients, they’re Maxterms, have a max of 512mb PC133, an 800mhz cpu, an integrated video adapter, 10/100nic, audio and 2 usb. They boot from a 512MB Compact Flash card. There is no moving parts in this.. Currently they’re using Windows XPembedded.

I really want to create a new persona for these terminals, and I am pretty sure I want to run Linux on these and see what it can do.

However, after being ignorant for 12 years, I have never touched anything Linux, and am embarassed to say so.
What I’d like to do is put a Linux version on these maxterms, but I have no idea which way to go. ubuntu, red hat, etc..
I’ve been trying to read up what’s good & bad between the different versions, but can’t really put my thumb on it.

These terminals currently run PuTTY to access our main cataloging program, and also now are using Firefox 3.6 for web browsing and Word pad for word processing. Open Office mobile/lite is used by a few people…
So pretty much, the requirements are low, there’s also some audio that’s needed for sound affects within PuTTY, but that’s it.
There’s a windows macro program we also use so we can use keyboard shortcuts within PuTTY, this program is pretty much a requirement. I don’t know if a windows program will run under Linux.

Any suggestion? please help guide me through the Linux waters!

Thank you!

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It would be difficult to say offhand whether your diskless clients are compatible with one version or another of Linux. For that purpose, either the manufacturer’s site may say or, as usual, “Google is your friend.” However, quite a few people are using Linux on them so it should be doable; I just don’t know how simple it has been for them.

PuTTY is avaialable for Linux, so that should not be an issue–although telnet is a basic function in Linux and fairly easy to implement if you choose.

I have no earthly idea about your “Windows macro program” running via WINE, but it really should not be necessary. There are various macro solutions in Linux that should work fine–just google “Linux macro” and you will find plenty of info.

Regarding distributions–I would not necessarily use the heavyweight ones in a 512 MB environment. It can be done, but the lighter-weight graphical environments would be much faster. Running it from a memory card shouldn’t be a big deal, so long as you have a machine to install it from. Since your terminals won’t run XP without the card installed, unless you have a second card slot on one of them it would seem a difficulty. However, a card reader you can use on a PC should do the trick nicely.

I presume that one of the available utilities also used to install to a USB drive may well work for the purpose, such as unetbootin (on Sourceforge: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net ). In fact, if your Maxterms have a choice to boot from USB, you can install the OS that way–and even run a live version from the USB while you work out the various issues that may come up before putting it onto the memory card–so you preserve your current embedded XP setup at least until you are confident that everything has been foreseen.

Various people have their own opinions about the LInux lightweight distributions, ranging from Puppy to DSL. If it runs on your hardware, a surprisingly good one is called Elive, which is built on the Englightenment window manager. That one is famous for taking few resources but still having considerable “eye candy” yet being extremely high performance. You didn’t specify a model of Maxterm, but I noticed a few moments ago an article in the Google search results that spoke of Puppy Linux recognizing the hardware including sound for the Maxterm 3300–apparently an older model, which bodes well for the newer ones.

A couple other possibilities might include Crunchbang Linux, now based on Debian, which uses the Openbox/XFCE environment, or perhaps Lubuntu–an unofficial Ubuntu variant which employs the very lightweight LXDE environment.

My goal for your setup would be for a distribution which is very lightweight for optimum performance in your environment.

If your office uses a terminal server, that is another issue to contend with to be sure the resulting setup is compatible with it.

I hope these few comments may prove helpful.

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You said you haven’t touched linux so I’d say go with Ubuntu. It’s technically a heavyweight but, I’ve run it off of an older machine with some success. The biggest problem I see is the 512MB internal memory. For any easy to use linux your going to need more than that. As David said you could install or even run linux off of a USB drive. If you have a decently powerful external hard drive you could try it that way and if you install to an external and it doesn’t work out that well you could just reformat and try again. Just be careful not to install grub to an external hard drive that’s not always connected because it will change the MBR (Master Boot Record) and could interfere, I’m not entirely sure though.

I’ve never played with Puppy linux but, I did try DSL once and I found it was far to limited for day to day activity. You might try DSL if you like to play with command lines though.

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I am currently running Ubuntu 9.10 on an old Dell 600m laptop (1.5GHz Pentium M, 512MB Ram and a new 140GB HDD). It had XP on it when I got it and despite the fact it had been well used for the last 4-5+ years it was painful to do anything with it. Ubuntu on the other hand runs sweet. It installed fairly trouble free (I did have a problem with GRUB2 but that is because it is unforgiving of a BIOS problem with the larger than factory HDD which Windows generally manages to ignore or work around). It does get a little bogged down when I have lots of tabs open in Firefox (I often have 20+ tabs open).

Once you get your head around the different way of doing things I actually find Ubuntu more user friendly and intuitive than Windows. And from an Administrator perspective its an absolute Godsend. All installed programs can be updated with 2 lines in a Terminal window or about 5 clicks through Synaptic (it also has an updater that will auto pop up every now and again), No need for spyware/virus/malware scans, no need for HDD defragging and so on. Sometimes I sit down and actually have to work rather than waste time maintaining it!

Xubuntu is meant to be a lightweight version Ubuntu (using the XFE desktop) but I found it identical performance wise and doesn’t look as nice.

I’m sure Ubuntu would run ok, but you may be better off trying Puppy Linux. I can vouch for it. Its a light distro which runs in RAM (generally from a CD or USB) but it can be installed if required. It works well on stand alone equipment and I haven’t tried it in a corporate style network (Ubuntu on the other hand is proven there in my opinion).

wattOS is a nice lightweight distro which is known for running nicely on low spec hardware. Currently it is basically an unofficial version of Ubuntu customised for low power PCs. I haven’t used it but Lubuntu is another lightweight version of Ubuntu, which also uses the lightweight but attractive LXDE desktop. It is anticipated that Lubuntu will eventually become an official Ubuntu release.

Whilst DSL seems quite good I personally find it just a little too retro feeling for my liking (basically it’s ugly).

Good luck and I for one will be interested to hear how you go.

.

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Hi ! FWIW, I’m running Lubuntu on an 800 mhz IBM thinkpad with 256 megs of ram (dualbooting with W2K). Lubuntu does fine, and I can use the Ubuntu repositories and the 10.04 kernel. The Ubuntu forums are an absolute godsend; I posted a question when I had a problem with their Evolution email program several releases ago and on another machine, and my query was answered within two hours. Lubuntu doesn’t have that much eye candy, and Chromium works as well for me as (my downloaded and installed) Firefox. Also, I’ve installed Microsoft Office 97 with Crossover Office (the one Linux program I purchased – $40 – (http://www.codeweavers.com -Highly Recommended!), and it runs beautifully. I’m told that one can install even MS Office 2007 easily in Linux with Crossover Office, but my budget is limited. I’ve also used Puppy Linux and that works beautifully also, although I haven’t installed any MS products with that distribution.

Hope this helps.

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Take a quick read through my Linux Mint Experiment.Mint is based on Ubuntu as well. I try to list the pluses and minuses from my Windows perspective. Don’t know if it will help you or not.

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If Mint has a LXDE version then that may well be worth a look. I have heard lots of good things about it, but admittedly never bothered trying it. IMO for use in an old/low spec machine I’d steer away for anything that uses Gnome or KDE. Although seeing as Mint is based on Ubuntu, you could always install LXDE and remove Gnome/KDE regardless of what they offer.

Also FYI the latest beta version of wattOS is now based on Debian (rather than Ubuntu, Ubuntu itself is based on Debian). The latest version of Puppy is now based on Ubuntu rather than being fully independent (which IMO is a good thing, more choice for apps to install).

How have things gone with your Linux project?

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If Mint has a LXDE version then that may well be worth a look. I have heard lots of good things about it, but admittedly never bothered trying it. IMO for use in an old/low spec machine I’d steer away for anything that uses Gnome or KDE. Although seeing as Mint is based on Ubuntu, you could always install LXDE and remove Gnome/KDE regardless of what they offer.

Also FYI the latest beta version of wattOS is now based on Debian (rather than Ubuntu, Ubuntu itself is based on Debian). The latest version of Puppy is now based on Ubuntu rather than being fully independent (which IMO is a good thing, more choice for apps to install).

How have things gone with your Linux project?

Please read the text. I’m not convinced that I will ever be a Linux man, but who knows in the future. I’m keeping it installed for now.

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If you have a server available try loading Ubuntu 10.04 LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project). You thin clients will boot and run applications from the server. Just for playing around, you could even use a decent workstation for the server and easily support 5-10 users. Many schools use LTSP with great success, some very large (several thousand users). The documentation on the Ubuntu wiki site is very straight forward.

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One build not mentioned so far is Peppermint linux. It is based on Mint, which is based on Ubuntu. However, what they did, is strip out most programs, and redesign it to be a “cloud” computer terminal. Most programs do not reside on the host, but are downloaded from the web on demand. I would consider it a preview of the Chrome OS. For example, If you click on the Google Docks Icon, it will open the application in a stand alone window of Firefox, configured for remote app session. peppermintos.com

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I’ve been through quite a few and am now staying with PCLinuxOS 2010. This distro fires on young and old alike ~ currently on Toshiba Satellite L500D, Thinkpad R30 and Coppermine Desktop ( 1999 vintage ).

No problems with any of these ~ download the livecd and try it out without installion hassles.

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I’ve found a version of Mint the easiest to install. Once I downloaded it and burned it to a CD, I put it into the computer I wanted to change to Linux and Mint installed itself just as a Windows OS would. Other versions can get technical with the install screens as you specify what you think each setting should be. (They do give recommendations, though.)

some will say this defeats the purpose of Linux, which is to put the user in control of the computer rather than the company that wrote/distributed the software. But for someone new to Linux, the technical terms, options, and specifications can be rather confusing. I’m not technical, and it does get confusing at times.

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Any of the ‘heavyweights’ would suit your needs fine and run fine on your laptops. Just use a lightweight GUI such as XFCE.

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I’ve done exactly what you are trying to do. I am a somewhat experienced Linux user, though, and still it challenged me a lot. My best advice is to start getting your feet wet with Linux using a regular desktop computer first before attempting an installation on a thin client. If you have to do it though, here are some of the challenges waiting for you:

– 512MB of RAM (and no swap partition, see below) and an 800 MHz processor make for a truly sluggish experience with default modern window managers in popular distributions such as KDE or GNOME. You’ll want something more lightweight such as XFCE but then the environment won’t be quite as “friendly” (when coming from a Windows background). I.e. you will still need the command line and not everything will be as readily available as you might expect.

– For the same reason, Firefox 3.x won’t run smoothly either (it runs slower under Linux, don’t really know why). There are more lightweight alternatives such as Seamonkey that however are often not included by default.

– 512 MB compact flash are too tight, too, to install distributions such as Ubuntu. Probably need to upgrade to a fast 2 GB CF card.

– Compact flash memory will wear out quickly (and be too slow) with a journaled file system such as ext3 that most distributions use by default. Use ext2 instead. Also, the use of a swap partition on a flash drive is not recommended. This requires custom partitioning during install (in the advanced section) to create just one big ext2 partition that contains everything.

– No optical drive means you’ll need to install from a USB stick. Most distributions nowadays support this, alas, not all USB sticks can be booted from, and the BIOS in the thin client needs to support this properly, too. Ditto for using an external USB optical drive. YMMV.

Sorry, your question was which distribution to use, but as you can see the challenge goes beyond this. In my case, I used Debian because it scales down better than Ubuntu but still has a huge repository of readily-available software and I know Debian well. But definitely check out some of the other valuable suggestions in the other posts.

HTH,
Chris

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There are a lot of Linux distributions around. What you should do is take advantage of the Live CD. Unlike Microsoft Windows where you pay the piper and he calls the tune, Linux offers you a different way. You can download an iso file and burn a CD to try it out to see whether the distro (Linux name for a distribution) meets your needs. Then if you like it you install that distro. The live CD boots into the RAM and when you shut down the computer all trace has gone. This actually means you can surf the Internet in safety. Linux is not prone to Windows type viruses or defragmenting files; so no Antivirus programme is needed. Clam AV freeware is optional if you are worried about an infected file being passed on to a Windows user.

I have tried a few and I downloaded a CD of Mandriva and that’s what I’ve got and stayed with. The most popular is Ubunto, there download will even allow you to uninstall it as through I believe the Add and Remove programmes of Microsoft Windows. Today, the 4 or 5 different types of Linux have easier programme installations than ever before. They come with Open source software and the option to install Wine. Wine lets you install a variety of Windows programmes virtually if you really can’t do without them. Unlike Windows in Mandriva to get and install a programme they have several repositories (download storage places to download) easily programmes from. The root console with its graphics shows tick to install by a choice and remove tick to uninstall then you left click on Apply. There are literally thousands of different programmes to be had. How much hard drive do you need for Linux a minimum of 25 GB and that is ample for everyday use, want to be large give double or more! Downloads are .rpm packages and when left clicked on you give your root password and it will install automatically.

Skype can be installed and some distributions come with Skype in them, Mandriva does. However, one drawback. No punches here; you have to start using the programme by typing the command line in root:

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype leaving the dos look alike window minimized: Doing this automatically enables a webcam.

What is good about a live CD; say you have an infected file or suspected file in your normal Microsoft Windows and normally it just won’t delete. Pop a Live CD into the tray and delete it that way. Linux can and does read ntfs (partitions made by Windows XP and 7). However Microsoft Windows does not know a Linux partition on a Hard Drive. There are I believe programmes that may let Windows see that Linux partition. How reliable I do not know.

Welcome to a new and exciting world of free choice!

Moshe

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Eric,

I have been useing Linux for years. I have tried many, many versions over the years and they all have some distinct advantages and disadvantages.

For your situation, I think I have a GREAT solution for you.

#1 – Easy to use interface.

#2 – Easily runs from removable media.

#3 – Easily updated with additional modules (software packages).

#4 – Unlike most other live from USBSD distros, this one will save your changes.

Dreamlinux

Go to: http://www.dreamlinux.com.br/portable.html

You will then burn the CD ISO to a disc and boot a PC to this OS.
There is a tool on the desktop that will allow you to transfer your current session, along with any settings (network proxies, etc), software configs, etc to a flash drive or SD card.

You will want to use the option for PersistDream if you want the computers to save their data when shut down, or use LiveDream to have the users revert back to your clean config after each reboot. This is great for a kiosk environment.

Give it a try, since Linux is free you can test out a different distro on each machine and see what best meets your needs.

I’m downloading Ubuntu Netbook Remix for my son’s Dell netbook right now…..

Ed

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Eric, you have probably found your distro already – but here is my two cents worth. I have used SUSE, PCLos, Ubuntu, Mint, Mepis, etc, etc, etc. All are good if you have the machine for it. There are three distros that rise to the top – Mint, Mepis, and PCLos, in that order. Mint and Mepis just work… outta the box. They find your resources and make ’em work. All three have an ‘antique machine’ distro kicked out by the community which runs pretty good under outdated equip. For a minimal machine, PCLinuxOS has tinyME (may have changed names recently) is great but you have to be a geek to get some non-mainstream equipment to run right. Antix version of Mepis is really good for old gear. Mint with XFCE desktop is a good choice. I have all of the above running on some old boxes in my network. You really need 1G ram or more with a decent graphics card to really use the full blown version of any distro these days. Ubuntu is in a constant state of flux and you will be ‘upgraded’ to death. If you need more, just send me a note.

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Hi Eric,
I’m about 4 months into playing with Linux and have tried several distros. Currently I’m running Linux Mint 9 ‘Isadora’ and a pleased with it. I have it as a dual boot with Windows XP on a PC with 1.4 GHz Athlon 4, 512 RAM, and a 320 Gig hard drive. You can run it as a trial from the iso-cd-rom. I believe it is the easiest to learn for those of us used to Windows.

Would suggest that you consider Arch Linux as it is a rolling distro (that’s the next one I’m going to try). There’s also a very lightweight Puppy Linux with the Opera Browser.

Good luck and let us all know your final choice.

Dick

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For your requirements and hardware Eric, I’d have to agree with Ed.

DreamLinux DE3.5 http://www.dreamlinux.com.br/

I’ve been using it for over 6 months now and have found it a perfect choice for all office, multimedia and graphics need.
I’ve hardly needed to install anything above the standard installation, but, if need be, installing .deb packages is very easy.

Try out the Live CD first and see what you think.

Bruce

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Another great source if information to sort this out is just a click away.

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Here’s a tool I came across a while ago. It’s a Q&A for what you want to do w/Linux and how tech savvy you are. Hope it helps. I haven’t made the jump to Linux yet because I still have the belief that I’m actually going to have time to use my computer for gaming again. and that I know of, very few PC games are produced to be Linux compatable

Bonus: it looks like the developer has recently updated his page.

Linux Test

http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/index.php?firsttime=true

I just went through the questionnaire again, and found it to be quite basic…I’m not sure if this will be detailed enough to answer the specific questions that you might, but it definitely seems to provide a good start/recommendation(s) based on your answers, with a brief paragraph about the different distro’s.

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Thank you all so much for the responses! I have my work cut out for me in trying these Linux flavors/distro’s.

I’m a very much Linux newbie with very little experience.

I have not chosen a Linux yet, I have not been able to dedicate any time to my project.
I have now begun to start re-investigating again.

the main goal is size. Unfortunately all I have to work with is 512mb CF cards. higher capacities are in the works, but only as the 512 cards die out. so far only 1 card has died, and I’m pretty impressed so far too.

I am hoping with all the great advice, I’ll find a small footprint linux.
Mainly just PuTTY and Firefox need to be run as well as a PDF reader, and probably word/excel readers. We don’t need a lot of programs, mainly PuTTY will be the main program in use.
a friend thinks he found a macro type program (similar to the pc program Autohotkey).
XP embedded is a small footprint and fits pretty nicely in 300mb of the CF card. With the other programs that are used, it’s another 100mb.
AFter slimmings things down I have 90mb free on the card.
I am hoping to find a Linux that will be as small as xp embedded. From there we can develop some of programs of our own to run and hope we can get the stability and speed. the xp-e is decent for what it’s running on. But.. I’m always looking for better, and to me, the future isn’t gonna be windows.. linux is looking way to appealing!

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I too am a newbie to progamming and I am interested in what linux verson to start learning. I am thinking of getting a Nokia N900 phone that is using maemo linux for the OS. The OS and Apps are not well developed and is basically open for development by the community. I go on sites relative to maemo/meego and read what they are developing and they give some programming steps or comment to install fixes, new tools, and apps, etc. What software and book (s)/web material would most help me to be able to keep the phone up to each new development?
Thank you.

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Puppy Linux is very light weight. Not sure it will do everything you want but it’s small, quick and easy to use. Maybe worth a try? Check it out at http://www.puppylinux.org

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I have run many versions of Linux before finally settling on Mandriva (current version is 2010.)
This version is available loaded on a USB stick.

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No one here has mentioned Pardus Linux so I will. I tried out quite a few distros last fall when deciding to migrate from Vista. The three I found most user friendly for someone new to Linux were Pardus 2009.1, Mint 8 and Mandriva 2010. They were easy to install, set up and run, and offered proprietary drivers for my NVIDIA graphics and Gemteck wireless cards. I found that the more established distros such as SuSe, and Fedora did not offer such support and I had to do some hunting to find appropriate drivers.

Pardus is not a small distro like Puppy or DSL so would probably not suit Eric’s needs, although it can be slimmed down some. I have read that it may be a bit difficult to uninstall KDE and replace it with the desktop of your choice because KDE is more integrated into Pardus than into other distros. I have seen discussions in the forums by users who have installed Gnome or the smaller desktops and they have mentioned no great problems. Pardus has been successfully installed on USB sticks and there are instructions in the wiki. Pardus uses Grub 2 and Ext 4 by default, but you can replace these with the bootloader and files system of your choice.

If you want to learn Linux, as Richard has said he does, I would suggest any distro based on Slackware, such as Salix, or build your own from scratch. You will not have a working distro right away so will need to dual boot with a working OS.

The O’Reilly “in a nutshell” series of books is a good set of reference works. There are probably other good ones out there, as well.

My best advice is what others have said: try out a bunch of different distros on live CDs or USBs and go with the one that feels right for you.

Hope that helps.

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Thank you to StarvinMarvin and Dean Lind.

I have looked at both of your recommendations and believe I will download each and try them.

Dean I am thinking of trying Mandriver One and then Mandriver Free later. Does that seem right?

As my real needs are to keep a linux OS and Apps on a “Smartphone” working and up to date, should I place my emphasis on learning scripting and shell programming? I am not desiring to learn to write programs, etc., just make the phone work.

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Er… PCLinuxOS is based on Mandriver and has had its’ hardware detection enhanced ~ LiveCD is the way to go ~ Unless you prefer USB then that choice is available also.

Try this ~ http://pclinuxos.com with possible Xfce desktop being of interest to you as a starter.

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Thanks to JoanRC. I will look at the Slackware distros’ and I especially appreciate the identification of the O”Reilly “in a nutshell” series of books .

I have been looking for a book or two to start with and two that seem good are:

Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming, by Mark G. Sobell

Linux Administration: A Beginners Guide,Fifth Edition by Wale Soyinka

Any help in selecting some reading material?

Snapafun, PCLinusOS looks great aslo. I downloaded Volume 42 of the magazie, very nice and interesting.

Now how do choose from all these great options?

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I would also like to suggest ubuntu, my experience is positive on deffernt platforms. My daughter converted her dell from vista as vista just didn’t run right, and she hasn’t looked back. with apps like teamviewer offering a linux version support for family is a lot easier.

my vote is for Ubuntu

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Following the tip from J Holz I went to Linux Test (http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/index.php?firsttime=true) which is “a Q&A for what you want to do w/Linux and how tech savvy you are. … provide a good start/recommendation(s) based on your answers, with a brief paragraph about the different distro’s. ”

It found the following “perfect” match(es) for my system: 100% OpenSuSE: 95% Ubuntu (Your computer may be too slow); 95% Linux Mint (Your computer may be too slow); …

The 5% difference in the “perfect” match made a huge difference for my system. I have successfully made and loaded the three disks mentioned in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSUSE : “openSUSE Download Edition: This is the freely downloadable ISO version, available from the openSUSE downloads page. It is available as a Live-CD version (KDE4 or GNOME) which can be installed on the hard disk, or as a more complete single layer DVD-5.”

Prior to this, I burned but could not boot the disks made from Ubuntu and Linux Mint ISO distributions, see http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=11796&hl=

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If you still haven’t chosen a Linux Distro, you might consider one of the “rolling” ones. These do not require a new install for upgrades as do most of the standard Linux distros, but are updated as the need occurs. Not having a computer which I’m willing to “sacrifice” if things go sour I haven’t tried it yet. I’m interested in Arch Linux, but I don’t feel competent in my ability to install it next to my Windows partition as I have Linux Mint 9. It doesn’t have the “install alongside” installation that most of the other standard distros do.
Please let us know which distro you choose.

Dick

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When Windows 7 was in beta I ran Vista, 7, and Ubuntu (don’t remember what version) on the same machine. I never had any problems, and was very happy with Ubuntu. Now I am using Winows 7, and just recently installed Ubuntu 10.4 and Mint 9 Isadora 64 bit. From the beginning i have had problems with Ubuntu. I had trouble installing, and after I finally got it installed, it would not recognise my wireless router. Mint, on the other hand has been flawless and trouble free. I was able to import all of my files from Windows without a problem. I have uninstalled Ubuntu. I installed Mint just to fool around with it a bit, but I think I will keep it.

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If you guys want to talk about linux, you should go over to Ubuntu forums and post there. It has a much larger linux community, and usually your posts will be responded to within minutes (honestly). I honestly don’t think you are going to get a user-friendly version of Linux onto 512 mb. Maybe puppy linux, but that still gets rather techy…

I would recommend Lubuntu, or Xubuntu, Ubuntu is great, but a little too bloated for your computers.

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