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which distro do I want?

Discussion in 'Linux Compatibility and Software' started by maditude, Dec 21, 2009.

maditude Notebook Evangelist

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My creaky old FreeBSD 5.5-Stable box is starting to make some worrying noises. I've got a spare laptop that I'd like to re-purpose for the home network server. Basically, I just need it to run the following:

Samba
Imap/Sendmail
Slimserver (for my squeezebox music players)
dyndns dnsupdater

What's my best bet for a Linux distribution to try? Looking for ease of use and installation/configuration of the afore-mentioned services. I know my way around the command line.

- edit -
The laptop is a couple years old - Compaq, Celeron 1.4ghz, 1gb ram, 120gb hard disk, but will have two big USB external disks.

maditude, Dec 21, 2009

#1
Charr Notebook Deity

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Go for Arch. It only installs a base system, then you work your way up based on what you need. It also ships binary i686 packages, which makes it a better choice here then Gentoo. Arch also uses a BSD style init.

Charr, Dec 21, 2009

#2
theZoid Notebook Savant

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Slackware maybe also. My choice.

theZoid, Dec 21, 2009

#3
Thomas McLovin

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Debian Stable or Ubuntu Hardy would be great choices as well.

Thomas, Dec 21, 2009

#4