DescentBB

I have an old PIII machine that I plan to turn into a webserver. Mostly this is to run a smallish site for my family, but it should be a learning experience for me as well.

I'll be installing the usual stuff: Apache, PHP, MySQL, but I've never personally installed a Linux distribution before. I'm completely comfortable working in DOS and Unix command-lines, so I don't need a complex gui or anything. Just something basic, workable, and free.

Any recommendations? (Good links would be appreciated.)

Almost any Live CD should have a reasonably easy to use installer, go ahead and download a bunch of different distros and try out your luck. Though if you are just planning on a web server I would avoid some of the more newbie oriented distros like ubuntu. Some distros even come with Apache/PHP already installed (But you will likely have to update them).

Also just so you know, I run the server at krom.d3k.org in my basement, it has all the usual Apache/PHP/MySQL. But its running on Windows XP, so don't think you must use linux for a low traffic web server. Windows with some mild security tweaks will work as well (and don't use IIS).

If you really want to do it right, I can recommend two ways:

1) Ubuntu or Debian. Debian is incredibly stable, and Ubuntu (which is based on Debian) is a bit more organized in terms of dependencies and included drivers. If you decide to go with Ubuntu (my choice for the installation environment alone) don't get the standard distro. Instead, get the server edition. It doesn't come as a live CD, but installation is still simple and you get LAMP right out of the box.

2) Slackware. If you want to learn how Linux really works, you can't go wrong with Slack. It's tiny but full-featured. Package management is a bit archaic, but then again so is everything; it's intended to be as much like a standard UNIX as possible. This is how I cut my Linux teeth. I had an old PIII with two 100Mb NICs sitting around and wanted to get a real firewall up and running, so I installed Slack 7 and configured everything. This was a real learning experience.

In short, if you're looking to learn about Linux (and operating systems in general) then I recommend Slackware. Debian or Ubuntu is good if you want a lower-maintenance experience that will reliably deliver, but doesn't serve as well as a teaching tool unless you're familiar with how Linux works and can understand what it's hiding from you in the name of consistency.

Thanks, guys!

Looking at the Slackware site, I think that's the direction I'm going to go, since I want to work with something fairly basic, and I want to learn as much as I can during the process.

I may post occasional questions as I work on this.