Specificly with (K)ubuntu and openSUSE.

I have an old Canon scanner (From late 1999) and an old HP printer (same year) that I would like to keep using when I buy a new PC. However, I've heard most new PCs don't have parrallel ports, so I thought I was going to run into some problems, and possibly buy a new printer+scanner.

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...9598&CatId=471

That's the device I'm looking at. (Cable that connects Parra. to USB) It says in the description though that only 98-XP are supported. Will Linux be able to recognise it, and let me use my scanner+printer?

What about PCI USB cards? (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1003994"]This one in particular) Will most work with Linux? I need to add more USB ports to an old PC my sister has been using.

Also, is there a list of PCI/PCI-E video cards that are supported by Linux? I wanted to get a video card (most likely a 32MB PCI or AGP card to play the odd game or two) but I don't want to end up pulling my hair out trying to get drivers for it. (Windows has done that to me to last a lifetime)

I have one last question, though it isn't really related to the rest of the post. What would be the minimum specs to get a server going? I know you could get one going on 16MB/32MB of RAM with a 133MHz CPU, but I wanted to know for a server that's being used in a house, hooked up to a few PCs, and mostly used for backups, or transfers of really big files.

I have a pentium 2 [266MHz, possibly as high as 700MHz] box with 64MB of RAM. Would that be good? And how big of a hard drive should I go? It's going to be used by three other PCs, though one of them is brandnew and has a 160GB hard drive. I wanted to hook up some of the space of the new PC's hard drive to be used across the network, but will it be possible to do so with logical partitions? (I ran out of real ones. The OEM has 3 partitions made by default)

And another thing, is using a used hard drive ever worth it? I need something small (10GB-20GB) for a PC thats down to its last few hundred MB, and I don't want to erase the copy of 'blows thats already on it. (Came with MSOffice, so a good 400$ down the drain) Do they still sell them new in that size?

Thanks to whoever is willing to help,
Cheers,
Joro.

Most likely not... take a look at SANE for supported scanners. As for printing I've got no idea. My guess is that the above hardware will be mostly useless in Linux, since the vendors that supply the hardware don't seem to have Linux drivers available. Or you might have limited functionality. IMO if the vendor did not provide a Linux driver, and nobody has bothered to code one, you're stuck...

Not sure here either, though I suspect this one might be easier to solve. If the PCI USB card uses a currenlty supported USB controller to run the ports (like the Intel 82801G, for example) my guess is that most distros' kernels should detect it out of the box and be able to work with it. I've got a 82801G onboard (on a GA-945PL-S3 motherboard) and the 2.6.18.1 kernel seems to have no problems with it. I can use USB flashdisks fine, read USB cameras, my cellphone, etc. etc.

My opinion - get a Nvidia based card. I've got a 7950GT PCI-E based card by Legend, and getting it working was a snap. I just downloaded and installed the NVidia linux driver, and it was working for me in X-Windows with full OpenGL support in no time. Personally I'd stay away from -any- ATI products as it seems their Linux support is patchy and not nearly as "lively" (as in new Linux driver versions regularly, easy installation,etc.) as NVidia's. I've used NVidia cards on several Linux systems under several different kernels, and they've always worked perfectly with the official Nvidia Linux unified driver.

Well, we ran a development server here successfully for the whole of 2004, based on a 300MHz AMD chip (can't remember which one - K7?) with 64MB of RAM. We used it for limited file transfers (it was quite slow) but mostly it hosted our in-house MIS, our web-development with PHP and MySQL, an FTP server (for testing) and our mail-server. Ok, we had mostly only 4 or 5 people on it at any one time, but it performed beautifully and was more than responsive enough and totally adequate for the job. I had RH9 on it (2.4.something kernel).

Sounds suffiecient to me. Only (of course) don't expect to have it do all the server related stuff and run X-windows on it at the same time. I found that the machine I described above ran just fine in runlevel 3 (text mode) and did all the serving I referred to, but it was a dog at trying to run X-Windows - it simply didn't have the horsepower.

Not sure I get you right here. The hard drive space you get for the Linux PC is immaterial - you just need to get as much as you need. Ridiculously small won't work, and if you want to go ridiculously large, no problem. How you distribute access to a non-Linux PC won't be affected if you add a Linux PC to your network... logically... I don't know why you worry about partitions? You'll parition the Linux machine of course, but adding a Linux machine to your network won't mean you have to repartition OTHER machines...! ??

Definitely. The system I refer to above had a six year old 20GB drive (I don't even know what make) and it performed beautifully and was more than fast enough for our needs. I don't think you'll be able to purchase such small HDD's new anywhere - that's ages old capacities. I think the smallest drive you'll get these days is 80GB and upward. (I recently had to buy a new HDD, and I couldn't even -find- an 80GB - smallest I could get was 160GB).

In summation, since you already have the hardware available, and you need not make any outlay for new iron, why not take a chance and experiment? You can't loose anything since you already seem to realise that the machine(s) have reached the end of the line and are basically useless to run something as bloated as XP to your satisfaction. I was amazed by how badly the PC I refer to above (that we used as server) performed in XP (ok, it was bad in X-Windows too) and how fast and actually usable it turned out to be when I put RH9 in text mode on it.

Give it a try.

Yeah, it's def. going to be running text-mode most of the time.

Ah sorry about the one with the 160GB hard drive. Sometimes I get lossed :P. I was just asking if I'd be able to leave a logical partition on the HDD, and allow other PCs hooked to the network to read and write to it. Saves me the trouble of putting together a server as I still have limited command line knowledge. And would I be able to have it so like each PC in the network can access it, and each has its own space for its own users?

And for the server, can I have a setup where it's the same accounts in the entire network, and each has their space on the /home partitions?

Thanks very much,
Joro.

EDIT: By the server question, I meant in conjunction with the space available on each PC. So let's say there's 140GB free on the server, and 5GB on 2 PCs, and there's 3 users. So each gets 50GB, and the files are spread across the network, first on the PC itself.

The USB to Centronics adapter should work in Linux, but I have not yet tested one.

Scanners in Linux are a mystery even when using SANE. The support depends on your scanner model. Just visit http://www.sane-project.org/ and search for your brand and model of your scanner. If you find that your model reads complete, then Linux programs can take full advantage of your scanner. If not, it is time to find a scanner.

There is a high possibility that your printer works in Linux. Go to http://www.linuxprinting.org/ and look through their database for your printer brand and model.

Linux supports all PCI USB cards in both EHCI and OHCI protocols. I suggest buying a NEC based USB PCI card because it will give you least amount of problems. I have USB 2.0/Firewire (IEEE-1394)/1Gb NIC combo card from Koutech that uses a NEC chip for USB.

Have fun finding a PCI graphics card with 32 MB. The lowest video RAM that I can find for PCI is 64 MB. X Window comes with drivers for several video cards. If the distribution comes with Xorg 7.0 or higher, 3D hardware support is used on most drivers that it has built-in.

If you are going to use an old computer that you have in the closet for a server, I suggest upgrading its power supply and if possible the memory to 256 MB. I recommend using ECC memory if you can upgrade to it. Power supply brands that I recommend are Eneramax, Seasonic, and Zalman. Seasonic makes the quietest and efficient power supplies.

Buying used hard drives is risky. I recommend buying new hard drives instead of buying used hard drives.

On old computers you will have to worry about the first partition size that the BIOS will boot from. When Linux loads from the boot loader, a hard drive as large has a terabyte or more can be used.

A minimal server is
486DX2-66
256 MB ECC
(2) hard drives using RAID-1 (mirroring)
100 Mb NIC
Excellent power supply
Video Card to configure some services like OpenSSH

For a home server using today's components with a budget:
AMD Sempron 2600+
256 MB ECC
nVidia GeForce 6150 chipset (passive cooled)
(2) Hard drive for OS using RAID-1 (mirroring)
(2) hard drives for data using RAID-1 (mirroring) in either LVM2 or EVMS
100 Mb NIC or 1 Gb NIC
Firewire (IEEE-1394) connection for doing backups using hard drives
Seasonic S12-430 Watt (for expansion)

OpenOffice has most of the features that MS Office has although you will have to use evolution and setup MySQL to complete the Office Suite package.

Linux has quotas that you can used for the /home partition.

Use Linux software RAID, if the controller has software RAID. Software RAID in Linux is a lot better than the manufacture's software RAID.

The above can all be done with Samba for quite low overhead, but you'll -have- to mess with the commandline at least once or twice to get the above done. I did exactly the above on the 300MHz machine I mentioned in my previous post - three users each with their own "shared" area that they could access (protected via passwords) on the Linux machine from their Windows production desktops.

That's pretty much what I refer to above.

Not sure exactly what you mean by the above...

You are going to have a hard time creating scripts and organizing the drives on each computer that the users are going to be logging in. When using Windows XP, the roaming profiles will get larger every time the user access their account. It is possible to setup an application server using Linux, but your network speed needs to be increased and you need to setup RAID to increase throughput and decrease accessing time.

You could create one computer with four processors, three graphics cards, three monitors, three keyboards, and three mice. It is a big feat for any expert Linux user, but interesting. The motherboard that can do all this is ABIT IN9 32X-MAX. Only X Window can do this, so you will have to provide VMware to users that have to use Windows programs. Setting up WINE is very, very, very hard and it is not predictable and not reliable. I suggest using RAID-15 or RAID-16 for /home to provide better performance while serving three users.

webmin can be used after you have configure most of your services. webmin is access through the web browser, so you can configure your server through a GUI like interface.

FYI rylan76, its X Window not X Windows. You are insulting the developer of X Window when you are saying X Windows.

Thanks for the links and info, guys.

Seems like my scanner has a "Good" support level. Would most apps be able to access it? But my printer works perfectly =D.

I think I'll try building a server another day... seems like a taunting task for now. I'd rather not delete windows on my sister's computer (I just don't know why.) but I might just go with Puppy or Damn Small and build it up from there. I'm sure she's got a decent 500MB left for Linux, if the personal files are transfered over.

Instead of building a server, would a NAS hard drive be good? I'm not sure as to whether I should get a NAS hard drive, or get a USB powered one... Each has their ups and downs, and are more or less just as useful, except the USB hard drive can be used even if the network isn't around, but if the PC has no USB drivers it's useless. Which do you think I should go with?

Is backing up with DVD-R/CD-R disks a better idea?

I think I'll go for a 64MB video card. Better to skip the hassle and get something that can play an even larger quantity of games than the 32MB one.

Thanks again, your advice is always wonderful,
Joro.

NAS is different than a hard drive. NAS is a network storage server that contains several hard drives. NAS costs more than a hard drive. For home backups, DVD is better than CD. DVD stores more data and it provides you a higher chance of reading your data when the disc is full of scratches. For data that changes often, I suggest a USB/Firewire combo hard drives. Use Firewire before using USB. Firewire is a lot faster than USB because Firewire's effective speed is a lot more than USB's effective speed. Keep in mind that magnetic mediums last longer than CD and DVD.

BTW, it is usually better to get a new computer than just upgrade one component.

My mistake...

Yeah I am getting another computer, but wanted to get multiple PCs in the house to let my sisters and I on at the same time.

I think I'll go for USB or FireWire for now. CD/DVDs don't seem worth it, because if I'm going with CD-Rs I doubt I'll have enough stuff to fit it, and I've heard CD-RW aren't too great for backups.

Thanks for the replies guys,
Joro.