Help choosing a distro
 

I want to run a game server from my old desktop.
First here are the specs:
HP pavilion 8765c
Proc: amd 900mhz
RAM: 384
HDD: 60GB

I don't plan on doing anything other then running the game server. I may change games from time to time but that's about it. I would prefer a GUI....
Can someone suggest a bare minimal secure distro?

Try Fedora/Ubuntu Linux. These are the best distro.

Best Regards,

Both Ubuntu and fedora are everything BUT bare minimal.

I would recommend in this case Arch Linux, or a minimal install of Debian with LXDE added. But you have to configure these systems by yourself. If you want a ready made desktop, try wattOS, it is optimized for low ressource use and comes with a preconfigured LXDE.

I second TobiSGD, Arch is a good choice for such an old machine.
I installed Arch on a PIII with 512 MB of RAM, 256MB swap, and it is running very properly even with Gnome.
So I think that running Arch with lightwight WM on your machine would be a good choice.

Markus

Nonsense:
Not for a 900mhz CPU with << 512MB RAM, they're not ;)

I agree: Arch is a winner here!

PS:
'Hope you get a PC capable of running Fedora, Ubuntu or similar OS's soon. You'll be pleased :)

So, which do you really want; a GUI or a bare minimal system? If you are only going to use it as a server, why to you need a GUI?

As a vanilla server, pretty much all modern distros will do equally well. Your application as a game server is a bit foreign to a lot of Linux geeks. In what way does a game server, well, 'serve'?

--- rod.

I would recommend CentOS. It's like Fedora and Redhat, so shouldn't be hard to use. And the GUI is not as heavy as Fedora. But I would recommend that you install it on minimal configuration, looking at your hardware, I mean just use text, not GUI.

If you use GUI just for easier administration, that I suggest you install Webmin, it may even better then CentOS GUI ^^.

Goodluck on that one ^^.

How about a bare minimal gui. But the purpose of the GUI is only to run multiple game servers at once. From the terminal I have only been able to host one server at a time. The GUI allows multiple instances of the terminal which allows me to host more then one game server at a time. Running multiple instances isn't required though...

Sorry I thought since 80% of the current game servers were linux I didn't have to elaborate.
So when I say game server I mean... Clients that have the game can connect to the server I host via WAN. The game I want to host uses UDP packets for transmitting. I would also like to setup a dns since the game allows you to use this command "connect dnsname".
So it looks like I'm going to need network capabilities, security, and anything you guys can think of I'm missing.

I will look in to Arch but please keep any further suggestions coming.
Thanks..<3

You don't need a GUI just to run multiple servers. If each server requires an interactive console, then you can use each of the 6 standard text consoles that are normally available. Even better than that, I would suggest running each game server in a Gnu screen session in multi-user mode. Doing so will allow you run many session in one console, and also to attach to each one from a remote login (ssh). It sounds like your server would be able to run just fine completely headless.
There are usually lightweight desktops that are part of most installations, and these are generally suitable for the kind of activities you talk about. Xfce is one that seems to get a lot of talk lately. You might look at Window Managers for X for a decent summary of window managers (maybe someone who really knows can describe how those differ from desktops).

--- rod.