Hey Everyone,

Well my Windows computer has crapped out again with spyware/adware.

Enough is enough, this will be the last time... I have decided to go and stay Linux.

I have a little experience with Linux, mostly live distros (Slax, Knoppix, DSL, Elive... ect). My problem is that I cannot

find one that suits me. That leaves me with customizing my own. For a while this was ok, and actually fun. Every time I seem to run into a small "snag" with some of the applications I needed.

If someone could please help me out with a recommended distro, or possibly a precompiled live cd that would be awsome. Here are the things I want to do (in order of importance):

1) stabilty
2) small distro that will load into ram (this to me will increase fault tollerance and speed)

APPLICATIONS WANTED

3) Server (mostly to share mp3, and network folders with other machines in the house. NOTE: One is my g/f Windows machine, another is an XBOX running XBMC). Because I have a Windows machine involved I believe I need Samba configured.

4) P2P Compatibility
- good bittorrent client (Azureus, or Bittornado, or ???)
- Limewire
NOTE: I do realize that I need Java installed and I did say in the beggining that I want a small OS that will load into ram. Looks like I am stuck with Java.

5) Browsers (either Firefox, or Opera 9... I am torn)

6) MSN Chat client and an IRC client.

7) Nice Server Stats Utility. (Something like Superkaramba, or Gkrellm)

Thats pretty much it for now.

If anyone has suggestions on which distro I should use please let me know. If someone is willing to work with me to build this I would appreciate that.

I also wanted to ask if anyone has tried BartPE or Reatogo (load to ram) with success?? Can I pull off the things listed here with loading BartPE or Reatogo into ram??

Please let me know.

MIKEMAN

have a look at http://distrowatch.com/, I recommend fedora.

I'd also recommend checking out distrowatch if you haven't already. Another good link is http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/Personally I recommend ubuntu for people to start off. It's available as a liveCD to check out what it's like, but you can install it to the hard drive using the same cd. For most of your requierments it seems any disto will work, and there's tons of threads already on this subject that would be worth looking at, but here's my thoughts anyway.

1. Stability. Shouldn't be much of a problem no matter what you use, as long as you don't use any weird new programs.

2. Not quite clear what you mean by this. "that will load into ram" makes me think something like a live distro, but that would tend to run slower not faster. For small size, my experience with more newbie frindly distros was debian based seemed to be smaller, though that's not really a rule I don't think. If you're willing to start with something more challenging I really like Arch because it's so minimal. However it won't hold your hand like some other distros, and I wouldn't recommend it for someone just starting out.

3. Don't know much about servers, but I would think you could get anything working with at most a little tweaking.

4. P2P - Simple as installing whichever client you want. I actually prefer Transmission for torrents. It doesn't do as much as Azureus, but a torrent client doesn't need to do much I think. I don't remember much about bit tornado other than trying it once, and not liking it as much.

5. Again, just install what you like. It seems like most distos are going to firefox being installed by default, so you may not even need to do that.

6. Gaim will connect to both of these. Not sure about kopete (the other most common chat client)

7. Not sure about any particular monitors, though I used superkaramba a bit when I tried KDE. There's similar apps availble using adesklets and gdesklets that might be worth looking into as well.

Thanks for your responses guys,

I am a frequent visitor at distrowatch.

@McMillan

Just to be more clear on "load to ram", You are correct, I am looking at installing a live distro as a replacement os.

While some people would ask why and think that it seems rather dumb, I look at it like this:

If I can install a live distro as a replacement os I will hardly ever have to worry once I have everything configured. If something goes wrong (say I experiment with new software and it fails) I just reboot. or lets say the server has been running for a week and then it freezes for whatever reason (reboot).

I see your point on installing an actual distro to the hd being faster. I actually did have debian base installed with fluxbox for over a week. It ran nice, but eventually I do something to mess up. With a live distro loaded into ram, it runs at nice speed as well. And if something happens the fault tollerence is there again for a reboot.

If I had lots of applications to install I would just install a distro, but there are just a few things I need this box for, and for that reason I was hoping a live cd into ram.

I think you are right with Transmition and Gaim, I used both with Puppy Linux and liked them. I may need more features with my bt client such as torrent imports and bandwidth timing, so I may have to go with Azureus, I just hate the bloat.

My Windows machine as I type this now has spyware on it, so any ideas on live distros would be appreciated. I may take your advise and try installing a full distro again, but I just love live distros that load into ram, I just cant seem to compile what I need.

Thanks again

MIKEMAN

I think you're looking at this from the wrong perspective. If you do something to "mess things up" the thing to do is fix the problem. Any way you slice it a LiveCD will always run slower. You're far better off to install a distro, learn how to use it, and address any problems as they come up.

Ubuntu or SimplyMepis are both decent distros for starting out with.

@masonm

I knew that someone would post something like what you did.

You are right to a certain extent. Let me ask it this way so that everyone may understand where I am coming from:

Does a live cd distro make more sense for me?

For the record I am going to try Gentoo for a while and see how that goes, so I am not going live cd at the moment... but I have tried several diff distros including Ubuntu and while I agree that they are great, I only need afew apps for my server. P2P, Samba Server and chat client are just about it (obviously I may have missed 1 or 2 apps that I use).

I believe (personal opinion) that I live cd would be best for me. The reason I registered on this forum was to get advise. I am taking your advise and installing an actual distro. I just dont want people thinking that I am choosing a live distro because of laziness or lack of effort(not fixing my "mess up"). I wanted a live distro because it is the best choice for my use. Practical, stable, and secure (once configured of coarse).

Thanks for your comments though masonm,

I am going to try a diff distro

MIKEMAN

Personally I view liveCDs as just for testing a distro that I may try to install, or as a tool to use for when I can't boot normally. I'd recommend instead going for a stripped down distro and just installing what you want. The debian install with fluxbox you mentioned you had before probably was along the lines of what I'm thinking. Arch or Slackware might also be good for this. The downside of going this way is that these require a bit more effort on your part since there will be less configured for you. If gentoo doesn't work out for you, I'd recommend checking out Arch. It's probably not any more difficult to install than gentoo (though I haven't tried gentoo personally, from what I've heard it's probably even a bit easier). What I really like about it is that it's very minimal to begin with, but easy to add other programs. Even though it takes a little to configure, I feel that time is better spent than with something like ubuntu where I spend almost as much time removing things I don't want.

That being said, if you really want to use a live distro, you could probably make it work for you. Of the ones I've tried Mepis seems to be the most full featured, with knoppix close to it. I think I've read that Slax has some options that make it easy to configure, though I don't know the details of that. If you want to customize a liveCD you'll probably want to look into remastering an already existing cd. I don't know how to do this myself, but I've seen other people mentioning it, and should be easy to find with a little googleing.

@mcmillan

Hey,

Thanks for your advise. I have tried Mepis (hd install) and liked it. The only downfall is about a week after my machine was crashing randomly.

Most of my live experience has been with Slax. I love that distro, props go to Thomas. Once again I had a snag, it defaults with KDE, I found KDE bloated. I know that popcorn version has XFCE but I couldnt get into that either. Slax has a nice module system that is fairly easy to configure. Right now I am just looking at alternatives and suggestions, if I cant get a minimal, stable system that I like I will prolly go back to slax.

As you could have guessed, I did some reading on Gentoo and its more indepth to install. I went Debian Net Install and I am running Gnome right now!!

Seems pretty smooth, I need to configure the video driver and start configuring the apps that I need. I actually think that Debian "Desktop Install" comes with lots of crap too.

I will keep everyone posted on my progress.

Thanks again

MIKEMAN