Hi i am a new user to this forum.

I am also a Windows user thats all i know, i am thinking of making a move to Linux at least on one of my machines.

What i am not sure about is the Support for hardware and software, well it is everything really what i am not sure about.

Basically i am the sort of person that just likes things to work, i remembered trying Red Hat a few years ago, i installed it and the first stumbling block was the graphics card drivers, and shutting the machine down was a nightmare.
So i uninstalled it and that was that, back to Windows.
I mean some people i read are even having problems with there mouse for god sake.

I am now thinking of Mandrake 9.2, i have Suse on five cd's and Mandrake on 3 cd's has Suse more Software, can Software on the Suse cd's be used on Mandrake, is Mandrake Easier to Setup.

The System i want to install Mandrake on is my oldest with:

Pentium 2 400mhz
384mb sdram
10gb quantum fireball
16mb velocity 4400 nvidia Graphics Card

Your system should bew supported by any new distribution. Pop the Mandrake 9.2 CD in, restart and what the magic unfold.

SUSE software (in rpm format ont he CD) shouldnt be installed on a Mandrake system, though u could, since they both use rpm for package management. But every softyware that SuSE has MOST PROBABLY will have a Mandrake rpm.

Thanks for your quick response,
Sorry for all the question but i want to know if it is worth my while installing, i am only really gonna use if for a mailserver or newserver.

What is Mandrake like on resourses, like memory useage.

Does it need rebooting every few hours like Windows XP and does it sufferer from virus attacks like Windows.

TIA

That all depends on how much you install. If you install X (the graphical portion of Linux), KDE (a desktop environment that looks and feels much like Windows) and all sorts of graphical apps to configure this, that and the other, then it'll run like a drunk snail. If, however, you are feeling adventurous, you can specify exactly what is - and what is not - installed onto your system and you can cut out the cruft.

It shouldn't need rebooting very often at all. I have very rarely had to reboot my Mandrake 9.1 system, and that is being used for much more than just serving.

Oh, and although there are technically Linux virii (or rather, Unix virii) you would be very unlucky to get one. Anti-virus software is available, however, if you want to check the mail your box will be handling, especially if your mail-server will be serving Windows machines.

Good luck.

Cheers mate, i will give it a try.

I am not sure how deep into linux you are looking to go, but if you are just looking for something to run a news server and mail server do you want to even bother with a graphical user interface? One of the great things about linux is you can turn all that stuff off if you aren't using it. There is no good reason for you to have a graphical interface up wasting processor power and memory on a headless machine sitting in the corner sending and delivering mail and news messages. You might want to try looking into a distribution that isn't so desktop heavy like Gentoo or Slackware.

To answer you question about resource usage and rebooting.... the uptime of my mail/web/file server running Slackware is almost 400 days. The machine is running with most of its memory free and the processor is hardly in use. It isn't a huge server, but it does do e-mail for 70 people, run 5 mailing lists, and provide a windows networking (read: samba) file server for 70 people as well. It really is too bad I am about to lose that uptime because I am switching to the newest 2.4 kernel on the box. If all goes as planned todays reboot will be the only one in the year 2004 (thanks mostly to a great UPS, the power here flickers all the damn time).