Quite some years ago...approximately 6 or 7...a friend of mine was running linux on his machine at home and it got my curiosity from the start. The distro he was running was strictly text-based...no graphics or anything and that is what I am looking for. I haven't spoken to him in years and have no idea where to reach him. I am getting a new pc in a couple of days and would like to run linux alongside windows, but I am more interested in a text based environment than all the bells and whistles of, say, Redhat.

Any suggestions?

I was reading up on Slackware, but wasn't sure about the interface. I could be totally mistaken and just not know that my friend never ran any programs with graphics. I don't know, but I'm mostly interested in learning the administrative part of the linux/unix environments as I will be going into the networking field.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Jay

hi,

you could go for a base install of Debian - this will just install fundamentals from which you can choose any extras as you require...

Any distro can work, explicitly in text mode. Just don't install an xserver and any graphical user interfaces i.e KDE, GNOME, XFCE etc.

Something draws me to Slackware...what do ya think???

How would I go about just installing the base without the "xserver" and/or gui?

I use Slack as my main distro and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. It very UNIX like and comes with a lot of text only applications. Debian would also be good, but I don't like the long release periods for stable.

I've been using Slackware for years. It's easy to install and you'll definitely learn to sysadmin.

Try it , you can always switch later if you're so inclined.

For a base install, use the a, ap, and n series of packages to get started.

That will set you up for your requirement plus all the basic networking utilities to connect to the Internet.

Go here for a list of mirrors: http://www.slackware.com/getslack/


Have fun!

THE ONLY ANSWER - SKACWARE!!! It even doesn't download GUI automatically if u haven't configured it. Slack is the best for the real Linux user (I use Slack, but not yet a real one - I'm too lazy)

GENTOO!!!!!!!!! even the friggin' install process is totally text based but first go with slackware to learn the basics(not that slackware is basic).

Just do an "expert" install of slackware and chose not to install X, or if you have space, install it all anyway and just don't run X, it won't boot to X automatically.

STill, If I were you I'd run X with a simple wm like flux jsut so it's easier to work with multiple terminals even if that's all you use and don't use a GUI.

yeah.. most ov what i do is text based.. but i get pretty colors in my terminal windows with enlightenment

yeah.. then you can have LOTS ov term windows open..

slackware.. yeah.. that.

if you are new to linux i would not suggest doing everything in text mode. it would be very difficult for you. Also you do not need to worry about your linux OS being to big. Your hard drive should have plenty of room for winblowz and linux.