Hi. I would like to setup a http server on my laptop, and I would like to know which is the best distro for that. I'm new to linux, so not a complicated linux distro would be good. thx

since i doubt your laptop is going to be a high traffic/volume web server, it's probobly not going to matter what distro you use. I would suggest slackware =)

That questions has no accurate answer, ya know: What's the best gaming console? (Xbox). What's the best band ever?(Nightwish). What's the best cell phones around?(Nokia).

Do you agree with all that? I hope you don't. Otherwise the world would be too boring if we all had the same tastes.

But to answer your question... if you are new to Linux, you'd want to use an easier to configure distribution as SuSE, Redhat or Mandrake. Last time I heard, LQ.org was running Redhat.

I'm using SuSE 9.1 for my server and I really am happy with it. At the end, it's all the same. The important thing is to know how to secure your server, the distribution is just a mere detail...

Regards!

I need it to be easy to setup. I'm a windows user so a nice GUI would be great. Which one is the easiest to setup? And yea, Nokia is the best, xbox rocks and Nightwish is good.

Lets say that i will pick slackware. Is there any software that will allow me to register and have my own domain?

LOL, that was really cool . Well, to answer your question:

Lets say that i will pick slackware. Is there any software that will allow me to register and have my own domain?

Not sure if I got it, but you can register any domain you want through a DNS. Usually they are expensive. I use dyndns.org and they have some free domain names, but you can't choose adrian16am.net or adrian16am.com, for example, but it could be possible to have adrian16am.homelinux.org, for example. Take a look into it

So there is now way that i can register a *.com domain using some software for free? I have a router, will it make harder to configure the webserver?

I really am not sure about that. Thing is, it's not a software that will give you the right to use a .com domain. It's a ISP that owns it from my understanding. You get the license/domain from them and when somebody tries, for example, www.adrian16am.com, it will be redirected to your server. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong please.

However, to configure a webserver behind a firewall is deadly easy. Simply go into your router settings and forward port 80 to the machine where you are running Apache. Right now, I've four "things" connected in my Router/Firewall:

1 - Faith = Webserver/SuSE 9.1 Pro
2 - Buffy = Desktop1/Sun JDS
3 - Angel = Desktop2/WinXP/SuSE 9.1 Pro
4 - Xbox

I simply hit my firewall from any machine in the network and forward port 80 (it can be any port you want, with 80 being default for webservers) to Faith, my Webserver. Whoever open a browser and types my IP address, the traffic will be redirected to Faith and hit Apache on it. It's easy, really.

If you have Linux/Apache installed, start the service and play a bit around with it before digging a lot of info to make it complicated. Start the service, play a bit with your firewall settings and see if it's visible from "outside" your network and then start searching for domains and stuff...

Regards!

Ok. I'm downloading now slackware. I will install it tomorrow. I will post some new questions if i have them. Thx.

Cool!. I'd love to see how it goes. If you are unsure how well your hardware will work with Linux, you can always try a live Distribution, as Knoppix. It boots from the CD and you have a fully working Linux system on your PC without installing a single file into your harddrive.

Although slow (since access to CD/DVD's are not fast as a real HD, plus a lot of the stuff is uncompressed on the fly) it's a great way to test hardware compatibility and get a little taste of Linux.

Good luck!

slackware isn't the simplest to use (though setup's one of the best, and cleanest interfaces i've seen), for ease of use after a windows switch, i recommend redhat or mandrake (i've never used SuSE, Deb, Gentoo, etc, just Mandrake, Slack, and LFS so far), if you know anything at all in using a linux/unix console, you'll be alright with slackware, and you'll learn a bit more, (or if you have time to "read the friendly manual" hereafter referred to as RTFM )

if you have any questions on using slack in general, i'll be glad to help, ... as for a server, Megaman X will be of more use i think ...

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Poison [BL]

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
-- Galileo Galilei

(even after setting up LFS i'm still a on most things, ... playing with LFS+uClibc+Busybox right now though - for an old 60MHz PKbell with 32MB of ram and a few hundered Mb of hdd my mom has at home <-- future linux convert

what ever distro you can get to run and work with all of your hardware from scratch...