Hi all,

I am planning to assemble a PC for RHEL5 and Vista.i need to practice on RHEL5 for RHCE exam.I need configuration advice.i am confused over processor,should i buy DualCore or just P4..also i have a IDE disk with data which i want to use in RHEL5. the config i decided
P4 :3Ghz
DDR RAM 1Gb
HD: 160 Gb
ASUS Motherboard.

Kind Suggest and advice

Thanks & Regards

if you just want to practise rhel, then there's no reason to pick either over the other.

Additionally, assuming you have a (fairly) recent PC, you could just run RHEL in a VM and not even worry about buying a new system.

In the past i had a terrible time installing RedHat on my PC,I am a bit apprehensive of hardware support RHEL provide.help me in letting me know if RHEL5 runs fine on Dual Core processors or i should stick to P4 3 Ghz.

secondly are there any issues using SATA disk along with IDE disk under RHEL at the same time?I have not seen many RHEL5 PC with DDR/DDR2 RAM can i use these?

Kindly advice

Thanks & Regards

How long ago was this? Hardware support has grown considerably in the last few years.

RHEL has no problems with dual-core processors as far as I know. I can't imagine why any Linux distro would, unless it just didn't include SMP support in its own custom kernel.

Processors are kernel level, so this isn't going to be an issue.

This is a little tricky. It depends on your SATA controller, so you might want to make sure yours is compatible with whatever stock kernel RHEL comes with. Newer kernels are adding more support all the time.

First, DDR and DDR2 are two totally technologies. Whatever you do, if this is going to be a white box (ie, hand crafted), make sure that your motherboard supports whichever type of RAM you purchase. DDR2 is not backwards compatible with DDR.

All distros will support both DDR and DDR2. It is a standard technology, and vendors don't offer drivers for RAM for obvious reasons.

No problem and good luck!

[EDIT]
I mentioned that processors are kernel level, but so is everything else you listed. Processors and RAM are going to be supported in every modern Linux distribution you choose because it's part of the standard kernel. They're built in. Most SATA controllers are also built into the kernel, and therefore will almost always work with every modern distro. There are a few exceptions, as I experienced a few days ago, but upgrading the kernel fixed the problem.
[/EDIT]

I will recommend you to install LINUX using VMWARE so you can run more than one LINUX system at the same time.

Remember that you need to test you services and do other taskes from from a remote computer

What license is VMware under? I'm pretty sure it's open source, but does anyone know the specific license?

While I have mixed feelings on the GPL, VirtualBox (another Virtual Machine solution) is licensed under GPLv2 if you use the OSE (Open Source Edition).

I've never personally used VMware, but I can vouch for VirtualBox. I'm sure VMware has its own strong points and it's definitely worth checking out on open source and user base merit alone.

vmware is a company, not a product. ;-) vmware player is not open source, just freely distributable under a proprietary license. same goes for vmware server. vmware workstation costs $$ whilst vmware ESX costs $$$$$$$$$$$$$.

According to http://www.vmware.com/download/server/open_source.html, VMware Server is open source.

[EDIT]
http://www.vmware.com/download/open_source.html
So is VMware Player...and a whole bunch of other stuff.
[/EDIT]

If you want to practise for RHCE; then its better to atleast 2 machines( physical/virtual). Assign one machine the responsibility of a Server. Assign other machine as a client.

IMO; VMWare Player only plays(runs) preconfigured Virtual Machines. VMware Workstation,ACE Edition, ESX edition, Server edition( blah blah).. help us to configure the virtual machines.
For version 6.0; one needs to buy license key.

no, you can run whatever you want in vmware player, you ust need to write your own config file or use a third party tool / website to create it.

and it says that a very old version of the code has been released as open source, as has a fork of the vmware-tools package. not the current vmware server itself, hence why there is an "open source" tab hidden away after the main download links.

Ah. Okay. Thanks for the clarification.

Thanks for the information.