Instalation

yup, the hardware will be fine.

any major distro has everything you need.

download a few "livecd" versions of the major distros.
burn them and start running them on your workstation.
find the one that suits you best.

buy a boxed set of the distro chosen from them.
benefits:
1) install manuals included
2) company support for install / service
3) free upgrades for a year ( 2 versions )

drawbacks:
1) it costs from $250 USD for this set
2) you start to get the loyalty for the distro from spending money, even when they do as red hat did and shaft 95% of users. ( rhl break into rhel and fedora core. zero customer support for desktop users. only support for red hat enterprise linux users )

if you search both the discussion and q&a you will find hundreds of time the best distro question has been asked.
it always boils down to your own personal prefference.

installing is different with every distro.
until you can name which distro no-one can answer how to install.

1) You probably want Red Hat Enterprise. It comes with a ton of support and is quite stable. Make sure you get Enterprise 4 with the 2.6 kernel

2) You machine is fine. You probably don't want to run a GUI on a server anyway, so don't worry too much about that. Everything will run fine in Linux. DHCP and DNS aren't much harder (easier) to setup than in Windows. qmail or sendmail with postfix are pretty easy to setup, but it will take some time.

3) Installing Linux isn't bad. Most distros have pretty easy to use installers. You basically need to partition your space (a /boot, /swap, /, and /home partitions are generally all you'll need)

4) sendmail with postfix has a TON of documentation online and step by step instructions. A google search with "Howto sendmail" should get you all you need.

The suggestion to get a live cd version of a LINUX distribution is a good one. for the last two months I've been suggesting the Ubuntu ditribution. Just make sure your system has a free partition and is connected to the LAN and the Internet (through your gateway is OK), then boot the system from the CD.

Ubuntu has two CD formats: The live CD runs from your cd drive and requires no installation. Running this will let you know if Ubuntu will find all the right components for your system. (This should be no problem. Ubuntu was the only disto that found ALL of the component drivers for mY Toshiba laptop, including my wireless interface.) Once you get a chance to play around with it, go ahead and install the distro from the install CD.

Ubuntu is letting people order CD's from their site, but it's not necessary. A boxed set is not necessary. Using any windows system, downloat the ISO files from the Ubuntu site. I also downloaded a great little utility called isorecorder. Once you have the ISO files dowloaded, if you have isorecorder installed you can right click on the file and the top menu item will burn the ISO to your CD. (Just copying the ISO to your CD will NOT produce a bootable disk.)

One last thing: Ubuntu installs a pretty hefty version of LINUX, but the Synaptic utility will probably help you locate many other utilities and some deprecated older utilities like rc and dd that may not be installed at first installation.

FYI, the Ubuntu distro is based on the Debian distro, and once you get it installed you should go to the website to find the technical articles for installing multimedia codecs and utilities for Mozilla.

I hope this helps.

The suggestion to get a live cd version of a LINUX distribution is a good one. for the last two months I've been suggesting the Ubuntu ditribution. Just make sure your system has a free partition and is connected to the LAN and the Internet (through your gateway is OK), then boot the system from the CD.

Ubuntu has two CD formats: The live CD runs from your cd drive and requires no installation. Running this will let you know if Ubuntu will find all the right components for your system. (This should be no problem. Ubuntu was the only disto that found ALL of the component drivers for mY Toshiba laptop, including my wireless interface.) Once you get a chance to play around with it, go ahead and install the distro from the install CD.

Ubuntu is letting people order CD's from their site, but it's not necessary. A boxed set is not necessary. Using any windows system, downloat the ISO files from the Ubuntu site. I also downloaded a great little utility called isorecorder. Once you have the ISO files dowloaded, if you have isorecorder installed you can right click on the file and the top menu item will burn the ISO to your CD. (Just copying the ISO to your CD will NOT produce a bootable disk.)

One last thing: Ubuntu installs a pretty hefty version of LINUX, but the Synaptic utility will probably help you locate many other utilities and some deprecated older utilities like rc and dd that may not be installed at first installation.

FYI, the Ubuntu distro is based on the Debian distro, and once you get it installed you should go to the website to find the technical articles for installing multimedia codecs and utilities for Mozilla.

I hope this helps.

The suggestion to get a live cd version of a LINUX distribution is a good one. for the last two months I've been suggesting the Ubuntu ditribution. Just make sure your system has a free partition and is connected to the LAN and the Internet (through your gateway is OK), then boot the system from the CD.

Ubuntu has two CD formats: The live CD runs from your cd drive and requires no installation. Running this will let you know if Ubuntu will find all the right components for your system. (This should be no problem. Ubuntu was the only disto that found ALL of the component drivers for mY Toshiba laptop, including my wireless interface.) Once you get a chance to play around with it, go ahead and install the distro from the install CD.

Ubuntu is letting people order CD's from their site, but it's not necessary. A boxed set is not necessary. Using any windows system, downloat the ISO files from the Ubuntu site. I also downloaded a great little utility called isorecorder. Once you have the ISO files dowloaded, if you have isorecorder installed you can right click on the file and the top menu item will burn the ISO to your CD. (Just copying the ISO to your CD will NOT produce a bootable disk.)

One last thing: Ubuntu installs a pretty hefty version of LINUX, but the Synaptic utility will probably help you locate many other utilities and some deprecated older utilities like rc and dd that may not be installed at first installation.

FYI, the Ubuntu distro is based on the Debian distro, and once you get it installed you should go to the website to find the technical articles for installing multimedia codecs and utilities for Mozilla.

I hope this helps.

The suggestion to get a live cd version of a LINUX distribution is a good one. for the last two months I've been suggesting the Ubuntu ditribution. Just make sure your system has a free partition and is connected to the LAN and the Internet (through your gateway is OK), then boot the system from the CD.

Ubuntu has two CD formats: The live CD runs from your cd drive and requires no installation. Running this will let you know if Ubuntu will find all the right components for your system. (This should be no problem. Ubuntu was the only disto that found ALL of the component drivers for mY Toshiba laptop, including my wireless interface.) Once you get a chance to play around with it, go ahead and install the distro from the install CD.

Ubuntu is letting people order CD's from their site, but it's not necessary. A boxed set is not necessary. Using any windows system, downloat the ISO files from the Ubuntu site. I also downloaded a great little utility called isorecorder. Once you have the ISO files dowloaded, if you have isorecorder installed you can right click on the file and the top menu item will burn the ISO to your CD. (Just copying the ISO to your CD will NOT produce a bootable disk.)

One last thing: Ubuntu installs a pretty hefty version of LINUX, but the Synaptic utility will probably help you locate many other utilities and some deprecated older utilities like rc and dd that may not be installed at first installation.

FYI, the Ubuntu distro is based on the Debian distro, and once you get it installed you should go to the website to find the technical articles for installing multimedia codecs and utilities for Mozilla.

I hope this helps.

This question was closed by the author