Learning - Linux, clusters, servers

[Internetrush]

Hello,

I have been using Windows Server 2003 for my job for a while now, however, now that i am out of the position i was looking to go over to the Unix / Linux sector.

Does anyone here know of any good books / Guides to get started with? What kind of pet projects / OS's should i consider?

I was looking at buying a couple of small form factor PC's next year and basically make it a hobby / learning experience to setup different applications, try different things, etc...

Can anyone give me some examples?

How may pc's should i purchase? (im guessing 3 or 4 would be best).

Thanks.


PS: i had a convo with a friend that suggested trying x11, vmware, and possibly to setup a cluster; however, as i have said, i do not know where to start.

[stlouis1]

how much do you know about linux? have you ever used it?

if you have no experience, start with the user side, start researching linux alternative to your most used windows programs before you install any distro. once you find the apps you want, then start trying distro's. the bigger ones will be the easier ones to try, suse, fedora, ubuntu, etc

ubuntu may be the easiest one to start with, get your feet wet. you'll use mostly gui, not much backend, but it helps get used to the different interface, learn some of the terms. read up on everything you do every step of the way, lots of wikis, huge forum for ubuntu

the problem with ubuntu is its setup to be easy for new users, which is fine, it hides alot of the back end which you'll eventually try to unhide and realize its symlinked to hell......thats when you'll know you're getting comfortable and you might want to start looking for a better distro.....

at that point, ill recommend arch, its binary based, similar to gentoo, but gentoo is source based. arch is very lightweight, it installs the bare minimal from the get go, no gui. you have to install your own window manager or desktop environment, like gnome or kde as far as desktop environments. window managers are another story, thats getting a little more technical, start simple, work you're way up.

basically, learn the fundamentals of the OS before you go building linux servers and what not

i've been running arch for at least a year now, and i find im still just getting comfortable. i used the terminals alot though, i've been compiling my own apps lately to optimize them for my system, and just doing alot of general tweaking. i have a linux server, but its more network storage, via samba, and upnp server via ushare. one thing you'll find going from windows to linux, is sometimes the simplest task becomes the biggest chore.

like the other day, i ran some updates, i can automount my flash drive anymore and copy files to it, hasn't been critical, but i need to fix it, small task, big chore

[Internetrush]

I have about < 6 months with linux (some years ago), however, i might as well be starting from scratch.

I had just priced out a 400 dollar setup for a SFF PC, which i plan to build at least two next year to install different distros on and start experimenting. As you have said i need to get comforatble first.

I was thinking Fedora and Mandrake first off. Then Ubuntu and others as i get more experience.

Ive always had a fondness of the power of a cluster, therefore, i thinkt hat will be my frist project; to build a cluster using Fedora then seeing how much of a difference it would make running Folding@Home or Grid.org programs.

Dont really know where to go from there =/.

[stlouis1]

my recent project was playing with splashy (http://splashy.alioth.debian.org/), wasn't quite as simple as it seemed

i was never too keen on mandriva, though mandrake 7 was the first distro i used. my main issue was between it and fedora using different rpm packages, made it harder to get certain apps.

the debian based distros are really popular, theres so many, they have huge repositories which makes it easy. even googles Gos is debian based

the nice thing with linux, pretty much any old system you have kicking around will run it, which is nice

heres (http://www.linuxalt.com/) a usefull site as well actually, i used it a couple years ago, really helped me get started. the thing thats hardest about switching to linux is not knowing what programs to use as alternatives. because if you dont know what you want or need, it leaves you with very little to make a goal with, and you just end up going back to windows, the whole small task big chore thing again

[Internetrush]

Well, ill look into that.

I dont have old machines lying around and cannot get any, so i was looking toward some low-end SFF Core-Duo's. 500 bucks gets me 500 gigs of storage 1 gig of ram and a E7200 processor—hopefully making installation time and implementation quite fast.