Re: [webmin-l] OS Suggestion

[Joe C. <jo...@sw...>]

Vernon Webb wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
> I have to setup a DNS server and that is it. I have an old machine that
> runs to slow using Red Hat 9.0 and/or Debian 3.0. Does any one have an
> suggestions for a very low overhead OS for this purpose?

I've found a basic Debian install to be excellent in low memory 
situations.  I wouldn't install X or any desktop stuff on a server, but 
if you needed to there are debs for quite a few small window managers. 
I've just started using wmii-3 on all of my desktops due to some 
mouse-related RSI pain, and it's too small to believe--the source 
download is about 50k, including docs and a bunch of extras!  It's 
really strange at first, but everything is keyboard-controllable and 
there is no temptation to grab the mouse to resize things or move them 
once you get accustomed to its keyboard shortcuts.

Someone else suggested "anything but leave out X" but even without X and 
Gnome, Fedora is pretty hefty if you're talking really small systems.  I 
once spent time stripping it down to a 512MB image for installation on a 
flash device...I had intended to take it down to 256MB, but it took a 
week to get it to 512, so I stopped spending time on it and spent a few 
bucks on bigger flash rather than spend another weak weeding it down 
more.  SUSE is even bigger in a non-GUI install.  Mandrake is a little 
better.  Gentoo can be small (but compiling all the time on an old box 
would be a stupid waste of time, even moreso than on a fast box).  And, 
of course, a stock FreeBSD is tiny.  Out of all of those, I'd pick 
Debian for a very small system (but Fedora for anything not very 
small...anything with 128MB of RAM and a 10GB disk is not very small, 
regardless of CPU and other stuff, and runs the latest Fedora just fine 
if you leave off X).