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Ubuntu

Tried Ubuntu on a new (ish) server for the first time in a while, today.

The installer’s very pretty, running in a nice GUI from a LiveCD. This actually made things a little difficult, as the only spare screen I have is a klunky old 15” CRT which goes all fuzzy at any reasonable brightness. Ctrl-Alt-GreyPlus was my friend.

The package installer is much faster at picking up package indexes than the RedHat-ish systems. Pulling down packages is just as slow, of course, but bringing everything up to date (including a new kernel) only took half a day versus about 2-3 days.

Remember that this is over a dial-up modem. I’m using Pacific’s mirror in Sydney, not that it makes the slightest difference over dial-up.

A lot of the config info is in different places, but it didn’t take too long to puzzle out.

So now I have a pet server again, one that doesn’t matter if I trash everything on it, so I’ll be throwing together a set of short articles documenting what I do to put up a DNS, Web server, scripting, enail server, backing SQL database (I’ll do PostgreSQL & MySQL) & gear up a Win32 workstation (plus Linux plus OS/X) to run it all.

Comments

sen said…
Congratulations and welcome to the (better) world of Ubuntu :-)
If you would ever like me to burn you a copy of the DVD version so any downloads you need will be very minimal just let me know mate.
Leon RJ Brooks said…
Well... I’ll actually be in WestAus next week, so I might take you up on that.
sen said…
haha. I'm going to be in BrisVagas next week (company is forcing to go to MS Tech.ED, am thinking of wearing my Linux shirt in protest).
But that's no issue. I'll burn off a copy and leave it somewhere for you... just let me know (my username @ google's free web mail service dot com )

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