sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Computers & Programming Computers, Software, Accessories Linux

Well he talked me into it. I was given a server w/3 gig dual core processor, 1 gig of memory, 80 gig hard drive. Conroe Presler FSB1333 DDR11667 silk-screened on the board, for those who know what that means. (Not me!) Came with server 2000, and was VERY clunky to use for just a desktop. Put XP unlicensed on it and that was even harder to use, before I got the "Black Screen" and warnings. Anyhow, I loaded LinuxMint and WOW. Intuitive, easy to use and FAST. ('Course I'm comparing this computer to a pentium4 1.2 gig, with 1024 meg of memory, XP sp3, and 70Gig hard drive. Speed is not mostly from the Linux, I suspect!) And this linuxmint came with assorted software that is functionally equal and able to trade with MS stuff. But I gotta keep the old computer on line 'til MagicJack gets their Linux version going. Now I need a Linux version of putty, or is there one? Any one else making this jump? John C.

There are linux versions of PuTTY but it's not as user-friendly as the windows one. The biggest thing that does it in for me is a somewhat buggy copy/paste functionality. Being able to highlight and then right-click the mouse to copy/paste is a must.

Since you are already running linux I would probably get friendly with slogin or ssh and call it a day.

Funny, I went to Linuxmint to check out their page and on the right hand side was a big advertisement for Windows Server 2008.

Yeah, I saw that. Based on my limited use, I'll never go back to Windows unless some application that I HAVE to use only runs on windows. HEY, MagicJack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111

Oh, I forgot to mention, my post about XP Pro space referenced 2 extra partitions. So guess what the 30 Meg partition is getting! I set up the desktop as dual boot, so now I will set up the Toughbook as dual boot. THEN I can really see what the boot diference is. Although I have a feeling that the 320 Meg of memory is NOT going to make LinuxMint happy.

If you have a program you need Windows for, there is a Linux program called wine (short for Windows Emulator) and you may be able to get it to run using that (all still within the Linux environment).

tim10, I have a feeling I'd regret using Wine with MJ. MJ is on all the time and any Windows emulator would probably hog the memory, just like Windows.

Lightninghorse,

If you're using Mint, you already have ssh installed. Open a terminal, and type "man ssh" (without quotes) to read the manual, and use "ssh some.machine.name" to ssh to a remote machine.

If you're used to using putty for serial communications, use the package manager to install minicom and lrzsz (for zmodem transfers), and also ckermit (for a very nice scriptable comm program + kermit protocol).

WINE is actually a Windows API to X API translator, not an emulator. Many windows programs that run under wine run faster than under Windows.
I do not think that your MJ software will run under wine however, since the MJ software does some funky stuff with the hardware at startup (removing its flash storage, etc). You could get it running under VirtualBox or another virtual machine, but you're right - the overhead just isn't worth it.

There's a budding community of MJ hackers that has gotten it running native under linux & bsd, talking directly to asterisk. It isn't easy though!

You're also correct on memory requirements. Modern, full-featured X installs chew memory for breakfast. 320MB is more than enough for linux, and just enough for a very light X window manager, but KDE or Gnome will have you climbing the walls just waiting for it to boot.

If you want to run linux on a memory-starved system, I recommend either DSL (damn small linux) or TinyCore.

Have a day!
Tod.