Muncken Posted February 22, 2010 Share Posted February 22, 2010 Hi, I am planning to convert my old laptop (Acer Travelmate 2410) to a Linux server whose purpose will be to host my personal webpage etc. Therefor I have the following two questions: 1) Which version of Linux would be nice for a person like me - who has no experience with Linus at all - to install? 2) The laptop is very old and I have no driver cd's etc. remaining. How do I - when Linux is properly installed - get the internet connection etc. to work decent? Thank you, Kasper Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonnoTheDev Posted February 22, 2010 Share Posted February 22, 2010 For a complete noob who wants a desktop. Ubuntu. http://www.ubuntu.com/ However i'm not sure you are correct in saying you want to host your website. I think you mean use it to create and preview your website in a local environment. You would never host a live website on a laptop. A laptop is not a server. Proper webservers do not use graphical user interfaces (GUI). They are purely command line driven. I think you are looking for an alternative to windows for your laptop. Yes, you will be able to run php & the apache server on a linux distro, but you can also run php on a windows platform. If you want to learn about linux then Ubuntu is a good start. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muncken Posted February 22, 2010 Author Share Posted February 22, 2010 Thanks, Neil, for a great and expanded answer to my question. Well as you can read I am not that into server/hosting yet (which basically is why I want to start up). I have always used payed webhotels etc. but I want to expand my knowledge and get started on Linus servers. You are completely right though, the purpose (when not hosting a website) is to run an http server like apache and then browse and preview the pages and programs I create. Thanks again for the answer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonnoTheDev Posted February 22, 2010 Share Posted February 22, 2010 No problem. What you are likely to come across is setting up dedicated servers that you may purchase from a hosting company that run linux distros such as CentOs or Redhat etc.. These are where you will host your websites or your clients websites or whatever. Learning to configure apache, setup your firewall (iptables), configure DNS, compile php with all required modules, configure mysql, is what you will more than likely encounter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PugJr Posted February 24, 2010 Share Posted February 24, 2010 OP, About 2., when I installed Ubuntu I didn't install any drivers and if drivers were installed, it did it automatically when formatting to it. I was using server non-gui mode. Like Neil said, I as well would recommend Ubuntu and as he also said, use the server version OS. Its always good to know how to use a CLI as if you seriously are wanting to having dedicated servers for webpages, that is a must. [ot] Neil, what is wrong with using an old computer (Not a laptop mind you) to host a dedicated server? Thats what I'm currently doing running 24/7 and it never crashes or overheats and can easily sustain enough people for my need. As well, my computer has ran for at very least 11000+ hours before it became one and has been always (Excluding the video card, but last I checked, servers don't require much of that.) stable and the 11000+ hours wasn't just idling like my server is now, but running at 100% CPU for most of that time. Is that bad practice to have such a used (But stable) computer running a server? [/ot] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trq Posted February 24, 2010 Share Posted February 24, 2010 [ot] Neil, what is wrong with using an old computer (Not a laptop mind you) to host a dedicated server? Thats what I'm currently doing running 24/7 and it never crashes or overheats and can easily sustain enough people for my need. As well, my computer has ran for at very least 11000+ hours before it became one and has been always (Excluding the video card, but last I checked, servers don't require much of that.) stable and the 11000+ hours wasn't just idling like my server is now, but running at 100% CPU for most of that time. Is that bad practice to have such a used (But stable) computer running a server? [/ot] An old PC might be alright for such situations. But a laptop? It'll likely overheat pretty quickly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PugJr Posted February 24, 2010 Share Posted February 24, 2010 An old PC might be alright for such situations. But a laptop? It'll likely overheat pretty quickly. Forgot about that feature. Sometimes it gets so warm you even have to put a book between your legs and the laptop! And that was a pretty much idle laptop as well! Not much of a laptop man myself so perhaps I shouldn't talk out of ignorance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muncken Posted February 24, 2010 Author Share Posted February 24, 2010 PugJr: Thanks for your advice too. I could make an alias from my website pointing at the server, just to check stability and to practice operating it. But suddenly my brain came up with a new point of view: Since I am a poor student maybe having a device running 24/7 isn't the best thing that could happen to my person economy ;-) But I have adopted your advice about Ubunte and I will install that to my laptop and see what'll happen. Thanks again, both of ya' :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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