KornEquipped

For those of you with a P4 class machine the best solution is a real OS like CentOS. It has a longer life cycle than Fedora and is so easy to add packages to. My favorite P4 is the ShuttlePC These are available in many different configurations and as 1 AGP and 1 PCI slot on the back. I also have a Revo. It does have HDMI out for video but works well with a DVI to HDMI adapter cable and an old Dell monitor. You could call it a netbook with no screen. I haven’t really found a good use for this yet other than BOXEE

One Linux package I would highly recommend is Midnight Commander. Its a clone of the old Norton Commander with some really neat new tricks.

Just type “yum install mc” at a command prompt and it will do the rest  Type “mc” to get started. If your functions keys wont work you can always user “esc” number instead. Hit “Esc” then “2” for the F2 menu or “esc” then “0” for f10 or exit. It works really well on a SSH session from a remote location and can even bring   up other machines in the view panes using SSH or FTP

I got asked a few questions about LAMP servers. Here are some of my favorite machines to use if you dont have a lot of space or power. Most of these are Pentium I Class machines unless noted otherwise.

The IBM Netvista 2200 I have a bunch of these used as Digital Signage and Media Players. They are very hard to make an OS for but if you Google Netvista 2200 Linux you will find one site with all you need. They dont have a real bios as a pc would have and only like to boot a specifically formatted kernel. These aren’t really suitable for running a backend database.They do need an external 12V power brick.

Then there is their bigger brother the IBM Netvista 2800. These are great for almost anything. They have a real bios and can run Dos apps pretty well.  They will also run mos flavors of Linux and I even had on loaded with Windows 98se on a 4GB microdrive. To make that microdrive fit in the CF slot required removing the top side of the CF connector. All I did was clip the top corners with a pair of cutters and fold the side over. It snapped off cleanly. I’ve done this to to a half dozen or so and never broke and thing. YMMV. I like the fact that the power supply is built in and it has pc standard serial and parallel ports and 2 PCI slots. These make great firewalls or VOIP PBX machines.

When you really want horsepower there are plenty of small form factor (SFF) pc’s out there with P4 or better processors. In the top of this pic is a 2.4Ghz P4 Netvista box and the bottom is a 2.8Ghz P4 SFF machine many of these lack space for  PCI cards even thought he motherboard will have the slots. The big Netvista has a few half height PCI slots. The middle machine is a Wyse thin client. That’s a whole different story, or at least paragraph.

I have tried many different thin clients and the HP are the best so far for my needs. The Wyse shown above is an oddity. It has a single PCI slot, a DVD and HD but is a Fat Thin Client. I like it but its external power brick gets in the way at times. The HP’s have no expansion and limited resources but can boot from a USB key so its easy to boot Linux and backup your work. I have many of these with FreeDos, DSL Linux and even one with Askozia PBX. They do run MySql pretty well but I use Monkey Web Server instead of Apache.

If you get the newer version it has a removable cover on the case that hides 2 USB slots. These can be used to hide Pen Drives and will be locked in by a standard PC cable restraint lock.