Re: [Sheflug] A New Linux Box

[Peter Humphrey <peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Saturday 25 October 2008 10:44:37 Richard Ibbotson wrote:

> My own personal point of view is to agree with some of the many UNIX
> system administrators that I have met and worked with.  I used to
> build PCs for IBM and Compaq.  So, just like other people working in a
> commercial environment I like to build my own.   Hollywood and NASA
> prefer the AMD processors and so I like to use AMD dual or quad core
> 64 bit processors with lots of RAM.  1Gb to 4Gb or thereabouts.

If Tom is really going to learn Linux and its administration, he should 
consider Gentoo Linux, in which everything is built on the machine from 
source. If he does that, I think 4 - 8 GB will be useful. I have 4 GB on 
this box, and that's enough to compile any package, I think, except Open 
Office - which I assume won't be installed on a server.

(Aside: there is a trick to enable vast package compilations: define /tmp as 
tmpfs and set its size big enough for the compilations, 6 GB in my case, 
and create plenty of swap for it to roll out into on those rare occasions 
when it's needed. This is my fstab line:
tmpfs           /tmp                tmpfs   nodev,nosuid,size=6g    0 0
)

-- 
Rgds
Peter

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