[Dxspider-support] Distro Selection

[Steven H Sawyers (na0ia)]

I have been following this mailing list for a year before attempting to put 
dxspider on one of my machines. I am a Linux newbie and only an occasional 
Unix user. I have done a couple of Redhat installs about 3 years ago, and 
played around but nothing serious.

I would like to replace the Win2K on a 133 MHz Pentium I am running as a 
internet portal to RF link for the local dxpacket cluster group. I am using 
BPQ to link to a cluster machine running AK1A. I have been running this for 
over 2 years and have kept the Win2K up for up to 9 months at a time, but 
it is just a portal and I would like to offer some other options which I 
see in dxspider.

I am interested in setting up a dedicated machine for dxspider. I have 
several 600 MHz machines that would work for hardware and hot backup, but 
we have tried several times to get something going and always run into 
something on the AX-25, or spider that does not work. We have tried old 
RedHat versions, Knoppix, Debian, and looked at others, but never got 
anything to be fully functional.

I have corresponded with some on the list about Linux Distros for dxspider. 
One of the big problems is not having the right packages or a dedicated 
HOWTO to set up Linux and dxspider on a blank hard drive.

Dirk's comments prompt me to ask for input from the masters.

Where do I begin and what do I need?

I am inclined towards fedora, but don't really care. I would like to do 
something everyone else is doing so I can ask stupid questions and get good 
answers. I would like to get this running sometime this winter.

Steve
NA0IA -North America - 0 land - Iowa