[GTALUG] Advice -- Building Debian 8 PC To Replace Win XP PC;

[CLIFFORD ILKAY]

On 01/08/16 11:05 AM, Steve Petrie, P.Eng. via talk wrote:
> I'd better check my research, re: Intel on-chip video support, versus 
> the monitor I have chosen:
>
> LG 22MB35DM-I 21.5" Monitor Full HD 1080p 1920x1080 IPS LED Back-lit, 
> DVI-D, D-Sub,
> contrast ratios: (static 1,000:1), (dynamic 5M:1), reader mode, 
> flicker-safe;

Hi Steve,

Any modern video card will easily drive that monitor. The only thing you 
need to be concerned about is if the video card and the monitor have a 
common interface. HDMI and DisplayPort are the two most common monitor 
interfaces these days.

Given that you said that you are of advanced years, if you are anything 
like the older folks in my life, you may find it difficult to 
comfortably see text on that monitor. One of my elderly relatives ends 
up running Windows at 150% magnification to be able to read things 
comfortably. You may want to go for a larger monitor, like a 27" for 
example, at the same resolution. Retails stores will have 1080p monitors 
of various sizes on display so it should be relatively easy for you to 
see the differences for yourself.

Also, you asked about "hard line". Hard line = POTS line (Plain Old 
Telephony Service) line = land line.

I still do not get why you would not jump straight to DSL with your new 
system and forgo dial-up and the expense and hassles of setting up a 
modem. The USRobotics USB modem you were looking at is over $60. The 
"psychological stress" of the migration from Windows XP to Linux is 
orthogonal to how you get your Internet connection. In any event, using 
a dedicated firewall/router/gateway device will make the transition from 
dial-up to DSL/cable Internet service short work and quite painless. You 
can have such a device running in a matter of minutes once you have your 
DSL (or cable) modem installed and your ISP has activated the 
connection. It will be a matter of connecting an Ethernet cable from 
your Linux (or XP) box to the built-in Ethernet switch in your 
firewall/router/gateway to have Internet access.

I have also read your comments about custom partitioning schemes. On the 
system on which I am typing this, I have a 32GB SSD(*), which I will 
replace with a 120GB SSD shortly, on which I install Linux. I also have 
a 1TB SSD and an 8TB Western Digital Red drive for other filesystems. I 
mount /home on the 1TB SSD and /data on the 8TB drive. When a new 
version of Fedora comes out, even though in-place updates work now, I do 
not bother. It is faster to simply do a fresh install. When I want to 
upgrade to a new version of Fedora, I make a copy of /etc/fstab to my 
home directory, shutdown the machine and unplug all disk drives except 
for the one onto which I plan to install Fedora, power up, and install.

It is not strictly necessary to unplug the other drives but I do it for 
a couple of reasons. First, if I screw up the kickstart file that I 
use(**) and specify that the partitions should be cleared on the wrong 
device, I would have to recover all that data I accidentally deleted, 
thus making what is normally a 20 minute process into a day-long 
process. Second, if there is a bug in the installer and it clears 
partitions on the wrong device, I would be facing the same situation as 
the first case. I recall a distro that did this (I do not recall which 
one it was) about 10 years ago so I have been cautious ever since. A bug 
or a mistake cannot clear partitions on devices that are not connected 
to the bus.

Once the installation has finished, I shutdown the machine. I then 
reconnect the drives that has been disconnected earlier, boot into the 
new Fedora installation, modify the /etc/fstab in the new installation 
to mount /home and /data using their UUID, which is why I had set aside 
the old fstab though I can always get device UUIDs using /sbin/blkid, 
and reboot. On reboot, everything in /home/cilkay will have been 
preserved, which means I do not have to configure all the stuff I had 
previously configured, like Cinnamon applets, virtual desktops, XChat, 
Chrome, Firefox, and Thunderbird extension, Thunderbird configuration 
for my various mail accounts, virtual machines, editor configurations, 
and so on. If I had to configure all that from scratch, I would be 
fiddling around for days.

(*) I intend to purchase a fanless tiny PC that has two Ethernet ports 
on the motherboard to replace the Pentium II 266 Compaq small form 
factor machine with 128M of RAM and 4GB of disk running IPCop, a 
dedicated firewall distro, that I have been running since March 2004 and 
repurpose the 32GB SSD as the drive for the new machine.

(**) I have a tftp and PXE server set up on my network and do kickstart 
installations when I want to upgrade. It makes for quick and repeatable 
installations. The Debian equivalent is a preseed installation, which I 
also do for creating virtual machines. You do not have to do this. You 
could boot from the ISO image and do a manual installation and not have 
to know a thing about scripted installations and my comments above 
regarding having filesystems on separate devices would still apply.

In short, I would have Windows on its own device if it is not feasible 
for you to run Windows in a virtual machine, /home on another, and 
everything else for Linux on a second or third device depending on 
whether Windows is installed in a virtual machine or on physical 
hardware. 120GB for the second/third device is plenty. How big the 
device for a physical Windows installation should be depends on what you 
intend to do with it.

By the way, I run Windows 7, 8, 10, and Server 2012 r2 in virtual 
machines running in VirtualBox. I have never encountered anything I 
could not do by running Windows in this manner. I know some people like 
to have Windows installed on the physical device in case there is a 
dependency on BIOS updates and such but that has not been an issue for 
any of the motherboards I have used. I would stay away from any 
motherboard that required Windows to do BIOS updates.

-- 
Regards,

Clifford Ilkay

+ 1 647-778-8696