By GABI
Introduction
Switching to Linux was a desire of mine for many years. I will not tell you all those bad things about windows that is like this and like that. Windows is a good OS if you know how to configure it and how to responsibly work with it. I had windows machines for years without being reinstalled.
My reason for leaving windows is the costs and the pirated software I had to use. Of course there are a lot of open source applications for windows too but on linux you can actually learn the basics of OS.
As some Linux guru once said … linux is all about choice!
When I start searching for a replacement for windows I had to take into consideration several aspects.
I cannot afford to make a drastic change because I still need to continue some basic development work (php web programming).
After testing most of the main Linux distributions, I started to test also the small distributions based on the most known ones. These tend to be more focused on the little details that makes the difference. And it is expected because the main frame is maintained and developed by the ones sustaining the source distribution !
I decided to go on Linux Mint distribution.
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I am not going to explain why Linux Mint is better or worse than other distributions because as I said … is all about choice. For me this is the distribution that best feats to my needs. It does not mean that it will be the same for anyone, but at least it will be a practical guide for the ones searching for info on this topic.
Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu distribution, meaning that will still have a strong community support and access to a wide range of application repositories. The latest version, version 8 (‘Helena’) has a default kde desktop so it boots and shuts down very very quickly, has all the needed codecs already installed, has all the common application already installed. You can start working in a few minutes: firefox, thunderbird, openoffice are already there, for instant messaging you have Pidgin, you have software for viewing photos and videos, take desktop snap shots in png format … basically 90 % of the day by day working application are here by default.
The idea was to have a computer with strong resources (250 GB HDD, 3000 MHz dual core processor, 4 GB RAM) that I can use as my desktop when I am home and have some things to do, and the rest of the time should act as a server with all the services enabled. When I say server do not think at some public web hosting server. It will host only a few domains, some mails and databases. It will be a small office / home server
Virtualization and encryption software are mandatory. For this VMWARE Server 2.0 and TrueCrypt 6.2a have been selected to be installed.
They do not require any tweaks to work on this distribution even if these are not in the repositories !
This website should be read from top to the end and not take each section as a standalone section.
For example before installing a server component I update the server and installed some needed libraries. If you go directly to the server component installation and do not install the libraries I have installed, it is very possible that the results you will get, will not match the ones I got and showed in this website.
One more thing. For sure this is not the only way or the best way of doing these things. But for sure this is a way that worked for me and it might work for you too ! Any suggestions or recommendations are welcomed !
I am writing this down because I like to have all this practical information just like an installation procedure that I can use from anywhere if my computer need reinstalling or I have to install this to someone else (my memory is not to good) !
And if by doing this I can share useful information to others (information that I had to search a lot and test allot until things were ok) than I am more than happy I could help !
If you need professional help on configuring your server please leave a comment to me! I will contact you back and we can discuss details !