[ale] Upgrading Red Hat 6.2 and Netscape 4.72

[James P. Kinney III]

On Tue, 2005-03-29 at 17:46 -0500, Bob Toxen wrote:
> You definitely want to:
> 
>   1. Back up all personal data (preferably to two different places).
>   2. Do a complete install from scratch.
>   3. Restore your personal data.
> 
> The claims for processor speed are just recommendations to get "crisp"
> performance.
> 
> HOWEVER, if you will be using such slow hardware, I recommend a Distro
> with less unneeded bells and whistles, such as Slackware.

The big thing that will bite on the new releases is the X environment.
Gnome and KDE are HUGE and require loads of ram to be responsive.

Slackware ships with XFCE which is very lightweight. However, there are
system startup differences between the RedHat (and Suse and Mandrake)
and Slackware. 

Given that your hardware is very underpowered for the more current
stuff, I will strongly second Bob's call to use Slackware. 

And don't even _try_ to do an upgrade. Everything has changed and will
need to be replaced anyway, so the fastest (and most reliable) will be
to backup your personal data, network access configuration (i.e. ISP
access) and do a full install by reformating the drive and starting from
scratch. 

One thing to think about is this: given a P166 CPU that would put your
hard drive at 8+ years old. For a SCSI drive, it is just outside the
anticipated lifetime for an always-on system. For an IDE drive, you are
running on borrowed time. It might be prudent to keep the old machine
intact and unchanged (security fixes are a real questionable point here)
and buy a new system to do a fresh install on. The basic "Monarch
Special" at Monarch Computer will run every Linux distro out there :
http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?
Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=90241&Category_Code=centiravaluedesktops

If you notice the penguin in the top right corner, that will let you
know it runs Linux. In fact, having the Fedora Core 3 installed on the
system is an option.
> 
> Bob Toxen
> bob at verysecurelinux.com               [Please use for email to me]
> http://www.verysecurelinux.com        [Network&Linux/Unix security consulting]
> http://www.realworldlinuxsecurity.com [My book:"Real World Linux Security 2/e"]
> Quality Linux & UNIX security and SysAdmin & software consulting since 1990.

-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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