Project Suggestions

[Riff Gaffer]

Howdy.

Let's start by saying I hope this is the right place for this - if not then please can a Mod relocate to a better place.

So here's the story: I've just been gifted an old Dell Tower. It's about 7 years old with what was an OK Pentium at the time, it's got about 2 gigs of ram and a 250 gig hard disk and an X1100 ATi (I think) gpu.

Currently it has Vista installed but it seems to me that it could be an interesting basis for a project. Now I'm thinking Fedora is the way to go - but bear in mind I'm not an expert at Linux. I'm ok getting a system up and running and most stuff installed but I do that mostly by following guides like the Nvidia guides here, and using Dangermouse's AutoPlus to install codecs etc.

I can edit stuff, and I can mostly do what needs to be done but the more complex tasks take me a while and if I ask for help and somebody rattled off a solution it'll generally take me a good couple of hours to decipher what I've been told

So ... I've got this box floating around. I currently have two towers at home, one is Win 7 for gaming, the other is Fed 17 Mate for everything else and I use CentOS at work. What I want is some kind of project that will give me a better understanding of things linux and I'd like to stick with the RH fork of Linux... and absolutely avoid Gnome 3.

Suggestions welcome and TIA!

[Adunaic]

Sounds like a fun / good way to learn.

Lets see. What do you wish to achieve? Do you just want a better understanding of linux or the ability to administer a linux system? Or something else? - When I first started using linux my goal was to be as competant with it as I was with windows, I quickly surpassed that as I eventually found linux easier.

I could list a few projects but I think I will wait for you to reply first.

[Camberwell]

I think following the guide and doing a stage 1 install of gentoo was the best thing I ever did with regards to learning about linux, I know its not the redhat route your desire, but you'll really learn allot.

Martin

[DBelton]

If you want to learn a little more, try using the Dell box to set you up a file/print server. As old as the hardware is, you would probably do better running something like CentOS on it rather than the newer versions of Fedora (unless you don't install Gnome Shell).

Fedora 17 (without Gnome Shell) would give you a better platform to learn the newer things that are being put into linux, that will probably hit CentOS in the next release, or run CentOS if you wish to have more like what you are using currently at work.

You could also experiment with it and set you up a web server as well.

Just mess around with it and learn new things.

[Riff Gaffer]

Thanks for the replies chaps

I run CentOS at work. I own my own small business so I have saved myself several hundred (thousand?) £££ using CentOS, Libre Office and Google Apps - compared with Microsaft - so the notion of a file/print server could be quite educational.

I'm pretty competent I think. I'm by no means a noob to Linux - it mostly takes me time to find out what I need to know and I have gaps in my knowledge. I guess what I'm looking for is to fill some of those gaps and come out with something of practical use (but that said, I could try several projects if need be so long as there's no major hardware upgrades needed.

I'm competent with hardware by the way just don't want to spend money on it right now

I'm not sure what Gentoo is going to teach me, I'd be interested in your thinking there.

Thanks for the input so far peeps!