UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hey folks,
This is one hell of a site btw. I've spent the last couple of days searching the forum for help here and some of it has been properly beneficial.
Anyway, enough of the brown-nosing.

Here's the thing, i've been fortunate enough to get a hold of a very old and very crappy Presario 5000 for free, and I want to stick Solaris on it as (a) I need to learn Unix for uni next year and want to get a jump start, and (b) i've been waiting for a chance to wean myself off windows for a while now.

Only problem is, I want to avoid as many headaches with hardware conflicts etc, so before installation i'm basically researching as much as I can about putting Solaris onto the system.

I've checked the 'Support - BigAdmin' section for the hardware issues involved, and basically, have not had much luck apart from finding out that the graphics card (which i'm taking out anyway) is compatible.
I can't find any info on the MB, Bios, HDD etc at all!!
I think that the Presario is just too old and sucky.

So if anyone has had any experience installing ANY Unix/Linux OS onto a Presario 5000, i'd really appreciate info on the distro that they used.

Thanks in advance,
Shep.

I custom ordered my Compaq Persario 5000z, which turned out to be better for me as a result. Bottom line is that my system ended up with a few better components than the shelf models (still isn't saying too much).

Loading Solaris 8 didn't work too well. I couldn't find drivers for my video, modem, or NIC. Solaris did install and I would have continued with Solaris but, since I was rebuilding the OS anyway, I installed Red Hat 7 for grins.

Red Hat installed drivers for every device but my modem (if I recall correctly). That coupled with it's cool collection of stuff decided for me. Solaris was pretty much the same Solaris I've always used and the Gnome window manager was far too appealing for me to struggle through tracking down video and NIC drivers just to get a functional system.

This configuration worked great as a database server for a year until my kid's gaming reqs conflicted with mine at which point I moved to Fedora for my Dell, which still serves as a database server.

Bottom line is that you're likely to have fewer configuration and compatibility issues on your Compaq with some Linux distro.

By the way, I learned my lesson with the Compaq system. These systems were not meant to be used for anything other than Windoze. Even Win2k was a hard fit. I buy nothing but Dells anymore. I can't speak to other distros but Fedora installed on my Dell desktop system without a hitch. I use it primarily as an Oracle database server, keeping up on their latest technologies.

Cheers man, i've got 4 distros at the moment. Libranet, Solaris, RedHat9 and i'm in the process of downloading Fedora. When i've got some spare time, i'll try Fedora first as i've head nothing but good reports about it. If it works, fine, if not, well i'll just work at it. What better way than to get acquainted with my first Linux distro eh? if it gets too much, i'll try another distro.