On 23 May 2008, at 06:59, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> I would like to try LedgerSMB for, well, a small business.
>
> I don't know what the line of least resistance is (I don't want to  
> employ
> my usual tactic: looking for the line of greatest resistance).
>
> I would welcome advice.
>
> Linux distros that seem plausible: ...
> I'm trying to figure out PostgreSQL versions as a factor in the choice
>
> - Centos 5.1 has 8.1.11
> - Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has 8.3.1
> - Fedora 9 has 8.3.1
> - Debian seems to be heading towards 8.3 (based on something said on
>   this list)

Hi there,

It's interesting you should ask this. What distro do you use at the  
moment?

The reason I make that reply is that I'd imagine most folks would  
just use the distro they're most comfortable with.

If you're new to Linux then my standard advice is to try several of  
them - the "best" Linux distro simply seems to be a matter of which  
"suits" you, and it seems to all come down to a matter of personality  
& preference.

If you're new to Linux then it's a bit of a step from Windows. I  
think that, for a lot of people, moving from Windows 2000 to XP, or  
XP to to Vista is a bit of a change. The jump from Windows to Linux  
is several times as surprising and confusing - even if you do  
_everything_ from the GUI. And long term you probably _don't_ want to  
do everything from the GUI - maybe I'm just an old fogey, but I find  
teh powah of teh Lunix to be in the command line. I'm sure you don't  
want to immediately start using the terminal exclusively, so when  
dipping into that it's useful to have a GUI environment that you're  
comfortable with.

My advice is to try several distros and see which you get along with  
best. Download Centos and Ubunutu and install them in turn on an old  
Pentium III (or I guess these days older, low-end Pentium 4s are  
probably cheap enough, a tenner at the local tip?). Don't be afraid  
to wipe each and start again with a different distro - iniially the  
whole point should be to learn. If the install process goes smoothly  
then I guess you'd find that reassuring, but also try all the usual  
stuff like changing the default web-browser, installing the extra  
codecs & stuff so that the machine plays video files, setting up  
Samba so you can easily transfer files from your Windows box, getting  
a printer working. This may not seem strictly relevant - in fact,  
playing videos may seem quite *irrelevant* - to a machine which is  
supposed to run LedgerSMB, but IMO you won't really learn whether you  
get along with a distro until you've had to struggle with it a bit,  
or at least done something non-trivial. At that point you discover  
how good the documentation is, the community support, the package- 
manager and whether you like the decisions made by the distros  
developers.

I would imagine that most people went through a number of distros  
before settling upon the one that's right for them - I've now been  
using Gentoo for several years, and am so comfortable with it that I  
could no longer possibly use any other.

I would say that any of the distros you mention are quite suitable  
for you, although I see no reason to choose Debian over Ubuntu (the  
latter is derived from the former, is basically a flashier-packaged  
version of Debian and much more up to date; people who use Ubuntu  
*love* it). I'd also add Suse to your list, but from a LedgeSMB point  
of view I'd imagine there to be little difference between them, and  
any that are currently using an older version of PostgreSQL may well  
come up to date in the 6 months it takes you to get completely  
comfortable with Linux & LedgerSMB, comfortable enough to deploy it  
as your main accounting system. Besides all that, once you're  
comfortable enough with the command line it's trivial to transfer  
your LedgerSMB installation from one machine or distro to another  
(don't forget to backup your customised invoice templates!!).

You might find better answers to this question on the -users list.

Stroller.


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