Kernel Version: - 2.2.14
KDE Included: - No
KDE2 Included: - No
Gnome Included: - Yes
Installation:
Booted from the CD into the text-based menu-driven installation.
TurboLinux prompts you to configure your language, keyboard and PCMCIA support then detects your hardware. It detected my network card (a Realtek RTL8139a).
You can then choose whether you want a normal verbosity or extended verbosity installation, I chose normal verbosity. You can then configure your network type(s) from LAN and PPP (Internet dial-up). The installer then attempted to detect a SCSI card - there wasn’t one.
You are then prompted to partition your hard disk(s) using Fdisk or CFdisk within the menu interface - as complicated as with any other system. The installer then prompts you to configure the network including an option for DHCP which if selected, causes a segmentation fault and crashes the installer. Although, how many people would use DHCP for a server anyway...?
You can then select the type of system that you wish to install from All-in-one, Basic/firewall, mail system, web server, Internet server or custom. I chose the All-in-one option and Turbo then installed the packages.
When the packages have been installed you are prompted to select the kernel for your system from a list. This should be relatively simple although the newer systems autodetect this. LILO is then installed and you are prompted to configure your printer(s). There is then the option to autodetect any ISA PnP device(s) in your system (e.g. old sound cards). You can then select the boot services and set the root password.
The video card is now detected (it detected my ATI Mach64) and you can then create the X configuration and select a graphical login if you wish.
The system then reboots and the installation is complete.
Software Content:
The software content in this version of TurboLinux was quite impressive (although quite dated). The software includes: - XFree86 3.3.6, Netscape 4.72, Gnome , Enlightenment, MySQL server, DNS, Samba server, Apache, Squid, Sendmail and a DHCP server.
Conclusion:
Overall this is a good server distro although it is now quite dated. There is almost every server application you are likely to need and a few server configuration tools (e.g. Comanche for Apache ). I did not expect an X server to be included in a server distro as it isn’t a machine for day-to-day use and most servers are configured remotely. I was also a bit confused with the option to use a DHCP IP address for the machine - how can a server have a dynamic IP address? Although this is a good server distro I wouldn’t really recommend it and I would suggest that it would be easier to use a single CD specific server distro like E-Smith.
