Linux help/advice...

Since I have built my HM + rPi I realize my Linux knowledge is woefully lacking. I have been working with computers since the DOS days, still remember most of those old DOS commands, so trying to navigate Linux for the HM was very frustrating to me (not knowing any of the Linux commands).
I've decided it's time for me to build a Linux machine to poke around at so I can get myself up to speed, I have plenty of computer hardware here to build up a machine. I am looking for advice on what version of Linux I should load and any pointers that would help me get started...
Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

honestly.... by another pi and work with that... there is a huge community dedicated to the raspberrypi and learning linux. also there is a ridiculous amount of projects you can try and learn how to use the gpio and other cool things. Heck its where i found out about the heatermeter in the first place. plus its a cheap piece of hardware that you can take anywhere with you. plus you can change hard drives (SD cards) on the fly to try different distros

The rPi doesn't interface with my KVM, I have PC's sitting here with removable drive bays and a stack of hard drives I can use for experimentation. Using the PC's through my KVM is more convenient for me, 'caus I can switch back and forth from my other computers at will and use the same keyboard, mouse and monitor. So I am looking for a good Linux platform to install and experiment with on a pc. I guess I could always putts around with a rPi via PuTTY, but one of the reasons I want a Linux PC is because I want to edit the default settings for my rPi OS which Bryan said could be done on a Linux machine but not a PC. I just want a full blown Linux machine to learn from and use as a tool when I need it.
Thanks for your advice.....

You can run the graphical interface on the Pi if you connect it to you LAN (wired or wireless) and use Xming (Xserver for Windows) to connect from Windows. It is easy to setup as there is a place on the web site that explains how to do it for the Pi, http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/pixming.php. Works like a champ.

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the OS running on the rPi a light/limited/offshoot version of Linux? I was thinking of using a hard drive and real PC to run a more full featured version of Linux. Being a Linux novice I could be complete off base....

No, it is just tailored with drivers that support the Pi. You can also load a different distribution on in it.

Yeah if you just want to poke around the rPi makes a decent little machine, that's really what it was designed to do. If you download Raspbian and burn it to an SD card you've got a fully featured Linux machine backed with hundreds if not thousands of installable applications, programming languages, utilities, the whole works. It has a GUI and a desktop and everything. It is a little slow compared to a budget computer but for around $50-60 total versus $200-300 for a full Linux PC you can't beat it.

If you ever decide to upgrade to a PC, all the same application packages are available under Debian Linux or the more popular Ubuntu (although the names might vary a bit on the latter).

EDIT: The reason LinkMeter is so slimmed down is because it is a little faster and the download is only a few megs instead of 500MB which I can't host. Also it grew from the Linksys version and I didn't want to rewrite the whole thing for the minor benefit of being able to run both (Linux Desktop and HeaterMeter) at the same time. Considering the $40 cost of a Pi A + WiFi I count the Pis as being of a low enough cost to be single purpose. Heck the Arduino the project started with was $35 and I still have it inside my original HeaterMeter.

Yah, the little rPi and the Arduino are incredible and it's awesome what you can do (have done) with them...
I just figured since I have a whole bunch of free PC hardware here I might as well poke around at Linux and learn something, just trying to figure out what flavor I should start with... Seems like that would be Ubuntu, Raspian or Debian, I'll have to google them and see where that leads me...

Honestly your best bet is to poke around the forums for a couple of releases and see which group you will mesh with the best. Most of the differences in releases are pretty meaningless for a complete newbie, just pick a release that is going to work with your hardware and jump in.

If you've got the spare hardware, I'd do Ubuntu. It is what I do all my development on and have been using for close to 10 years now. It probably has the largest userbase and they have a new release every 6 months.

Bryan Mayland said:

If you've got the spare hardware, I'd do Ubuntu. It is what I do all my development on and have been using for close to 10 years now. It probably has the largest userbase and they have a new release every 6 months.

Click to expand...

Funny you said that, I decided on Ubuntu and got it loaded a few hours ago.... just starting to poke around....