No guis please

We have four computers in our house.

1 PC running 8.04

1 All singing, all dancing laptop running 8.10

And 2 aspire one`s running 8.10 (both with 120g hard drives)

We`ve got a fancy home network where all media files are connected to the pc and we can access them all from wherever, and all print to the same printer etc etc.

I`m trying to learn linux/unix properly and would like to install something on all the computers to aid me. I just want the shell. But I would like (if possible) for all (most) of the hardware to work.

Just tried puppy and damn small but all I really want is the shell. I would like to try to set up a home network like Ive got, from the command line, on the same computers, without harming what Ive already got.

So new partitions on all of them, but what to install?

Thanks

Why don't you just kill the display manager or log into a session with no DE?

Try Ubuntu's server edition.

geoken said: Why don't you just kill the display manager or log into a session with no DE?

+1. then, you can add screen and dvtm which will give you more options for window management (yup, even in the console). elinks is my favorite text browser. nano, or vim, for a text editor. cplay, mpd+ncmpc or cmus are all great for music. mc for a file manager (or, just use terminal commands). streamripper is something i can't do without, but maybe you already have enough music. cdcd for playing cds.

forrestcupp said: Try Ubuntu's server edition.

or install Debian.

Try INX linux it is cammand line only and is a tool to learn the command line. Check out this thread.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=859914&highlight=inx+linux

It is a live cd and very cool. I hope it is something that will help.

Kelean.

+1 on INX

INX was built for this sort of thing, it should be recognized more

INX is one of the friendliest console based distros out there

kelean said: Try INX linux it is cammand line only and is a tool to learn the command line. Check out this thread.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=859914&highlight=inx+linux

It is a live cd and very cool. I hope it is something that will help.

Kelean.

This is just what I was looking for. I want to really play with the system and don`t want to break my existing set up. Cheers.