Considering Sorcerer? Copyright 2008 by Evert Vorster Stuff to think about before you even download the Install/Rescue disk: About you: Sorcerer requires a System Administrator. Someone who is not afraid to read manuals, or spend a long time hunting down some annoyance. If you are not afraid to deal with a command line, and are looking for a way to learn more about UNIX in general and Linux and it's standards in particular, Sorcerer might just be the distrobution for you. Sorcerer has a community of very helpful and friendly people who frequent it's mailing lists. About your computer: 1. Disk Space: Sorcerer uses a lot of disk space. I would not install Sorcerer on a system with less than 20Gb hard disk. While it is technically possible, it is painful. 2. RAM: Sorcerer runs best on systems with lots of fast memory. Below 1GB of RAM you start thrashing your hard drive. While Sorcerer will run on less, you should expect to be running a pretty frugal setup or waiting a long time for compiles to complete. 3. CPU: Sorcerer takes advantage of multiple CPU and CPU cores. The more the merrier. No matter what the amount of CPU you have, Sorcerer will run at quite a high nice value, and your computer will stay responsive even when rebuilding everything. Sorcerer will also queue some jobs to be executed in the background at a later time when it detects low CPU cycles. 4. Architecture: Sorcerer Install/Rescue disks are x86 and x86_64 only. While no one sees any difficulty running on some exotic hardware, no one has ported it yet. 5. Internet: If you plan to run more software than what is on the I/R iso, this is pretty much a requirement. Setting up a good all-round selection of software will use quite a bit of bandwidth, but updates are small, and very frequent. Which Install/Rescue Image to download? Currently, there are only two. 32 bit and 64 bit. If you plan to be running binary blobs of software not compiled by you, I would recommend 32 bit. If you want to be on the bloodiest of bleeding edges, and your CPU supports it, get the 64 bit version. Download your poison and burn it on to a CD-ROM, read the install instructions and install. Welcome to the Sorcerer community. -Evert Vorster-