[plug] Recommended Distro for lo spec computer? [UNCLASSIFIED]

[Shayne O'Neill]

xandros! I cant recomend this baby high enough for newbies, it just works,
does it all, isnt flooded with mystery apps, and behaves in a manner thats
not going to completely bamboozle a windows user. Plus its nicely
integrated. Ie, mozilla/ooffice brings up kprinter for printing (meaning
only one print subsystem to deal with) etc.

--
"Well, I think if you say you're going to do something and don't do
it, that's trustworthiness."
-- George Bush on CNN online chat, Aug.30, 2000
RIAA Copyright notice trap: http://guild.murdoch.edu.au/~shayne/

On Tue, 8 Feb 2005, Clark Julian wrote:

> Thanks everyone for your responses.
>
>
> Arie:
>
> Thanks for the offer. If I can't persuade her to pursue a Linux
> solution, I'll point her in your direction.
> Personally, I'm sick of doing windows based installs. Though she's not
> incredibly financial, I'm sure that she'd offer you something for your
> time. I wouldn't consider doing windows for free. ;)
>
> I'd like to try and make my first Linux convert. ;) I don't want to
> start my own religion, so maybe I should change the world in other ways.
> ::grins::
>
> I imagine that the main barrier in this instance is that she'd be a
> brand new Linux newbie, and I really don't want to bamboozle her.
> A 'friend' of hers has been 'helping' her with her current windows
> installation. She finds that he's complicating stuff no end. I guess
> that this is the main reason I'm considering a *nix solution. Installing
> what she needs and no more; and leaving her with a minimal menu/icon
> set.
>
> Hopefully I can achieve a solution which is relatively responsive,
> without the need for the endless cycle of hardware upgrades.
>
> Craig:
> >try dillo, its tiny and works reaal well. not sure if theres a winblows
> >port tho.
> Cool. I'll look into it. I'd imagine it may be best to stick with a
> major browser; (ie firefox or opera)  incase the sites she want's to
> visit are targeted at thos browsers. People seem to forget standards.
> Most of the time we're lucky if crappy sites works in mozilla/firefox.
>
>
> Russ:
> >I found that ram was more the issue on my 233 laptop. When I only had
> >64M, gui's were useless. I added another 256M stick and now it runs
> >well with kde or gnome.
> Memory upgrades are not out of the question. I guess that I'd like to
> find out what she's got first.
>
> >Point her to plug.
> Ahh, yes but no. I probably wouldn't recommend to her that she
> subscribes to the mailing list. I'd imagine that it'd probably be too
> much information for her. Perhaps to let her know of the mailing list if
> she has a problem might be an idea, but she's got minimal computing
> expertise. I really don't want to confuse her.
>
> Generally:
>
> *Window Managers*
> I've not much experience with other window managers though, I personally
> use KDE and love it, though I imagine it may be a bit heavy for such an
> old machine.
>
> I was thinking of a simple window manager (WM), something in the order
> of fluxbox or icewm (or heaven forbid, TWM, actually, that's NOT a
> consideration)
>
> Does anyone know what WM the computer angels distro ships with?
> Does anyone know of comparisons between various window managers;
> limitations and advantages perhaps?
> (I'd Google but I'm behind a very restrictive firewall)
> I'd imagine a limited menu structure and basic icons would be ideal.
>
> *Word processing / Spreadsheets*
>
> Any suggestions as to alternatives to openoffice.
> I'd say she's been using MS Word and Excel for many years. My first
> thoughts were for OpenOffice. AbiWord could also be a consideration.
>
> Any other suggestions?
>
> *Internet*
> She's using dialup.
> Can dialup be handled by a shell script, or are there pretty gui's that
> do the same?
>
> *CD Burning*
> K3B was going to be my suggestion.
> It seems to me to be the most logical Linux cd burning app that I've
> seen. Any other suggestions?
>
> Anyway, this post is getting too long.
>
>
> Thanks again everyone.
>
>
> Julian Clark
>
>
>
>
>
>
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