[Sussex] New linux user

Chris Jones cmsj at tenshu.net
Sun Jun 12 13:46:19 UTC 2005


Hi

On Sun, 12 June, 2005 14:13, Liam Derwin said:
> so I'm looking for a distro that has an installation process that vaguely
> resembles win98 (i.e. check boxes for the things you want installed).

I wouldn't worry about the installer much, they are all pretty easy to use
these days. Ones that don't ask you things can often be better too, e.g.
Ubuntu's installer asks far far fewer questions than Fedora's (they would
be the two distros I recommend you look at).

> A chat client other than kopete, that can do icq, aim, msn and yahoo.  If

gaim?

> A media player that plays dvd without any additional tweaking

That will only happen if you buy a distro. However, most of them are only
a few steps from DVD playing. For Ubuntu, see the RestrictedFormats wiki
node on their website. Very simple.

> Sync with an ipaq running I have no idea what version of wince

You *might* get that going, but it's not easy or stable yet. Multisync and
SynCE are the tools you will need. I can just about get it going with my
ipaq 4150 on Ubuntu Hoary, but it doesn't really sync properly. I'd leave
it until synce is more advanced and better integrated.

> use linux, but I'm looking for the equivalent of a .exe file when I
> install a package.

Going for Fedora or Ubuntu opens up a pretty huge collection of software
in compatible RPMs and DEBs (respectively) that are easy to install. There
are lots of incompatible ones floating around too, but at least in the
case of ubuntu (and debian) you have so much available in the package
archives anyway that most things are there.

> Any advice you guys can give on a suitable distro would be much
> appreciated.

My advice would be to grab an Ubuntu Live CD, boot it up and see what you
think, if you like it, it's a damn good distro to go for in my opinion
(all of my desktops are running it now).

Cheers,
-- 
Chris Jones
  cmsj at tenshu.net
   www.tenshu.net





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