[Sussex] New linux user

[Steve Dobson]

Liam

On Sun, Jun 12, 2005 at 02:42:14PM +0100, Chris Jones wrote:
> 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).

I would add Knoppix to that.  It comes with a lot of software, but it should
be installed to a seperate disk.
 
> > 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.

Chris is right.  DVDs use a very simple form of encryption to "protect"
their content from "illegal copying".  The Motion Picture Association of
America (MPAA) is using "broken" US laws to go after developers and users
of technology that.  Because of this DVD (and other media) players have
special addons (called CODECs) and these addons are made available from 
servers outside of the US and stupid US laws.

This means that if you want your Linux DVD player to play your DVDs you
will have complete the installation youself.  Of course it also means that
you can be pretty sure that the software you are using is not reporting
what you watch back to some kind of "Big Brother".
 
> > 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.

Which is why I recommend Knoppix, it has alot of software already available.
 
> > 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).

Or the knoppix Live CD.

Hope this helps
Steve

-- 
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming:
	Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.
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