[NBLUG/talk] nblug newbie here, distro+applic. query...

[Christopher Wagner]

A few observations of my own on various distros and software, although I'm
not hardly as qualified as some of the folks on the list..

1) I don't believe that Debian is well-suited for anyone (I don't know about
you, you did say you were a UNIX admin so that nudges a little more towards
Debian) that wants pretty point-and-clicks for configurations.  Almost
nothing in Debian is point-and-click for system configuration.  OTOH, Debian
is much more nicely structured about where configurations are placed which
is quite refreshing.

2) Debian does have a "Debian Jr." package set that is basically a kids
version.  I've never used it but I've heard good things about it.

3) Mandrake is, on the other hand, excellent for those who like
point-and-click everything with quick/easy hardware detection and reasonable
Windows integration.  I heard something about it automagically detecting
Windows drives and fonts on install and then proceeding to convert the fonts
and install them for you.  I dunno how reliable that is, but it sounds cool.
It also has good plug-n-pray support.

4) Personally, I'm a little hesitant to suggest Redhat because of the latest
changes in their offerings, but I tried Redhat 9 when it came out.  It was
basically Redhat 8 but refined and cleaned up quite a bit.  I have not tried
Fedora yet but have discs for it and plan to.

5) Someone mentioned Crossover Office and I've heard good things about it,
but it is pricy last I checked.

6) If you buy an out-of-box distro, what you're likely to get is something
that's at least a few months old, however if you get a distro from burned
CDs like Lincoln was offering, you're more likely to get recent software and
not having to apt-get update/upgrade tons of packages

7) If you go Debian, I'd recommend to stick with stable.  unstable moves
along much quicker as far as updates, you'll end up downloading a lot more
everytime you update.

Wow..  That ended up a lot longer than I expected.  Good luck to you! :)
- Christopher Wagner
chrisw at pacaids.com

Packaging Aids Corporation - Information Systems
P.O. Box 9144
San Rafael, CA 94912-9144
http://www.pacaids.com/
(415) 454-4868 x116
 

-----Original Message-----
From: talk-admin at nblug.org [mailto:talk-admin at nblug.org]On Behalf Of
sms at sonic.net
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 3:29 PM
To: talk at nblug.org
Subject: Re: [NBLUG/talk] nblug newbie here, distro+applic. query...



> > I'm planning on getting XP Pro & multibooting that
> > (for the few Windows apps I can't replace)
>
> What apps are those? Maybe we can help.

Educational/edutainment (3 kids in the house) + Quicken.
I know that there are some Linux app's in the personal &
home-finance sector, but AFAIK none are NEARLY so polished
as Intuit's.  And, of course, nobody offers kids' stuff
like the mass-media leader... :/

[ UPDATE:  XP Pro looks like it'll co$t more than I expected;
I'm told that it's notably more stable & secure than XP Home,
but I dunno that it's worth THAT much to me, since I expect
to boot Linux approx. 95% of the time... but getting XP Pro
pre-loaded looks like I'd have to spend MUCH more on h/w than
I was planning to.]


> > Can anyone tell me how I could get a pre-burned CD with Sarge
> > (& GRUB, I hope)?
>
> Ask someone on this list to bring them to the next meeting, and then
> come to the next meeting; probably with a couple bucks to offset the
> cost of this generous person giving you these discs.

Heh.  That'd be... uh... tomorrow nite?

<grins> OK:  "would 'someone on this list' be able bring CD's with
an installable burn of Debian-testing (iirc, that's 'Sarge') + 'GRUB'?
Ummm... & I guess I'd need some sort of partitioner, too...

I am indeed hoping to be there.

In the end, I may wind up buying a retail-packaged Linux (SuSE or
Redhat) from CompUSA/etc.

- Steve S.



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