Best version of Linux for newbie?

[jonnyboyh]

Hiya,

I'm looking into putting Linux on a machine I'm fixing for a friend. She is older and only uses her PC for email and office type apps, solitaire/mahjong type games. It's a Celeron 466, 128mb ram, 6Gig hdd, built in sound, graphics, and network card on an SiS motherboard, with a Diamond MM Supraexpress PCI modem.

I'm fed up of re-installing windows 98se on this PC when it get's it's knickers in a twist and wondered about going for linux instead. A friend has Mandrake 10 that he could let me have. If I then got Firefox and Thunderbird how easy is it to get them going. Also would I have any driver issues with the on-board stuff?

Cheers,

John.

[kilgoretrout]

To check out hardware compatablility with linux, the best thing I've found is to use a live linux cd like knoppix. If knoppix picks up the hardware OK, most linux distros will as well. Most typical problem is with modems, particularlly winodems as opposed to hardware modems. Not familiar with your brand listed but if it's a winmodem, you can expect problems. If your hardware checks out OK, mandrake should run on it OK but a tad on the slow side, mostly due to the limited ram. It will be noticably slower than win98.

[Karnevil9]

If Knoppix reads everything OK, I would be inclined to just stay with Knoppix. It is just as good if not better than Mandrake in my opinion. SUSe now has it's 9.1 version for free download. It is very user friendly, with good hardware detection, you might want to try that also.

[cameroth]

I'd recommend SUSE 9.1 also. I installed in on my computer, and it's very easy to use. The day to day stuff on SUSE seems to be as easy as Windows, but it gets a little bit more difficult when you get into downloading and installing new stuff. For a new user that shouldn't be too much trouble since it comes with lots of free software already installed. The only system requirements that I know of for it are 64MB of RAMand 2GB of free space on your hard drive. They've got lots of information on it here: http://www.suse.com/us/

[Gibble]

I'm going to say Fedora. I'm using Fedora Core 2 at the moment and I must say I'm really starting to like it. I don't think I've been Windows in close to a month. Fedora is easy to use and once you get Synaptic up and going, you'll never have to worry about downloading and installing programs (well, never say never, but it will take away a good 90% of it). Fedora Core 3 should be coming out soon, but FC 2 is still a great choice.

[ZeratulsAvenger]

While I may be alone, I have found Slackware 10 to be the most pleasent of my Linux trials. I don't like the clutter that it seems some of the distro's have been overwhelmed with(Trying to gloss everything up... Suse, FC1/2, Mandrake, etc..).

While the installer is slightly more intimidating, there are many guides that do basicly step by step through it all(only part of that is at all difficult is the partitioning in my opinion, and that was easy after a lil bit of messing around with it.).

After an install all you really need to do is install Swaret(also not to hard. Download the file, place in / directory. "tar zxvf (filename)" and bam, its done from what I remember...) so you can update with ease. It comes with Mozilla, but you can install Firefox with some directions from the site. GAIM is installed for MSN/AIM/Yahoo/ICQ(?). Mahjong is actually installed as well Probably solitare as well.

I would say slackware, but that's also from someone who has done more then a few Linux Installs and has just just found Slackware to be the nicest. Your experience could differ a vast amoutn I suppose though.

Hope whatever you choose works well Good luck

EDIT:Oh ya, the installing of Knoppix to the hard drive after trial by the Live CD as said above could work quite well also. Knoppix has GAIM as well, Mozilla(can install firefox), and probably the lil games as well. If it works, I would say use that. Also it comes with XFCE(a windows manager) that I am about to install since it looks a lil less demanding on resources then Gnome or KDE.

[da ga]

try using xandros 3.0 i have it dual booted with xp pro on my 466 celeron My friend gave it to me and he told me his 6 year old son learned how to use it in about 1 hour and i think it took me about one hour to decypher the different lingo in the start menu and install was very easy to do I simply partioned my hard drive [40 gig] into three hd's one ntfs 512k @ 15 gig one 4k ntfs @15 gig and one @ 9 gig ntfs 512k then installed win xp one the 15 gig 512k after win xp installed i shut down put xandros in booted up and it took about 4 questions not knowing any thing about xandros i answered what hard drive to install and in about 15 mins it was a dual boot I am very amazed @ how easy it was i never worked with any linux or done a dual boot ever but the price of xandros is about 90 dollars us

[Karnevil9]

I would second the Knoppix live CD. You don't even need to install it on the hard drive, so she could even have win98se to use in a pinch. SUSe is also a good choice for a new user. The only isues you may have with linux is with some USB connections or if she uses a wireless system it will be more difficult to set up. I've used older versions of Mandrake and found them to be a lot like Red Hat and easy to use. I don't know about Mandrake 10, but I've heard some Mandrake users grumble about version 10.

[ric449]

Remember da ga, check the date of the thread you post in.

[LocoCoyote]

I don't think the question is what distro..they are all good. I think it is more of what to run. It is your GUIs that are the performance hogs. KDE and Gnome, most noteably. If you make an effort to reduce the overhead as much as possible, you will do fine with any of the above mentioned distros.

One more note....

You can install SuSE 9.3 Free via FTP. And its legal.



Besides....who drug this thing back out anyway? (consider this an update!)