[Wlug] switch distros???

[Bruce Linnell]

Bill,

I've been a Linux user for less than a month now, so take this with a
grain of salt. In my search for a distro, I first tried Gentoo and
Ubuntu, and finally installed openSuSE. Its a large distro (5 CDs, or 1
DVD), so you may have space considerations. For me, anyway, its been
more user friendly than the others - YaST is a blast...lol.

I think the key here as far as your family goes is to use the same
distro for all, and that should be the one you are happiest with,
because in the final analysis its going to be you at the help desk while
they climb the learning curve. Is there enough room on your son's box to
set it up for dual booting? Just a thought...

Good luck,  

Bruce

On Sat, 2007-02-17 at 17:00 -0500, Bill Mills-Curran wrote: 
> I have an opportunity to get my wife to consider switching from
> Windows to linux, but I don't think Fedora is the right distro for
> her.  I'm wondering about Linspire/Freespire (Freespire is to Linspire
> as Fedora is to RedHat?)  or Ubuntu.  (I've been using Redhat & Fedora
> since '98.)  I've also been frustrated at some of the compatibility
> problems (like wireless) with Fedora, so I'm considering switching,
> too.  On the other hand, I like being able to get some of the newest
> apps, like the newest gnucash, on Fedora.
> 
> Eric Raymond's recent piece on Slashdot was pretty convincing, too.
> He argued that it is good for the linux open/free community to get
> linux in as many places as possible, even if it means mixing the
> distros with commercial drivers, because linux needs more market share
> in order to succeed against windows, particularly as 64-bit comes on
> the scene.
> 
> The "family license" of Linspire seems pretty attractive, too.
> 
> A big win would be to get my 17 yr old son off windows.  He's forever
> infecting the windows box with junk from his web surfing.
> 
> My most-used apps:
> Open office
> Tetex/latex
> ps utils
> gnucash
> mutt
> VPN (compatible with my work, which uses Cisco)
> wine
> perl
> firefox
> USB devices: scanner, drive, camera
> code development utils
> multimedia (not so good on Fedora)
> gpg
> 
> My wife would like to use Publisher (windows).  She might be able to
> use Scribus (I haven't used it successfully).
> Her favorites:
> AOL (I can't break her loose of this)
> MS office apps
> 
> Suggestions?
> 
> Thanks,
> Bill
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