RE: [SLUG] distro recommendations

From: Ken Elliott (kelliott11@cfl.rr.com)
Date: Mon Jul 16 2007 - 17:41:25 EDT


>> What distro would be easiest for a complete neophyte
>> (I'm talking 12:00 flasher here) to use?

>> Celeron 450

I'm thinking "an old version of whatever you are using". That way you know
it inside and out, and older versions tend to have lower hardware
requirements. Put Gnome on it and remove apps she doesn't/shouldn't use.

Ken Elliott

=====================
-----Original Message-----
From: slug@nks.net [mailto:slug@nks.net] On Behalf Of Eben King
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 3:43 PM
To: SLUG Mailing List
Subject: [SLUG] distro recommendations

Hey.I'll be getting use of a dinky computer (physically dinky, that is) for
my grandmother. I'm not sure of the specs, but here are my best guesses:

Celeron 450
DVD reader
30? GB HD
FD
maybe 500 MB RAM
no idea what ports, other than PS2, parallel, USB whatever monitor we can
grab, probably a 17 incher, whatever that is in pixels

What distro would be easiest for a complete neophyte (I'm talking 12:00
flasher here) to use? I don't want her to even attempt anything but email,
web, and maybe showing downloaded/mailed media. It definitely can't provide
easy access from Jane User to the root account. Ease of administration
isn't really a big deal; I'll set it up, and fix whatever breaks, but if I
change anything I'll never hear the end of it.

The machine has Windows 98 (SE most likely) on it now. While that's
suffered remarkably little bit-rot (as far as Windows goes), I'd like
something

- less buggy
- remotely administrable
- pretty well virus proof
- approaching modern
- that I have respect for
- that probably won't run the crap others bring to it

If I get a wild hair, I may set her up with OO and a printer one of these
days...

-- 
A well-lovd and corrctly traind domstc cnine is gnrlly slobbry, excitbl,
noisy, scatologically obsessed, xenophobic, pathetically unjudgmental,
embrrssngly uninhbtd, unreasnngly dvtd, hrtbrkngly dpndnt and wretchedly
craven.  All othr knds of dog cmpre unfvrbly wth ths picture. - PB, AFCA
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