[H-GEN] Question from a wannabe Linux newbie.

Ewan Edwards Edwards_Ewan_B at cat.com
Wed Jan 15 23:54:54 EST 2003


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Good afternoon all,

I have the uneasy feeling that I'm going to start a bigger-than-Ben-Hurr 
discussion / flame war here, but here goes anyway.

One of the people I work with has just ordered himself a brand spanking shiny 
new PC, on which he is planning to install a GNU/Linux operating system.  He 
has now come to myself and a few others here with the question, "Which 
distribution should I use?".

My answer to him was, "I suggest Redhat 7.3 because I'm biased.".
Others in the office have suggested Mandrake because thats what they use.

So, the point of this email; What do various HUMBUG people suggest for this 
person?

No doubt a lot of you will want to know more about what this person wants to 
do with his shiny new PC before giving a considered opinion.  To answer that, 
I can provide the following incomplete list.

* Will be wanting to learn a bit about shell and Perl scripting, but he's not 
a programmer and has no intention of being a programmer.
* He intends installing OpenOffice.org on this PC as well as on his office PC.
* He intends installing VMware and running various versions of Windoze as 
guest operating systems.
* He is a multi-lingual (English & Spanish) technical writer.
* He wants to learn about producing platform independent product 
documentation.
* He says that he needs "to be able to use it, learn about it, not be 
overwhelmed by configuration things, etc., and not be bitten in 6 or 12 
months and have to rebuild stuff."
* He has some experience with Mandrake as a guest O/S in VMware on Windoze.  
(The lengths some people go to just to get away from Outlook.)

All intelligent suggestions gratefully received.

Regards,
Ewan


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