[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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