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

Tony Nugent tony at linuxworks.com.au
Thu Jan 16 04:17:35 EST 2003


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On Thu Jan 16 2003 at 17:27, Ewan Edwards wrote:

> One thing I did neglect to mention.  This PC is going to be connected to the
> 'net through a Telstra cable modem via a built-in 10/100 ethernet interface.
> Not sure what (if any) difference may make.

None at all, almost all linux distros can handle that.  (Although
you'll need bpalogin to use the cable modem with telstra, it is
easily found on the net).

> > 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?

Like you, I would suggest rh7.3 as a good, stable and well-proven
platform.  But having used redhat since 5.0 was around I would say
that I'm biased :)  Beware that there are around 520Mb of updates
currently needed for it (not including the SRPMS, another
600Mb-odd), someone might be able to give them to you on a cdrom.
I'm using 7.3 for servers and my own workstation, I'm happy with
it - it does everything that I want it to do.

I've had a good look at rh8.0 and it is good, but (like many x.0
releases) I'm not so impressed with it's annoying little issues
(like weird font support and what they did to the kde/gnome
desktop).  Also, you'll need to go to psyche.freshrpms.net to
download all the multimedia stuff that they took out of it (xine,
mpg123 and so on).  I would also recommend using the alsa sound
drivers (also available from freshrpms), they work _very_ well,
especially for the more recent sound cards.

I'm waiting for rh8.1 to arrive before I seriously consider updating
my workstation, things should be a lot better after some
fine-tuning.

However the latest releases of mandrake, suse, and debian are all
good and any one of them would certainly do the job.  After all,
they are all linux :-)

Good luck, I hope your friend has a good experience with whatever
distro he ends up using.

Cheers
Tony

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