[Techtalk] Wanted: Help in New Mexico

Caitlyn M. Martin cmartin at rateintegration.com
Tue Oct 29 14:18:09 EST 2002


Hi, Wendell,
> 
> She's no geek, but neither does she fear hardware or software.
> 
> Mandrake, maybe.  Or Lycoris.  Or Lindows . . . .

I can't help much since I don't live in that area, but... recent
Mandrake releases are buggy as all get out.  I have heard not so nice
things about Lindows as well.  I really, really recommend beginners
start with RedHat 8.0, for the following reasons:

-It works, it's stable
-It's popular and lots and lots of people use it
-Nice GUI admin tools that really work for most everything
-The BlueCurve desktop (which I despise) really does make Gnome or KDE
very Windows-like in look and feel and is totally user friendly
-The "Personal Desktop" install is probably just fine for her and is
*easy*
-RH 8 detects and correctly installs hardware very, very well indeed. 
It's done better than any distro/version I've seen before on a wide
variety of hardware, including laptops
-If a developer makes rpms, they almost always do RedHat.  Even linmodem
drivers often come in RH rpms.  Adding stuff is easy, easy, easy.
-up2date/RHN is now free for individuals, has Windows-like wizards that
work, and make updates/security easy

Look, I know a lot of things make experienced Linux users want to barf. 
For someone coming from Windows it's now all so easy, though, and in her
case that is probably what you want.

Best,
Caity




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