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On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 16:25:40 +0000 Paul Sutton <zen14920@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi My friend who runs farseerenterprises (www.farseerenterprises.com)in torbay wants to produce a line of PC's running Linux. He was thinking of Linspire, and asked me if it was suitable (Not having used it I am unsure) However I said that Mandrake was good for beginners, What do people think, I also said that it really depends on the user. So what do people think would be a good idea. I have fecora core 3 from the Linux magazine cover dvd, however this is currently with the technician at the college. I guess what version of Linux you use depends on the user, and what he / she wants to use Linux for. Paul
My experience of Linspire has tainted my views on it as a viable Linux option, I'm affraid. If the person installing Linux onto these machines is familiar with Linux, and Debian in particular, then I am sure that Linspire would make a perfectly good choice *after* it had been locked down somewhat. This "Click n Run" thing sounds like a very nice touch, until you realise that you're paying a subscription fee in order to download mainly software that is GPLed anyway. I know there are other packages in the CnR repository, but the bulk of it is Free/Open Software. To my mind, they (Linspire) are taking a perfectly good idea (apt-*) and getting their users to pay a subscription for using Linspire's servers as their apt repository. I don't like the sound of it. I have used Debian based distros only recently, and I have to admit that the whole apt thing is fantastic. I probably would recommend Debian itself for new users, but there is a wealth of Debian-based distros around. Xandros seems particularly aimed at people used to Windows environments. I am also hearing great things about Ubuntu. You're absolutely right about Mandrake being a good "beginner" distro. SuSE *can* also fit into this category. I wouldn't recommend RedHat/Fedora as a beginners distro, though. I know they're all RPM based, but that seems to be where the similarities (end-user perspective) end. SuSE has the great YaST tool. Great if you don't know what to do manually, possibly terrible if you do (or at least I found it to be horrible around SuSE 7.x... I am sure it used to reinstate files after I had edited them manually - perhaps I was being paranoid). Mandrake's recent tendency is to be almost-cutting-edge, which sometimes lets them down. Although progression is the name of the game, sometimes Mandrake release things that, in my opinion, should really have been left for a little while longer. Particular example is Mdk9.2. Horrible, horrible! Should have been a nice "upgrade" from 9.1, ended up being a shambles (IMO). From what I've seen of 10.0 and 10.1, things are a bit better. Grant. -- Artificial intelligence is no match for nuratal stidutipy. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.