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On 29/09/11 16:06, Gordon Henderson wrote:
On Thu, 29 Sep 2011, Neil Winchurst wrote: The one to use is the one you're prepared to give support on. So for me, it would be Debian. At the end of the day it's just the window manager really that they'll see, so pick one you like and stick to it. I'm sort of thinking I could get my wife to convert to XFCE4, but then the current implementation on Linux doesn't exactly make it easy to edit the menus if you need to - actually it's a royal PITA, however. Gordon
I agree with Gordon. For me I now recommend either Linux Mint (with a Gnome desktop) or Linux Mint LXDE edition (for older or lower spec hardware).
The reason I choose Linux Mint is that pretty much everything that I want is installed by default, although this does include some non-free stuff like Adobe Flash, audio/video codecs and Java (although it may be the GPL'd version of Java, not entirely sure).
I guess it really depends what your target user wants to do. Take a friend of mine for instance who has asked me to sort out her laptop. She just wants to use Facebook to keep in touch with people and play the basic Facebook games, so for her it does the job, she can browse Facebook, check her e-mail and play the simple flash games.
My dad on the other hand uses his laptop and PC for business, so he doesn't need Flash or the audio/video codecs. He uses OpenOffice to create invoices and estimates and Firefox for a bit of web browsing and web based e-mail, so he could probably get away with a completely free OS (i.e. no non-free components). He however chooses to use Windows at the moment (I've tried to get him to make the switch but so far I've not had that much luck, or time to spend on it).
Rob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq