[vox] linux recommendation

[Bob Scofield]

On Saturday 03 March 2007 13:10, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> I want to buy my mom a computer.  Don't care bout OSS principles, the
> "right" way of doing things, or any of that.  What I *do* care about is:
>
> 1. Brainless install on my part.  Everything "just works".
> 2. No tinkering necessary once it's installed.
> 3. Easiest to use.
> 4. Seamless integration with things like wine.
>
> A distro that caters to people who don't know anything about computers, but
> more importantly, who don't WANT to know anything about computers other
> than word processing, reading email, browsing, running stepmania, and
> various other mundane tasks.
>
> What distro best suits my needs?

I predict that a lot of people here might recommend Kubuntu, which I may 
download this evening for my laptop.  In fact I specifically predict that Rod 
Roark and Bill Kendrick will recommend it.  I use Debian testing for my 
desktop.  But the distro that I have always thought was the easiest, and the 
one that does not seem to have problems is SuSE.  It seems from Distro Watch 
that a lot of people are using it.  And some Linux users dislike SuSE for the 
reason that it reminds them of Widows, so that might be a reason for your mom 
to use it.  (And you yourself used to be a big SuSE fan, remember?)

I started out on Gnome, and used it again about two years ago.  I really like 
KDE better.  I don't see how KDE is hard to use.  Your mom could do it.  I 
*love* the K-Dictionary sitting in the task bar.

Bob