[vox] linux recommendation

[Sameer Verma]

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've also heard that Gnome is better than KDE for really clueless newbies
> (that would be my mom).  But it sounds like if *I* ever had to tinker with
> her system, I would be in trouble.  Would there be a reason to install one
> more than the other?
>
> Thanks,
> Pete
>
>   
I can comment on items 1, 2, and 3. We use Ubuntu Edgy Eft on the 
desktop (a 800MHz PIII with 384MB RAM) at home. The machine was free (so 
many people find such machines *slow* that they give it away) and the 
install  was "brainless" as Pete put it. The kicker here is that the 
machine is used by my wife and our parents when they visit. Admittedly, 
they use the browser (FF2) and occasional photo transfer software from a 
camera to an external USB drive and not much more.

I try hard not to interfere with the "average user profile" status of 
this particular computer :-)

GNOME or KDE, its a matter of preference. For a new user, both are new, 
although KDE does look a lot like Windows (hence a lesser option for me).

Then there is this prank... [http://www.degredo.net/]

Sameer

-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/