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I'm considering installing Linux on my home PC, which is essentially my wife's PC. She really only uses for Web Browsing, Email (via a Web Interface), for our family photos (Picasa is what she currently uses). If I were to get her on the Linux Bandwagon, what distribution do you recommend? We have Athlon Dual Core machine with 6 gigs of RAM and a 500 MB hard drive. I'm currently leaning towards the following:
I've heard StudioUbuntu is good as well which may be the logical course based on her current use.
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Personally I would recommend Linux Mint. You literally have to do nothing, just install it and you have everything the basic user would need. No searching around for codecs, flash or any of that stuff. Just a nice stable OS with a good range of basic software. I have read several people comment on the fact a clean install of Mint is like like having an Ubuntu installation you have spent a couple of weeks with. You can find it here.
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Out of those two picked by you, I would recommend Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Fedora gives you a bit of a headache until you make it usable(drivers, codecs, etc) but after that it's quite nice and it works great. Ubuntu is much more stable and faster, and besides that, it is much easier to install drivers(nvidia, wireless) java JRE runtime or SDK adobe flash player and reader.
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Agreed. I'm also biased I admit, to the Debian-derivatives than I am to Red Hat and it's derivatives. I know it;s all Linux underneath the hood, but Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS are great, but just not for those new to Linux.
(16 Jul '10, 21:46)
Ron ♦
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With your bias towards ubuntu and all that RAM, a desktop environment is of little concern to you, it would seem. As such, I would start with Mint and peppermint then, if one would like to broaden his horizons gradually, go with a Debian-based distro like MEPIS. Next mini-step would warrant delving into binary-only Debian like sidux.
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The North Texas Linux Users Group has an installation project that meets every month. If a LUG near you has something similar, take your computer to them and let them install the Linux they prefer. They'll also update the software of your choice to the latest versions and check the installation. Regards, Bill Drissel
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Hi, Andy, also take a look at the Linux distribution flow chart. :) http://www.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/choosing_linux.jpg PCLinuxOS and Mandriva are also good choices.
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Great Link and Flowchart!
(19 Jul '10, 19:17)
Andy
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PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, OpenSuSe, Mint BTW Picasa works in Linux. Picasa does not require wine to be installed, it is built in. You can use the Google repository to install, Chrome,Picasa 3.0 and Google-Desktop. There are two repositories 'stable' and 'testing'. http://www.google.com/linuxrepositories/index.html
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I'm not overly crazy about installing wine just for Picasa but will consider it.
(19 Jul '10, 19:16)
Andy
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Studio is good, but not ideal for this particular case. Linux Mint is the way to go.
In the end, decided to go with Linux Mint.