(So many to choose from I don't know which one to get him for Christmas! Maybe a Linux Live CD Tie ...)

His computer is a Dell Optiplex GX1, with US Robotics internal WinModem and a Dell 15" monitor. He has no printer, no external devices, except his Zip 250 which is USB. And then he has his speakers which I don't consider to be "external devices".


I thought of giving him Helix 1.6 or Damn Small Linux but he LOVES the Win2000 menu thing so I think that axes out XFce and what, AfterStep in DSL.. or is that something else?!


Really... what do you people think. What Linux distro is closest to the "Microsoft Way"?

Well, you can get KDE to look pretty much like windows, so any distro with a good KDE should work. With a bit of tweaking the panel and the window decorations, it can end up looking almost exactly like MS. I would recommend Kubuntu, since it uses KDE 3.4, and it has good hardware detection. Plus it comes on a LiveCD, so he can try it out and see if he likes it first. You could also try Mepis, which also comes on a LiveCD, and includes many "non-free" packages like flash and Windows media codecs. It is a bit of a bloated distro, but if he likes things to be like Windows, that might not be a bad thing As far as I've heard, Mepis is best for detecting Winmodems, but it has problems with USB storage devices (wouldn't hotplug my USB drives, I had to reboot or mess with fstab). Kubuntu works like a charm for USB, but I don't know about winmodem support. They're both free, so you could give him both.

I've also heard that Xandros is the best for Windows-lovers, but have had no experience with it myself. The main versions are $50-100, but it has a stripped down free version. It doesn't come on LiveCD, though, so you can't "try before you buy."

--C

He may be comfortable with SimplyMepis, Kubuntu, or just about any distro with KDE.

The thing to keep in mind is that if one goes into Linux expecting it to be like windoze, they aren't going to enjoy it much. Linux is NOT windoze. It's very different and has to approached knowing this going in.

He wants to try Linux because he's tired of getting viruses in Win2k even with Norton antivirus. He got some new virus recently as in 3 days ago and the symantec page just stated it, Norton Antivirus, could detect it and that's all. There was no fix page. I did a bit of searching with Google, which he doesn't even know about, and found the "fix" which includes downloading 4 apps and hacking the registry. He's novice and doesn't know about google.com and he wanted me to print out the fix and download the apps so "he" could fix it. Yeah right, hack the registry! Me and my next oldest brother convinced him to give Linux a whirl. Right now he's reinstalling win2k.

Hardware update.... I forgot to mention he only has 256MB RAM, a regular Microsoft 2-button mouse and Microsoft Natural Elite 104-key keyboard which I bought him for Christmas. I bought a 8-pack of them for a real bargain of $9 each.

KDE.... I know all about KDE.

Hotplug... I think he does the hotplug thing because he has a iMac like the rest of the family and he doesn't have the two systems networked which he should because both machines have ethernet built-in. His iMac is running Apple MacOS 9.2. I spent a whole day with him updating his firmware on the iMac after he spent 4 days unsuccessfully trying to update it. He was sticking the probe into the wrong hole.

Xandros... I didn't know you had to pay! :O

SimplyMepis... that sounds interesting, hope it's free...

I have Hoary... I can just see him trying the su and sudo commands...

He calls me alot just to set up his WinModem, which he just got because lightning fried the external 56k Zoom modem I gave him. A modem I've had since 56k came out during so many lightning storms in Texas it's not even funny. He had it on a surge protector and APC office backups. So much for surge protection. My poor modem is back in my lab. The lights come on but it won't connect.

Thanks for the info people. Is that all though? I mean there's what, 100 distro's?! What's a distro that has no server networking in it at all. Nothing except dialup networking so he can get online? You know, just tcp/ip and a dhcp client thing. No ssh, sendmail, fetchmail, etc.

EDIT: Nothing that could get him into trouble configuration wise or hacked because of some remote software installed.

You know the usual stuff. He likes web browsing, emailing, instant messenger, icq and that's it because his hard disk isn't that big to hold mp3's and movies. He's not answering his phone so I can't find out whether it's a 2gb, 4gb, or 6gb hard disk.

To be honest, with such old hardware I'd say go for either Gentoo or Slackware. KDE may well be a little bloaty, but FVWM (which is Win 95-like) should be light enough and obvious enough for a Windows only user.

The upside of using Slackware or Gentoo is that you could set it up for him, leave him a note or two about using package management (swaret/slapt-get or emerge) and leave him to it. You can also set it up so that it's fairly light.

It also means that when he's ready to start learning about it more in depth, he has a very good, plain, *nixalike distro to start with.

I started with SuSE 7.1 four years ago, tried Caldera OpenLinux, then BeOS for a while, now am using SimplyMepis, and find it works best for me. Installation is dead easy, will run on as little as 128 MB RAM (although I've got more), and only took 16 minutes from the time I put the CD in till I was done. From there, it was easy to configure my internet connection and get online.
Being based on Debian, installing additional applications is a cinch using KPackage, Synoptic, or apt-get.
SimplyMepis costs $10, and delivery time is a few days, shipped from Mepis headquarters in West Virginia.

I should mention that SimplyMepis does indeed cost $10 to order, but can always be downloaded and burned for just the cost of blank CD. But I'm sure Warren would appreciate the order.

After reading the follow up information I would definately suggest going with SimplyMepis for him, at least to start him out as it's one of the easiest to set up and use.

Slack or Gentoo are fine once they're set up and running, but if he had to deal with a problem it may be more than he could deal with at this point. I wouldn't recommend them, or an RPM based distro, for a technically challenged person.

I'd definately stick to one of the Debian-based distros with automatic config and hardware detection. I feel SimplyMepis is the best in this line but others may have (read definately do have) other opinions. (After all, they are just opinions)

You know your brother best, but it sounds like "easy to use" should be the key words here.

I keep forgetting these "little" details.... he'll be starting a Computer Tech school in like 6 months and they use MS Office documents. I know OpenOffice is the one that will open MS Office files, but I don't know up to what version of MS Office files or if you can save them from OpenOffice as files that those Win2k and Win2k3 apps can read. Have you checked that out or do you have experience with the newer Microsoft Office applications?


And... what kind of networking is in SimplyMepis?

What about Linspire? Is that any good?

Linspire, like all distros, has it's fans. It also has those people who dislike it. It's aim is to provide a bridge for Windows users who want to ease into Linux. If you have a look through the Linspire forum, there is a very long thread called "Linspire is not Linux" - there is a huge discussion of it's pros and cons: the main one being that it's not free to download. There is also a thread which shows how to get it for no cost (apart from download and blank cd and burning time) legally.

I read alot of that thread just now and I see it "sort of works with an analog modem". I wish the people posting told what kind of connection they pay for to download all those free applications with apt-get. It must be cheaper than using a $9.95 analog dialup modem account for them to be talking this way and that about CNR. In the case of people who have analog modems it's cheaper in the long run to buy another release of the distro than to "upgrade" with a 56k. It sounds like a nice distro for my brother. The more it looks and handles like Microsoft the better. It just has to work. He's like the one post that stated "just to get the job done". Very true. If it works there's no reason to upgrade anything including recompiling the kernel. Which reminds me of NetWare.

<man one> "Hey look, a new revision of NetWare!"
<man two> "But my uptime has been 3 years, why should I upgrade?"

Of course NetWare and Microsoft are expensive because of client licensing, etc. But thanks for the thread referral. I just emailed that link to my next oldest brother. He and I are the computer guru's in the family. And before anyone says anything based upon my posts here. Don't take the lack of knowledge from my posts as absolutes. Some people seemed to be playing games with me so I played too. I do much better over the phone than a forum because I've been trained by the best: Sony, Dell, Compaq, and IBM to work with customers of all intellects, but I point them to links/manuals/tutorials more instead of telling them how because that's how I learned. By reading the manuals and having hands-on training. IT's the same way I was trained by Mercedes Benz when I was in my teens and another school for foreign auto's and diesel engines, fuel injection, transmissions, etc.

But anyway... the Linux distro for all Microsoft Windows users is the most desktop gui wizard friendly. Kernel compiling should be double-click/done methodology. Setup.exe is what Linux should aim for. I hope to find a distro that so simplistic my mom and dad will want to use it over MacOS 7.5.5 because that's the computer I used to teach them in just two days how to use when they never used a computer before. The install CD had a tutorial which they watched and then I showed them and two days later I left for Texas.

If I don't find one I'll probably make one with Linux From Scratch or the howto I wrote to Build Your Own Custom Distro.

As for the "not Linux" part of the thread about Lindows/Linspire... people have to understand that the main goal of Linux is not to customize it. The main goal is that it works and it more stable if you leave it alone. It's less prone to viruses too I think. It doesn't have to be free. It's gotta work and with the simplest way possible no matter if you are root or not. In windows95/98/98se you are root. Anything you delete that's important and the sys goes down. People who have used those kind of oses don't do console commands. They don't run server commands because they don't know what they are! And then installing things in those ms oses are just the same as being root because you always are. Unless you have a login script and are logged into a Window Domain, then that's another story. I'm rambling because I have to deal with Linux selling to my family. No offense people. I'm the one that got them on Mac's including my next oldest brother. Now I'm trying to get everyone off of them and onto Linux. If you have used a Mac for years you understand how difficult this is. And then the rest of the family is using Microsoft Windows because I got them on that too. No one in our entire family bothered with the Internet until I started working in tech support for those four companies. It was I who got them all emailing each other. Now they are like the person in the post of that thread. "Turn on computer... log onto internet.... check email.... look at cnn.com.... check aim.... check icq.... check cnet.com.... log off computer.... shutdown."

So.. what other distro's are like Microsoft or MacOS that support analog modems?

You could install the XPDE desktop environment - it's skinned and menued to look like XP.

You could always give him a Linspire Live cd (http://iso.linuxquestions.org/version.php?version=74) just to get him started to see how he handles it.

I'm not sure I understand the question. Mepis, like other distros, supports just about any kind of network connection you need. I use ethernet LAN, wifi, and in a pinch dial-up with no problems. One of Mepis' strongest areas is hardware detection and ease of use.

As for the Microsoft stuff, I understand Open Office stays reasonably current, but I don't work with M$ crap, err I mean formats much so I'm no expert there. He could always run a dual boot keeping a small windoze partition to work with the M$ docs if there are any formats OO doesn't handle well, and use Linux for everything else. While I don't personally use windoze at all, a lot of people do run dual boot systems for work related stuff that just absolutely requires a Billy box.

I really don't want to come off as a raving Mepis fan pushing "my distro". Truth is I use several, it just sounds like Mepis may be the easiest for him to start off with. Check out their website and read up on them. Since it's a combo livecd/hdd install, it's easy enough to just boot the livecd and check it out personally.

.Puppy Linux will do well because it's small, packed with apps, and works like W2K

thanks for the tip.. i sent the link to my other borther for him to eval.

xpde looks like kde with a color theme but it's not and it is.

they added some windows apps to the list which includes "disk defrag" and "cleanup" and some others.

i hope they, xpde, are using the latest kde (3.4) if they are indeed using it, so their window manager is secure.

my other brother seems to think buying him a complete system from walmart is the easiet way to go. that way he can get online with his win2k sys if and when the linspire box needs attention or just so he can have another linux friendly system to install linux or freebsd onto.

thanks for the info. he'll be getting a bunch of different distro's soon and then i'll be going over to his house to tutor him, install, etc. for a few days.

looks promising. i'm using dsl (damn small linux) in the other room which is just as small as "puppy linux". i'll give that a whirl pretty soon when i get time.