Re: [Nolug] Which Linux is best?

Chris Johnston wrote:
> I am going to install Linux on an old machine that someone gave me (it
> now has Win 95) and give it to my brother for Christmas.

What kind of hardware are we talking about? As a new computer user, he
may not know what he wants to do with a computer, so you won't want to
confuse the user. Also, many of the modern heavyweight distros won't
play nice on older hardware- You'll be setting him up for aggravation,
frustration, and a bad Linux/first-time-computer experience. This is a
Bad Thing.

Tell us more what he wants to do with it: is there a printer involved? a
  modem? games?

> Which version
> of Linux would be appropriate for a newbie? By the way, I have SuSE
> 6.0 and 9.0, Mandrake 7, and RedHat 6.0 all available to me at the
> moment.

I'd use none of those. Depending on hardware, I think you'll want to
choose a more minimalist distro. I'd recommend Damn Small Linux, Feather
Linux, or the more feature-complete Vector Linux.

See this wiki page for more links to Lightweight Linux:
http://nolug.org/nolugwiki/index.cgi?LightweightLinux

MDK
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Received on 12/18/04