I think this message might have been lost during Arachne list downtime. If my previous posting of this message was successful (I can't find it), apologies for the repeat.
from Sam Heywood: > In the Linux world, are there any full-fledged word processor applications having wysiwyg screen editors suitable for use by dummies? I am speaking here of something that might be comparable to M$-Word or WordPerfect for Windows. Besides Word Perfect, there's abiword and LyX (free, open-source). I remember finding Word Perfect 5.0 and 5.1 for DOS user-friendly. From what I read, Star Office is a resource hog, might be hard-pressed on a Pentium 100 with 32 MB RAM. I think Word Perfect would be my first choice. > It was a Pentium 100 with a 1.6 MB hard drive and a 48x CD-ROM drive and 32MB memory. I fixed it for $2.69. It needed a new CMOS battery and the hard drive needed fdisking and reformatting. I partitioned it into two FAT 16 DOS partitions of about 800 MB each. Another thing wrong with the computer was that the ribbon connectors between the two on-board serial ports and the external connector ports were plugged into the mobo backwards. Now everything including the CD-ROM drive works and the C drive boots to DR-DOS 7.03. Where do you get CMOS battery so cheap? How much do they cost now, anyway? I think the minimum disk space occupied by one file however small would be 16384 bytes on a partition between approximately 512 and 1024 MB. DR-DOS 7.03 has a nice DOSBOOK help program. > Often it is easier for a rank novice to learn something entirely new than it is for a person who has previous experience and skills with something similar. She thinks she wants to do Window$ 95 because that is what everybody else does. Whatever she does, whether DOS, Window$, or Linux, she will be starting off as a beginner. > Does anyone think that this machine might be a good candidate for a Linux box? Would it be just as easy for a total novice to computers to learn to work with Linux as it is to learn how to use Window$ 95? Is it still possible to get Window$ 95 legally? Even if yes, all the new MS applications would be hard-pressed to run in 32 MB RAM, and some of them might not run at all on less than Window$ 98. > Went there and looked at it. It looks good. The site says that it requires Linux kernel 2.0. I don't know which distros provide kernel 2.0 and I don't know which distros having this kernel would be suitable for the machine described. Any recommendations? I don't think you can find any pre-2.0 Linux kernels any more. They're long gone. > Can you recommend a good URL for me to learn more about Slackware 3.5 and how to install it? I don't know about 3.5, but Slackware has their own Web site http://www.slackware.com Current version is 8.0, you could buy CDs for that direct from Slackware. They skipped over 5 and 6, went straight from 4 to 7.
