On 5/13/05, Clair Ching <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, everyone! > > I have friends who want to switch to GNU/Linux. They are currently > using a bootleg copy of Windows 98 and other apps but they realize > that they ought to not do that anymore so they talked with me about it > and gave me these details: > > Hardware: > Pentium II 233 MHz > 2 GB > RAM 64 Mb > on board sound and video > external modem softk
Hmm... this sounds suspiciously close to my hardware specs[1]. FWIW, I'm on Ubuntu at the moment, but am using really really lightweight apps[2], and for a newbie to Linux I don't think I'd suggest it. However, in my experience, the GNOME 2 desktop is pretty usable on my box, but it isn't comparable to a Win9x installation on the same hardware. However, the following is comparatively the same stuff I do on Ubuntu... > What they want to do: > to record tapes to mp3 Very much doable on the hardware specs; I do rip my CDs to FLAC (not MP3). > web browsing Again, very much doable. If the modem's external, all the better-- with the caveat that it isn't a USB modem[3]. > games I've run Tux Racer acceptably on my hardware, but that's because I switched the onboard video off and bought a PCI-based video card[4]; thankfully, it has DRI/GL support[5] > office suite As long as you aren't running OpenOffice.Org, sadly. OO.org is incredibly intensive on resources-- your friend is better off running AbiWord, et. al. instead of the OO.org suite. > chat client X-Chat is good. I run X-Chat quite acceptably. :) > scribus I've tried Scribus on my Slackware installation before, and it runs acceptably. But mind, I did run an older version (pre 1.x, IIRC), so there may be more bells and whistles to Scribus now-- but it may still run acceptably. > video and music playing capabilities I play music using MPD[6] and play videos via MPlayer[7]. When playing videos using MPlayer, be sure to run with the '-framedrop' switch, and '-vo xv'. Also, highly encoded/compressed DivX videos and similar play poorly on the hardware, but for most cases (playing VCDs etc.), MPlayer with '-framedrop' is acceptable. In all of the above, YMMV. [1] http://www.mycgiserver.com/~butiki/linux/boxen.html [2] I use ratpoison as my WM and start an Emacs session for editing etc. For mail, I run either Mutt or Sylpheed-GTK2, and use fetchmail and fetchyahoo to grab my pop3 mail from pop.hotpop.com. I use Mutt to check incoming mail when I'm too lazy to start Sylpheed-GTK2. [3] IIRC, some USB modems are in fact WinModems, but YMMV and you're better off googling for info on your particular USB modem. If it's a serial-port-based modem, then it should work out-of-the-box. [4] S3 Savage4, kindly donated by my cousin [5] The X11 DRI and GL driver is pretty much in development, but works for me. If your friend's on-board card has a DRI/GL driver, then good. If not, expect poor gaming performance. [6] http://www.musicpd.org/ [7] http://www.mplayerhq.hu/ -- JM Ibanez -- A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. -- Bertrand Russell ----- http://www.livejournal.com/~jmibanez/ http://www.mycgiserver.com/~butiki/ _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Read the Guidelines: http://linux.org.ph/lists Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
