My brother, who is far from a computer expert, got a laptop from someone for
his schoolwork a few weeks ago and asked me to wipe it clean and start over.
I booted live CDs of various distros and setup Trisquel 4.1 LTS and Ubuntu
11.04 and he picked the look of Trisquel. I wanted to go with a LTS version
so I wouldn't have to do an OS upgrade for a few years and supplemented it
with Launchpad PPAs of free software.
Thankfully the wireless card on this Dell was a Broadcom one so it used the
b43 drivers from the Trisquel CD and once I was able to get online,
everything fell into place. The default look of Trisquel, with the glass like
panel at the bottom, made the transition easier from Windows Vista/7 from a
visual perspective.
Plus with him using Firefox, it was a program he used on Windows and all his
sites worked. I may have cheated with installing Adobe Flash, but that was
the only non-free software I installed and until Gnash gets more mature, I
may have to leave it on there. I haven't gotten any questions or complaints
about the laptop and that I am glad for.
