On Monday 24 June 2002 12:29, Nick Andriash wrote: > I have been humming and hawing about installing Mandrake 8.2 for some time > now, but perhaps you fine people can help allay my fears:
No need to be frightened. Its fun Most installs are incident free. If you have an issue just drop us a line. You will be amazed at just how good 'free' software is. Your Mandrake CDs will have over 3000 applications on them that would cost $000's in a Windows world. > > 1) I will be purchasing a new Box to install 8.2 on, and most likely will > be a P III 1.3Ghz with a 40 GB HDD, CDRW, etc., but am worried about > having enough RAM. It is all relative. Windows XP does not work well with less than 256MB of RAM, well Linux with a KDE Window Manager will work quite nicely with 128MB. Give it 256MB and its really flying. As for processor. My laptop has a 233MHz processor and is a bit too slow for KDE 400MHz and upwards is fine. > I see there are already discussions on GNOME, KDE and > Enlightenment... which I presume are GUI's for Linux... that are all > seemingly resource hungry, so I will try for 512 MB RAM with the 1.13Ghz > chip and hopefully that will be enough for any one I choose. BTW, are > those choices made during install? Can you install more than one and then > switch back and forth? Again its all relative. Some list members use what would today be 'low end' hardware, so they absolutely need to maximise performance with a lightweight window manager. Your proposed system will run all the possible window managers with ease. But install them all anyway. Its fun trying them out. Some will be reassuringly comfortable to you, while others will seem really weird. Mandrake go to great trouble so that KDE and Gnome are set up nicely. Some of the other WM's require a bit of manual setting up by the user, and are probably not the first choice for a newbie. But install them anyway. All it costs is disc space. At least you get a choice, unlike what you get with you know who :-) > 3) I have a lot of Word XP Documents and Excel Spreadsheets that I need to > keep around, so is there any Linux Software out there that will allow me > to read and edit those files? Better still, is there such a thing as MS > Office for Linux? Better alternatives? Open Office is best because - It is free (both in cost and freedom) It comes on your CD's (one version behind the latest) It imports and exports to Word,Excel and Powerpoint format almost perfectly. It is quite a resource hog but will be fine on your system. Star Office6.0 is next best- It is almost identical to OpenOffice but costs money (for enterprises whose accounts departments cannot cope with software not costing anything) (It also has a database not in OO) KWord and Abiword are MS Word replacements but with fewer features and only partial importing capability and no export to Word format. They are lightweight and quick. (Abiword is not on the CDs but can be downloaded) KSpead and Gnumeric are Excel replacements. Again only partial importing and no exporting. They are lightweight and on your CDs Finally is you are really paranoid about MS Office compatibility you can actually run MS Office under Linux. There are 2 ways to do this (ignoring the expensive VMware solution) 1/ Buy a copy of Win4Lin this is $79 if bought from Mandrake club by Wednesday or else $89 normally (www.netraverse.com). It allows you to run Win98 or Win Me as a window *inside* Linux You can then run most 2D applications like MSOffice just like as in Windows. The bad news is you still need a Win98 license and pay for a copy of MS Office which just perpetuates the evil empire. 2/ Buy a copy of Codeweavers Office (www.codeweavers.com) This is software which allows *some* Windows apps to run natively inside Linux *without* a copy of Windows on the computer. MS Office is a supported application. The bad news is you still have to pay for MS office.... evil empire etc. > > 4) I work a lot with PGP and GnuPG, so the Mail Client that I end up with > will have to support both Programs... but at least GnuPG. Is Linux like > Windows where you can download any Client you want, or does the Mail > Client come packaged with the Desktop or GUI such as KDE and GNOME? There are a 'zillion' mail clients for Linux. Just use the one you like best. Kmail is simple (I am using it now), Evolution is 'Outlook' like and can even synchronise with MS exchange servers (If you buy an addon plugin)Others include Sylpheed, Mozilla Mail etc. > > Thanks for your help.... enjoy your new OS derek
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