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: > >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. 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? > Yes, you have 11 you can install and you can call for all of them if you like.
> >2) I have a Palm M515 and it is imperative that I be able to Sync with my >Desktop. I understand JPilot will do that... which requires a whole bunch >of other Programs to make it work it seems. Does anyone have any >experience having their Palm work with Linux? > >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? > OpenOffice will for one. If you simply _must_ have office, codeweavers makes a commercial app called crossover office for $59.95. It is superior to Office in one way, it fakes the access privileges Office thinks it has so that it does not compromise the security of your machine, which Office always does. StarOffice6 also works on Excel and Word files. The big advantage of OpenOffice is that while it will import and export MS files, its native format is human-readable, so never again need your data be held hostage to a proprietary license and an upgrade cycle. >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? > >Thanks for your help.... > A mail client comes packaged with the KDE desktop, called KMail, and it will use GnuPG, but that really means nothing. Ther are many many mail clients in linux: Kmail, evolution, sylpheed, aethera, spruce, elm, balsa, mahogany are all available from either your install CD or the web. The formerly popular pine has had its license altered, and its use is no longer recommended. Anyway, if you use a mandrake rpm to install each of those mail clients, they will appear on your menu and you will be able to use all of them. Even mozilla mail supports GnuPG. Civileme
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