I decided to post to this list because I have been using Linux-Mandrake for a while and feel it is probably the best option for a project I intend to start. I am hopeful that perhaps some of you may be able to assist with knowledge or other resources. I am a psychologist who does a lot of work in nursing homes. In my experience there is a population in every nursing home that I have visited who are intellectually intact and quite lonely and bored due to their circumstances. Some of these people are relatively young and suffer a debilitating disease such as MS, and others are elderly persons who have retained their intellectual abilities in the context of declining health. They have lost the physical ability to interact with the outside world as the rest of us do, and typically feel quite out of place in an environment where most of their peers are too confused to provide them much human interaction. I want to begin placing computers in these facilities for the sole use of residents who wish to use them to reach out to the world they can no longer physically access (via email and web access). Obviously I need a multiuser system and need to minimize costs and maximize reliability and ease of use. Consequently I plan to try to obtain donations of equipment and will probably use Linux-Mandrake as the operating system (unless I were to find another Linux version that would be more user friendly for novices). I am trying to keep any costs to the nursing homes to a bare minimum (such as a phone line for internet access) because this industry is in financial difficulty in the US and unlikely to be willing to burden any significant costs to participate in such an effort. If anyone knows of a company that might consider donation of equipment, or if you wish to provide any expertise you may have in setting up and maintaining Linux-Mandrake for use in such an environment please contact me directly _off_list_, so as to not burden this list with further discussion that might not be of interest to most list members. Thanks in advance to anyone who may be interested in such a project. -- Regards, Eric Mings Ph.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
