I fully understand that this is an EL list. The laptop of a retired
colleague failed. On that laptop, I had installed SL pre 7 because the
machine was not adequately provisioned for 64 bit operation. A mutual
friend donated to this colleague a Lenovo ThinkPad R400 series (in much
better physical condition than her failed laptop); he is a computer
enthusiast enduser with no computer science or professional IT
background. The machine has Mint on it. The colleague did not like the
default Mint desktop -- I have installed Mate that is similar to what
she is accustomed. Is there anyone on this list who has to maintain or
use a Mint environment? (I understand that Mint is a Debian/Ubuntu
family Linux.) If so, a private response would be most appreciated.
I have joined the Mint Forums (sic) but much of the discussion there
seems more what I expect from enthusiasts/end-users, not professionals.
At some time in the future, I may transition the machine to SL 7, but
she cannot afford the downtime now and thus will continue with Mint.
She needs particular versions of MS Office applications, and thus I have
configured both CrossOver (commercial, supported, Wine) as well as
VirtualBox -- however, she uses Linux Thunderbird (IMAP) for email and
Linux Firefox as her default web browser, not a MS environment or
application.
Yasha Karant
