Tom Russo wrote:
On Tue, Jun 26, 2007 at 11:16:50AM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of
the <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> flavor, containing:
On Tue, 26 Jun 2007, Jim Tolbert wrote:
I have a 3 year old laptop (Windows XP) that I could dedicate to
this. I have to wipe the disk anyway. What Linux do I want? Do I
reformat the disk before installing Linux? What do I do about
various device drivers?
You'll get various votes on the different Linuxes. I personally use
OpenSuSE, and develop/use Xastir with it. Other developers and
users have differing opinions. One of our developers is running
FreeBSD.
But that developer (me) wouldn't recommend FreeBSD for anyone other than
hardcore Unix geeks. It's better for server systems than desktops (in my
current opinion after over 15 years of using it), and not well suited for
a first non-windows system.
I recommend one of the Ubuntu systems for sheer ease of install and use,
especially for folks new to Linux. It is a solid desktop (or laptop)
environment with good support.
If it's older hardware, you probably don't need special device drivers,
except maybe if you want hardware accelerated 3D graphics (which you don't
need for xastir).
And these days, I prefer CentOS as it's stable, costs about the right
price and pretty reliable. Down-side is in some of the libs we need for
Xastir (but most are fine) may require compiling from scratch instead of
RPM install, or finding non-vetted replacements from things like the dag
repository.
As for stable desktops, I've been well pleased.
gerry
--
Gerry Creager -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University
Cell: 979.229.5301 Office: 979.458.4020 FAX: 979.862.3983
Office: 1700 Research Parkway Ste 160, TAMU, College Station, TX 77843
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