XP Replacement Distro?

[jbennet]

Ok i would like to look into swapping my dads XP home pc to linux as it will not have a chance of running Vista.

Im in two minds about whether to choose:

SuSE 10.2 -may be slow?, crippled dvd support, bad updater?
PCLinuxOS 2007 -new, maybe unstable?
CentOS 4 (maybe 5 if its out yet) -reliable but old but maybe thats what he needs?
Ubuntu - may be slow but v. easy to use

Its a 512mb RAM, Pentium 3 1ghzish pc with 40gb HDD - hardware is all generic and linux friendly. Our budget is £0. Will be used mainly for listening to music, email, web and office tasks

Also, he needs a program for his accounts (HAS to be MS money 2000 compatible) and something to play his WMA files as well as DVD/MP3/JAVA/FLASH support. Also a way to save and import his MS outlook express mail into linux

[DimaYasny]

ubuntu/kubuntu is my desktop choice. Mandriva is ok as well.

[jbennet]

yeah, im thinking Ubuntu or CentOS

[John A]

Why do you continually suggest SuSE as an option for a distro when you hate the updater so much? Of course don't pick a distro that you hate.

Perhaps you should install Ubuntu and see how fast it runs initally when using basic applications; if it's too slow than try PCLinux or CentOS.

[jbennet]

cos the lack of a decent updater would be offset by the fact that its an easy to use distro for non linux folk like my dad

Im thinking either Ubuntu or CentOS now as PCLinux is starting to look a bit too cutting edge - ubuntu is probably easier as it has easyubuntu for easy libdvdcss support

Ubuntu runs sloooooow off of cd but i think thats as its a crap drive?

6.10 runs quite ok on my thinkpad P3M, 256mb RAM so i suppose it would work well on the machine in question

[John A]

Ubuntu runs sloooooow off of cd but i think thats as its a crap drive?

Try it and see. :)

My theory of trying Ubuntu first is that it's probably the easiest to install, you find out it won't run well on your machine, you haven't wasted very much time.

Btw, nice avatar ;)

[jbennet]

thanks, its of my PDA. i much prefer the sqaureness of it to the curves of the ipaq - means you drop it less...

Ive sorted out the dlls i need for VLC to play WMAs and ive sorted out everyting else im gonna install it probably but first im gonna VM it and see whether GnuCash or KmyMoney can open MS Money 2000 files

[Infarction]

Ive sorted out the dlls i need for VLC to play WMAs...

Sorted out the dlls? Why would you need to do that?

[jbennet]

you need to copy dlls from windows to vlcs dir and it can play DRMed files apparantly

[Infarction]

oh... didn't realize you could make it play the DRMed ones. Got a link for how to set that up?

[jbennet]

grr the forum post i was etting the information from has been deleted - soemthinga bout the DMCA?

[John A]

grr the forum post i was etting the information from has been deleted - soemthinga bout the DMCA?

You mean you don't cache important help pages from the internet on your hard drive? :eek:

I do - especially if the server seems unstable, or there's a chance the information may be gone by the time I want it. Not that I'm doing anything illegal, but oftentimes one will delete information off their webpage.

I would have very much liked to see that page you speak of...

[jbennet]

What the hell is the Digital Millenium Copyright Act Anyway?

It was on linuxquestions.org - i went to my bookmark and it said post not found so i pmed a mod and he said thats why it was deleted? - supposedly things like libdvdcss are illegal in the U.S- well im not in america thank you very much :(

[Infarction]

What the hell is the Digital Millenium Copyright Act Anyway?

Some scandalous legislation I'm sure. Too lazy to wiki it.

supposedly things like libdvdcss are illegal in the U.S

Oops :twisted:

well im not in america thank you very much :(

You aren't but he probably is.

[jbennet]

well ive only just installed SuSE 10.2 on all our pcs (dual boot with xp - used YaST to shrink the xp partition which luckily was FAT32 not NTFS). The trick is NOT to choose the package groups "ZenWorks" or "Enterprise Package Management" as theese are the brken ones - instead just select the packages from "OpenSuSE Package Managament" - im currently sorting out ATI and NvIdia drivers

[tuckeratlarge]

why do you feel it necessary to swap XP? Is it broken? just because Vista has arrived doesn't mean to say XP will stop working. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

I am not saying Linux is crap or anything, I like it, but why change if it works still?

[jbennet]

because home edition will cease to be supported in two years and also as i just dont like it as its getting a bit dated now (has been 6 years...)

[TheNNS]

I would recommend trying debian. It runs extremely well on old systems. and i mean old. mim requirements are p1, 16mb or ram and about 1-2GB hdd. I'd try tath out.

[DimaYasny]

any linux distro,if well tuned should be capable of running on an old system

[jbennet]

I would recommend trying debian. It runs extremely well on old systems. and i mean old. mim requirements are p1, 16mb or ram and about 1-2GB hdd. I'd try tath out.

1) agreed, gnome under etch runs better than xp on my 750mhz celeron with 128mb ram

2) debian wont install on under 24mb ram (debinstaller requires it)

[jbennet]

happy with SuSE - YaST and novell gnome is good for my non computer literate parents

[John A]

2) debian wont install on under 24mb ram (debinstaller requires it)

It will, if you use a special version. There's versions of Debian that can run on 0806k processors (usually the machines had ~5 MB of RAM).

[jbennet]

thats pretty cool