“While other articles seem to discuss the impact of this drastic change for some older Windows users, here we are going to discuss how those newbies looking to Linux can tell you if are truly ready for Linux, and which Linux distro would be the logical and best choice for their own needs and/or tastes. More here.
Taking the Linux Plunge
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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The linked article talks of options available for dis-enfranchised Win98 and ME users, yet discusses distros that are (mostly) more akin to WinXP.
I’d suggest that Puppy would be a better first step for such users and their hardware. DSL, whilst excellent, is just that bit different to what a Windows user would be familiar with. (although they could be beaten into submission pretty quickly) …
Sort of like moving from beer to wine … little steps. And before you know it, you are a Slackware / Debian / Gentoo evangelist.
N
Puppy Linux runs really fast because it loads into RAM.
Recent versions install to hard drive easily and boot-up time is quick. I replaced ME with Puppy on a 400 Mhz 128 Mb RAM machine so I could take video guitar lessons with Gxine.
Yup, Puppy is very fast, and it’s also quite nice from a Windows user perspective because it identifies programs on the desktop by generic names which are less likely to confuse a new user.
Here’s a picture of Puppy 2.01 running on my XP desktop using QEMU:
http://www.visi.com/~rsteiner/puppy-qemu.jpg
Torsmo and MC are my own additions (they aren’t on the default installation).
Edited 2006-09-19 17:25
It all depends on the persons learning capabilities and willingness to learn.
I’ve used linux for years and puppy is still one of my favorite distributions
probably because I’m too cheap/poor to upgrade my hardware and it runs fantastically with minimum effort on my lowend machines. (think p233mmx overclocked with 128-256mb of ram)
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How many more of these do we need? It seems like one of these types of articles are posted at least once every 2 months. Its getting ridiculous.
The more times the Linux fascists say it, the more true it becomes!
This article is uncomplete, as Mandriva is left out of the review. And Mandriva is probably the first Linux distro that was aimed to the desktop!
It’s like talking about server Linux and leaving out RHEL and RHEL-clones.
Peace
…even though later versions of DSL provide both apt-get and synaptic as a MyDSL package, which opens up over 8000 debian applications to a DSL user.
DSL *is* intended for power users. It just has a different goal in terms of initial installation size, but one can expand the system considerably from that point.