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Which Linux For Non-Techie Windows Users?

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zridling:
A Slashdot user asks a good question: Which Linux For Non-Techie Windows Users??



Having at last gotten Linux to run satisfactorily on my own PCs, I'd now like to start transitioning friends and family from XP to Linux instead of Windows 7. The catch is that these guys don't understand or care much about computers, so the transition has to be as seamless and painless as possible. Actually, they won't care for new things; even the upcoming upgrade to Windows 7 would be a pain and a bother, which is a great opportunity for Linux. I'm not too concerned about software (most of them only need browser, IM, VLC, mail and a Powerpoint viewer for all those fascinating attachments). What I'm concerned about is OS look-and-feel and interface — system bar on the bottom with clock, trash, info on the right, menu on the left, menu items similar to those of Windows. Is it better to shoot for a very targeted distro? Which would you recommend? Are there themes/skins for mainstream distributions instead? I've been looking around the web, and it's hard to gauge which distros are well-done and reasonably active.
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And off they go! The usual suspects are heartily recommended -- openSUSE, Mint, PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu -- but the broader discussion of what to do with users moving from XP but not to Win7 is quite interesting.

MrCrispy:
I would be interested in other peoples opinion on Linux's speed and footprint. We hear a lot about what a fast and light OS it is, but whenever I've tried it (and I mean a distro like Ubuntu, Mint, Mandrake etc which has a full KDE/Gnome gui) it just does not seem any faster than say Windows 7 or even Vista. Even on a netbook Win7 seems to win over Linux distros such as Jolicloud (recent Lifehacker comparison), so I'm not sure what it brings to the table for a Windows user.

Lutz_:
Is there a Linux distribution in which the drives can be accessed without a code like:
/dev/fd0 ; /dev/scd0 ; /dev/hdb ;/dev/sda3 ; root & home ???
This distro would then qualify automatically as the easiest for windows converters.  The standard Linux device name system will simply deter the majority of curious windows users immediately.

Bamse:
Look out for Lubuntu https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu :) They have official netbook edition but not yet a minimal for desktop so hopefully this project get adopted.

MilesAhead:
Is there a Linux distribution in which the drives can be accessed without a code like:
/dev/fd0 ; /dev/scd0 ; /dev/hdb ;/dev/sda3 ; root & home ???
This distro would then qualify automatically as the easiest for windows converters.  The standard Linux device name system will simply deter the majority of curious windows users immediately.
-Lutz_ (February 23, 2010, 05:45 PM)
--- End quote ---

You could create a bunch of aliases at logon.  For instance /dev/fd0 I used to call floppy and /dev/scd0 cdrom1. It doesn't really get you that much though.  To get the Windows users you need a whole bunch of applets in the window manager to configure stuff, rather than using scripts(usually the applets just write the stuff to the scripts but it's more intuitive.) But that conflicts with the smaller footprint and better performance you get with a lean window manager.

It's been awhile since I did a lot with Linux.  But for me the most disorienting thing that made it feel "foreign" while I was using it was the text editors. I remember when I put Kylix on how all of a sudden I could type in source code without thinking about it because the editor used the same keys as the Windows Delphi IDE.  When I was using it, around the time of Slackware 3.0, I could only find one free text editor that came configured with Windows style editing scheme by default.  And that one was kind of quirky and unstable.

If you use Windows most of the time I don't think you'll really feel at home in Linux unless they have a bunch of editors now with Windows style editing.

I did like Mandrake 9.1 on my Pentium III machine.  The nice thing about it if you had broadband was the single CD install.  First thing it did was get your network card going, then let you pick the packages you wanted.  It rebooted to a basic Linux install, then downloaded your packages and installed them.

Mandriva still has the same scheme going.

I guess it's like learning a foreign language without hearing it spoken at home.  You have to immerse yourself in it.  If you don't have to do it, you probably won't.  If you want the guy to learn Linux, lock him in a room with a PC with only Linux on it.  If he can boot Windows, forget it.

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