NewLuna

As I have mentioned in a previous article , I’m a Windows 2000 user. I periodically review Linux distributions in the search of a Win2k replacement. I have a few PCs, and I plan on installing a Linux distro on all of them once I find a suitable replacement for Win2k. I’d prefer to have a mostly homogenous setup for support reasons. Also, I don’t want the other users in the house to keep track of multiple OS or distro flavors (how do you burn a CD on this thing).

If I were the only one in the house, I would have had Linux running on my PC a long time ago. I’m a fan of OSS, and I don’t like how the MS OS is progressing (DRM, activation, phone home). However, my wife could care less about the open source movement and DRM. All she wants is a usable OS that can send emails, view pictures, perform mail merges with MS Access and Word, and look n’ feel like the OS that she is currently using (win2k). She doesn’t want to have to learn another process. She’d rather stick with win2k or spend additional money to get the latest MS offering.

I don’t want to have to spend a large amount of my time altering settings, creating themes, configuring WINE, and writing code to get a desktop similar to Windows. I’d much rather occasionally test the Linux waters and wait for a distro that meets my expectations. I’m pleased to see that some distributions have realized that the Windows inertia is very powerful. From a usability perspective, inertia and de facto interface processes must be taken into consideration when designing an interface. It doesn’t matter whether you think your ABC interface is easier when the majority of the public is already very familiar with the XYZ interface. This is usability 101, so it makes me wonder if some of these Linux distributions even perform usability tests. If not, they should at least read up on Jakob Nielsen .

Windows 2000 support is targeted to expire in 2010, but I plan to have adopted Linux before then. I will be starting a new round of Linux distribution testing at the beginning of 2007. It’s been a little over 7 months since I’ve tested a distro, so I’m excited to see the progress that has been made. I will not consider usability issues during the installation process (basic install, mp3/flash setup, etc). My main focus will be in daily usage. That said, I probably won’t be testing distributions like Gentoo that require compilations or set-ups that are not point-click friendly. I realize that that won’t be a problem with many of the top distributions since many of them have a fairly simple installation process along with a GUI for package management.

I will test each Linux distribution by using it as my primary desktop for two weeks. I will document my thoughts on each distribution and post them on this site. I’m presently looking to test the following Linux distributions:

I’m in the process of downloading OpenSuse 10.2, so I will be testing that distribution first. Please comment if you feel that there are other distributions that I should be looking at. Stay Tuned!

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Distros of choice

Kavey (Unregistered) 2006-12-27 13:34:00

Personally I could care less about the Distro wars. Mostly it's hype. You;ll often hear "oh this distro is awesome because of X, or because of Y," but when you boil it right down, they are pretty much the same, just a little bit different way of doing things. In many instances you'll hear people compare distros but it's apples and oranges. i.e. a brand new release of any distro will almost always contain things other distros don't have.....yet.

That being said, I am a fan of Mandriva for a lot of reasons. My kids use it with few compaints (the complaints they do have usually have to do with some Windows only game, ActiveX, or Shockwave game they want to play). My fiance has even gotten use to it, although she uses MS Office at work, and sometimes converting is an issue. We have VMWare with Windows 2000 with MS Office as a backup. I haven't gotten around to using trying WINE with it yet. She doesn't use Access, so that might be a viable option.

The kids and I use OpenOffice.org quite regularly, and they turn in papers to the teacher using it despite the clear instructions that they are to use MS Office (how dare they tell us which software to use to create a printed product).

All I can say about it is give it time and patience. The thing I think frustrates most people is that they forget that Linux is not Windows. If you enter in with the mindset of "I can do X in Windows can I do X in Linux" many times that's where the headaches begin. So instead of asking "Where is X feature" start asking "How can I accomplish X." You might find solutions presenting itself to you.

Also remember, although Linux is community based, some communities are better than others (this isn't a slam at any distro, but rather the Linux forums and chats in general). There are jerks out there that won't help you, but there are plenty of nice friendly people out there too. Patience is always the key.

Corvus (Unregistered) 2006-12-27 13:35:18

I've tried all but Freespire over the last several years and I've become quite the loyal SUSE user. My wife, who is far less of a mucker, also runs it on her laptop and has begun complaining about how limiting her Windows based work PC is.

Look at Xandros

Ernie DeVries (Unregistered) 2006-12-27 15:30:22

Particularly because of your wife's desire to run Access and Word, you really should look at Xandros. In fact, based upon your criteria I think you are wasting your time looking at the rest of your list. I'm not affiliated with Xandros, other than being a satified user, but I can attest to their slogan being true - "It just works".

Mr.

belal1 (Unregistered) 2006-12-27 15:30:49

I think for your wife, who simply wants a familiar look n feel, aswell as holding onto legacy apps, any of those distros would be fine. personally though, I think she would like freespire as the click n run technology makes it easy for someone coming from windows to install new software. she'd have less time to worry about how to install programs, and you won't have to spend much time installing those multimedia plugins. besides, it looks kinda nice. as for the legacy app's (msOFFICE), you'd have to get something like crossover office, or see if u like tweaking wine. try sidenet tools, they make installing ms office "point n click".

I like ubuntu myself, but only because I like the ubuntu forums/community and apt-get. everyone else who's a windows fanatic (that is, xp fanatic) seems to like freespire over ubuntu when I let them use both.

by the way, there's also asianux which clones the windows 2000 GUI. you might want to check it out, it seems kinda cool if your into win2k pro.

Ubuntu

bartek (Unregistered) 2006-12-27 15:31:06

Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10 with GNOME. Choosen to be the most user-friendly distro of 2006 at the Linux new media award.

PC Tech / digital print specai

DaveC (Unregistered) 2006-12-27 16:28:41

Honestly you are wasting your time trying out all those disros.
PCLinuxOS
that is what your are looking for.

User

Robert (Unregistered) 2006-12-27 18:18:50

www.mepis.org

Look at the applications not

S.M. (Unregistered) 2006-12-27 19:46:15

The key to migrating to Linux is to migrate to open source applications on Windows first - eg. OpenOffice, Firefox, Scribus, Thunderbird etc. If you are OK with the open source apps on Windows, then you will be OK on Linux, as far as user experience is concerned, because there really isn't much of a difference in terms of the user interface. The main difference is in the configuration of the system.

One thing you will find about all the distros above is that the out of the box media support will be poor. This is due to artificial licence restrictions on distribution of proprietary media codecs like flash, realmedia, windows and deCSS codecs. Because all the distros you chose are free distros, they are not permitted to bundle these. If you know how, it is possible to download and install all of these.

Another thing you need to pay attention to which a lot of people have problems with is the printer setup. A disto with user friendly CUPs printer management tools, and a preconfigured CUPs environment that allows users to delete their own print jobs from queues for example is a definite requirement for ease of use.

Hardware drivers is the next thing to be aware of when switching to Linux. The best approach is to look at what drivers are bundled with the distro or provided by the hardware manufacturer or available on the Internet, before buying the hardware (rather than after which is the Windows users approach). With respect to hardware drivers, the distros listed should be pretty well similar in their support.

Dedmen (Unregistered) 2006-12-28 01:40:13

I wanna change without changes! Why we need Windows cloninngs just because you like Windows way! Stay with Billy. O, yes! You don't want to pay anymore. But in OSS world the community is the base, not consumer thinking that you are showing ...

Asianux

Phil (Unregistered) 2006-12-28 02:45:25

I can't say anything about usability or anything like that, but I have seen some Screenshots of Asianux which looks quite like Windows... also there is/was a project aiming to recreate the Windows XP Luna Desktop for Linux it had something with XP in its name... if I find it again, I'll post back...

Anonymous (Unregistered) 2006-12-28 03:44:51

Debian has already a graphical installer, too. And it is after the installation when you get the real pleasure - nearly 20.000 packages are almost everything that exists in the F/OSS world.

Missing distro

Michael Rasmussen (Unregistered) 2006-12-28 07:46:57

You could also consider the forthcoming Debian 4.0 aka Debian Etch.
http://www.debianadmin.com/debian-etch-beta3-graphical-mode-installation-with-screenshots.html

Linux and Drivers

Zeljko (Unregistered) 2006-12-28 08:22:38

I'm a Windows user and have been for many years since the first version of windows 3.0. And i, like you wanted to try a linux distro that would give me a windows replacement. And i tried many of them just to name some Suse, Mandriva, Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Xandros, Fedora, Red Hat, Vector, linspire etc.. And many of them are great distros that can replace windows no problem. But they all have one problem at leased from my experiance and that is "drivers".
If you go and buy new video card or sound card or digital camera that dosen't mean it will work on linux. Yes you can go and gooogle for drivers but that dosen't mean you will find one. So the best linux distro that i found out there from more then 100's of linux distros is Suse 10.2 using KDE. I also liked Xandros but i hated that flashing Security Center that always wanted your attention. So right now i just run Dual Boot Windows and openSuse 10.2. I think linux in many ways is better then windows but if they can get better driver support i would get rid of the windows in a second.

Don't forget Xandros

Patric Conant (Unregistered) 2006-12-28 10:02:04

XYZ and ABC interfaces aside, Xandros mimmicks the windows interface, down to a right-click to share folders. If spending money on windows is a possiblity, then most definitely buy Xandros. They have a no-cost download on thier website.

Ian Hazelden (Unregistered) 2006-12-28 10:46:41

Take a look at Puppy Linux, which is aan amazing small footprint OS

Tim Z (Unregistered) 2006-12-28 11:07:14

I was in your position about 5 years ago. (My wife didn't want to switch.) After installing Linux on the main box, I added win4lin, which may be familiar to you. It allows you to install a full version of Windows (and run it in a window from Linux). She could do the few things she needed, and I was happy. It was worth the $ spent on win4lin, and as she became more comfortable, I was eventually able to abandon win4lin altogether. You can get a 30 day trial. http://win4lin.com

Suggested Distros

idrmrsr (Unregistered) 2006-12-28 18:54:40

You could do worse than try Linux Mint 2.1, based on Ubuntu, or SLAX which is the fastest LiveCD I've seen so far, couldn't get a wireless card up, but mounted NTFS partitions just swell!

Sounds great

Julian Yap (Unregistered) 2006-12-28 19:34:27

As well as Kubuntu, you might like to also try out Ubuntu which uses Gnome.

Dan (Unregistered) 2006-12-28 20:09:29

I just switched from RedHat/Fedora to OpenSuse 10.2. Suse's RPM diff updates make dial up life feasible. Also, Fedora pushes a lot more application updates (not strictly bug/security). This means you spend a lot more time downloading updates and adjusting to changes.

I think Suse is more concerned with user experience than being 100% OpenSource. That makes more hardware and apps "just work".

And of course, both free and paid support is available if you need it.

n/a

rav (Unregistered) 2006-12-28 21:51:41

try Mepis!

Check out SimplyMEPIS 6.0.4

WB7ODYFred (Unregistered) 2006-12-29 01:03:43

www.mepis.org

MEPIS works fine. Easy install. Has Programs to meet your needs.

Quote:

All she wants is a usable OS that can send emails, view pictures, perform mail merges with MS Access and Word, and look n’ feel like the OS that she is currently using (win2k).

Email Clients: Kmail, Thunderbird

View Pictures: Digikam, showphoto, Kphoto

Mail Merge: ?? I am checking OpenOffice Base to create a data base ( like Access ) for mail merge with an OpenOffice.org version 2 Writer to create
Letters and Invoices for my small firewood sales business.

2005 comparison of Access with OpenOffice Base
http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/openoffice-base-20-vs-microsoft-access_22.html

Wikipedia entry of migrating from MS Access to OO Base
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org_Base

OpenOffice Wiki entry MS Access to Base migration
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/MSA-Base_Faq

Okay, so this migration for the mail merge is looking like a pain.

Here are some better HowTos for performing a Mail Merge with OpenOffice 2.0. Do read
http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/general/0,295582,sid39_gci1190106,00.html

Several links to article commenting about migrating from Windows to Linux
http://librenix.com/?inode=8373

MIGRATION & INTEGRATION
Step-by-step how-to, part one: OpenOffice 2.0's new mail merge tools

Solveig Haugland
02.21.2006
Rating: -4.75- (out of 5)
http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid39_gci1167989,00.html

Please feel free to add URL links and comments
Fred Finster
fredf at kendra dot com

Bernard (Unregistered) 2006-12-30 00:44:08

How badly does your wife need to tie the mail-merg to Access? Maybe that boils down to: could she dump Access for something else (either a spreadsheet or a real database), or is she effectively forced to use Access for compatability with her workplace?

The previous poster listed some pertinent links -- but not being in a similar situation myself, I couldn't say how useful they'd be if Access-compatibility is an issue. (There's always the possibility that a relatively simple script could be set up to sync Access with OOo, especially if one direction is sufficient).

From a Windows convert - Xandr

Linux Boy (Unregistered) 2007-01-08 14:44:35

I migrated over to linux around may 1999 and toyed with many distros, but "strangely" - in the beginning, only the gurus (former unix-ers) could do what I wanted. Then step in Corel Linux ... I started to be able to do what I wanted, then Xandros ... since version 2, I've been on a level-playing field with hard-core Windowers (except for games). But since this is not my bread & butter, I really couldn't care less. I've even been using it at work for the last 2.5 years.
- So basically I use it day-in, day-out and so does my significant other (a nurse/teacher) and my 3 kids.
=> So, honestly, if they can use it, upgrade/install the components they want & use - you should be a happy camper.

BTW, the hardware support is excellent with well known, documented brands (or conversely sometimes the 'el cheapo' stuff clones the better ones and must use known components).

It is THE distro that people need to know the least about linux and whatever is under the hood (and that they couldn't possibly care less about). We all own cars, do we _all_ know exactly _how_ they work ?!

Enjoy the freedom, feel the power - Xandros Linux (now at version 4).

LB.

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