General Linux questions

[Russell T. Brunet]

Jason,

I would say stick with 9.2. Only because I (unlike your father) am fairly
computer savvy, and although I have had fun tinkering with YellowDog, when
I need a reliable system, I boot into OS X. Your father-in-law will have
much less difficulty with 9.2, and I am fairly sure that if you can get
ahold of an old version of MS office (office 98 should do fine) you won't
have much speed issues with the word processor. Also he won't be zipping
around the web, but a 6400/180 with 136 mb of ram should be more than
sufficient for simple web browsing. I would stay away from YDL (or any
linux clone for that matter) only because there have been many nuances that
I have found with regards to monitor settings, and printing, etc. that are
not exactly straight forward.

Now if you know unix/linux and want to be your father-in-law's 24 hour help
line, go ahead and install it :)

Good luck,

Russell

>Hi - I am hoping that someone can offer some honest advice.  I am giving
>my inlaws my old Performa 6400/180.  It has 136Mb RAM and a 10Gb hard
>drive.  I have been looking at Yello Dog Linux and Mandrake Linux as two
>possible alternative OS's.
>
>Here are the two questions I have:
>
>1) The reason I am thinking of installing Linux is to see if it will be
>more efficient in running the Performa that OS 8.6 or OS 9.1.  The issue
>is that my father-in-law is not very computer-savvy.  What type of
>performance increase, if any, will Linux make for the Performa?  Is Linux
>easy enough for someone with little computer experience to run on a daily
>basis?  His only real activities are browsing the Web and word processing.
>
>2) Looking at both the Mandrake and Yellow Dog websites, it seems as if
>Mandrake has more resources behind it, and possibly would be a better
>long-term solution.  However, as they provide solutions primarily for the
>Intel crowd, I am not sure of their dedication to the PPC platform.  What
>are the main benefits to Yello Dog Linux over Mandrake?
>
>Thanks - Jason
>
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