Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

My neighbor's Windows (2000?, ME?, about 600 MHz) computer has been having 
problems for a year or two and he says now it is dead, won't even boot 
into Windows, and he suspects a virus.  We are going to use F-Prot on it.
He tried to fix it with XP, which would not fit into memory or disk.
He says his friend with a Mac never gets viruses and he will consider a 
switch away from Windows. He did not know you could browse, do email, and 
write documents without Windows or Mac software.

I will offer him BL3 or BL2 with Abiword and Opera (which needs a library 
update to the SW81 library) - or would the latest Mozilla (needs 64MB RAM 
52MB hd) work with BL3 or BL2 if I upgraded the library to 2.3.2?  It also 
wants gtk-2.0 and xft (neither of which I have ever used) and xfree 3.3.6 
and libstdc+++.  Has anyone on this list got it working with either BL, 
and if so is one better than the other?  Today they came out with 1.03 
(security fixes to favicons etc. - what is a favicon?)

I am guessing he has a newer video chip/card (VESA 2.0), and since 2 of 
our 4 such cards would not do Xvesa, it is nice to be prepared with 
xfbdev.  I still have to compile a fb kernel that does not need modules 
for CD-ROM and that will handle vfat format and sound.

Would it make any difference whether I use BL2 or BL3 for the above?

He does want a graphical browser, and links graphical does not handle all 
websites (javascript is incomplete).  He did not mention needing sound, 
which is good since I have not had much luck with Realaudio.  I can 
probably get an SB16 playing CDs for him.