Baslinux mailing list

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

On Sat, 16 Apr 2005, David Moberg wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "sindi keesan" <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
>
> Just my $0.02.
>
> > 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.
>
> Make sure the hardware is good.
>
> > He tried to fix it with XP, which would not fit into memory or disk.
>
> I find this surprising, as XP's minimum is a Pentium II. Although I
> haven't tried it, I'm fairly sure it would work on my older PC, a
> PII-300, 8GB HDD, 192MB RAM.

He probably does not have that much hard drive or memory or maybe even 
that fast a cpu.  (Most people, if you ask what sort of computer they 
have, will answer either Windows or Gateway).  We will know some time this 
week.  Another friend put XP on her computer with 950MHz cpu but 4GB drive 
and 128MB RAM, and after 2 service packs was down to 3% free space (after 
first moving AOL to a second drive).  They apparently no longer offer a 
minimal or custom installation.

> > He says his friend with a Mac never gets viruses
>
> Not many non-Windows boxes do. :)

The only viruses I have gotten live on the boot sectors of DOS floppy 
disks - we got quite a selection of those when volunteering for a place 
that fixed up and sold donated computers for charity.

 >
> > 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+++.
>
> That's a lot of updating. Better to start with a larger distro if
> you want that, I think.

Okay.  Another neighbor just offered to put on Redhat Fedora 3 which comes 
with Mozilla, but it is probably already and out-of-date Mozilla.

> > Has anyone on
> > this list got it working with either BL
>
> Not I.
>
> > 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?)
>
> If you go to certain web sites, larger GUI browsers will take this file
> from the webserver called a favicon (it's just a standard icon) and
> put that as the web browser's icon, which you can usually see on the
> taskbar and titlebar of the browser window. IE, Mozilla, Firefox, Firebird
> are all known to do this. I can't see much of a security problem there.
> Someone must have really botched the job the first time around.

Opera lets you choose whether to do something with favicons.  First thing 
I do when installing opera is to toggle off all the bars.  I use the 
keyboard.  Have you tried the Firefox add-on that numbers links? 
'hide-a-hint'.  Needs version 0.9 or later.

> > Would it make any difference whether I use BL2 or BL3 for the above?
>
> Probably not, as long as you're updating everything. BL2 is usually
> suggested for larger uses.

I don't want to get into compiling gtk, so I may skip Mozilla and just 
show him BL2 with Opera and if he likes it, copy over my setup and he can 
change later to Fedora and Mozilla if Opera is not adequate.


> > He does want a graphical browser, and links graphical does not
> > handle all websites (javascript is incomplete).
>
> No web browser can "correctly" handle 100% of all websites. IE
> won't handle Mozilla or Netscape-specific things. Mozilla won't
> do IE-specific things. Links can't handle certain things. If it
> works on links, though, anything can handle it.
Links does some javascript and lynx does not.  I have links set up as a 
downloader for lynx for that reason.  Lynx won't do tables either.  And 
some sites really don't make sense without a graphical browser.

> > 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.
>
> If I have the webspace I'll put up my static version of MPlayer.
> It's very nice. I can play DVDs on my PII, play many different
> A/V files, even do a little video editing. Of course, it's a
> huge binary, but IMO worth it.

Some day I will try this (after compiling the Matrox kernel).  I might 
want to get the parport BL3 to work first so I can try BL3 on the 
neighbor's computer.  MPlayer also does Realaudio?  I keep getting 
segfaults when I install RP8 (except on our fastest computer, 475MHz). 
We are putting together one 600MHz computer - will Mplayer work on that 
with 128MB RAM?

> David
> --
k