edallica69

hey guys,

i was going to do this ages ago but i never got round to it.....

ive got an old pentiumII 266MHz 4Gb 128Mb RAM PC that had win98 on it. the UI for 98 is and i want to look at something fresher.

the pc will not be required to do the following things:

go on to the internet
print anything
scan anything

i really want:
a nice web editor (phpDesigner or equivelent).
i would also like openoffice
gimp and inkscape
the main thing is: will i be able to plug in a USB key and transfrer HTML and css files from the linux pc to a machine running XP home?

aLinux appears to be very nice. is it suitable?

ive never used linux before and would really really appreciate any help in finding a distro that applies!

thanks,

edo

LoneWolf071

I Would REcommend A Distro With Either KDE OR Better, XFCE or Fluxbox, these 2 are very lightweight distros... but go to www.distrowatch.com and they will list all the distros available and there default programs...

Aeuzent

I would suggest Ubuntu. Few linux distros look nicer and it's designed to work great for both beginners and advanced users. As far as the GUI goes the default for Ubuntu is Gnome but if that's a problem you can always download KDE or Fluxbox very easily using apt.

You can find Ubuntu here
http://ubuntulinux.org/

and here is a real nice FAQ
http://ubuntuguide.org/

w00t

Try Slackware its lightweight and its got KDE.

oh some help, linuxiso.org its got all the main distros and descriptions.

shuuhen

A Debian based system with an easy install would be a great place to start. Debian has great package management and a huge selection of precompiled packages. I've heard Ubuntu and MEPIS are both easy to install. Ubuntu has Gnome by default, but you can get Kubuntu if you waht KDE. I think MEPIS has KDE by default.

I personally would install a lighter window manager or desktop environment after installation anyway. Switching from KDE to Fluxbox on my slow laptop gave me a big enough speed increase that I could play more games (like all of the Marathons that run through Aleph One). I recently started using XFCE on my tower (it's the one I run Debian on), and so far I like it a lot (maybe more than Fluxbox). With a Debian based distro it should be easy to install and try both, then uninstall the one you don't want (or you can keep both, but 4 GB can fill up fast)

edallica69

thanks for the comments folks!

just wondering though is it possible to use a USB key between Linux and XP? i doubt highly that its possible but if the files are just txt or html files, would this make any difference?

cheers

Aeuzent

The short anwser is that Linux can do anything, it's just a matter of how much work you want to do.


Although I don't really understand what your asking. If it's as simple as "Will linux support my USB keyboard" the anwser is 100% yes. If your asking about sharing a keyboard between two machines using a KVM switch this is also possible.

edallica69

sorry i should have been a lot clearer, what i ment was my USB memory key. as in a USB storage device.

the only reason i was asking was that i think that linux requires a differently formatted hard drive compared to windows, so i was just wondering if it was the same for the USB memory devices, i.e. do they have to be of a certain format?

cheers

stanthecaddy22

yes it will work, just make sure the thumbdrive is formatted using a FAT partition (they usually are) in windows and linux *should* have absolutely no problem reading/writing it. I know in ubuntu the thumbdrive is automatically mounted and a link put on your desktop when connected, makes it very easy for begginers to use the drive.

Ralck

Linux does support USB memmory keys. With some distros you have to go into the console and set it up manually. However, with Ubuntu, you can just pop it in and it will work and act just like it does in windows.