Hi there, A friend of mine has had Windows installed for over a year. He's getting somewhat sick of it due to the recent spate of virus and spyware that's rendered his machine unusable. He's asked me to reinstall Windows, and Linux in a dual boot configuration.
The problem is this; while I've been running Debian on the desktop for over two years, a large proportion of the average Joe desktop stuff has never graced my machine. I've never seriously looked at any hotplug, automounting, gui configuration tools, hardware auto-detection, or any of the other little things that make an OS 'easy' for non-tech people. I'm hoping for a list of applications and software that people have come across which has worked (properly) every time. I am doing my own research, but I'm hoping other people may know something that I don't find. I'm aiming at a GNOME desktop, but am perfectly happy to recommend KDE if the applications support is better. * Things that I'm seeking information on specifically; * Automount of CD's for KDE. (Gnome has magicdev) * Automount / appear on desktop, of USB / firewire devices. * Video editing/collection applications. The guy has a Sony digital cam, and likes to rip and edit movies. Connects via USB and/or firewire. * Versions of GNOME 2.x, and KDE 3.x that are stable - and that goes for the bundled applications as well. I like the bleeding edge, but the average user is not so forgiving. * Automagical detection of hardware. * Something to handle screen resolution changes. * DHCP for the network, overridable by the ppp (dial-up modem) connection that doesn't hold up the system if no DHCP server is available. * An apt-get shell that lists applications, rather than packages (this probably doesn't exist). * Basic image editing software (preferably not something as complicated as the GIMP). * Those apps and libs you don't notice until you discover you forgot to install them - like gnome-spell. * Anything anyone else can think of. The hardware is as follows; Athlon 1600, 256 MB DDR, nForce1 board, nForce1 sound, AGP GF4MX, generic networking (Realtek I think). Cheers Edward Murrell -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
