Re: I Want to identify best Linux approach, and any pitfalls.

On Mon, 30 Jan 2006 18:09:40 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> Printers will be an ageing Laserjet 6P (already networked: Talks LPR)and
> a HP designjet 650C large fornmat inkjet...parallel only that one..be
> mice if teh MAC cold talk to it though..ghostscript?

Can't help there.

> I will need some form of CD-ROM or DVD burning for backups and data
> exchange.
>
> I'd like to play DVD's as well, but I understand there are issues.

What issues? Basically, not any longer. DVD playing is just fine using
most GUIs; I use Gnome these days and frankly their dvdplayer is as good
as any I've used before.
>
> Ideally I'd like to use an integrated cheap motherboard with Intel
> graphics chips. Built in sound and networking etc.

Why the preference for builtin graphics? I can see builtin sound and
networking, since those are pretty good these days, but often a cheapo
board with builtin video steals a bunch of system RAM for video, which
sucks. A decent video card is cheap.

>
> What I need is a desktop that is as near Win98 as I can get, without
> exccessive configuration..I don't want to waste time learning X windows
> subtleties if I can avoid it - and a reliable web browser - Firefox
> NEARLY works, but some sites I used daily require IE6 rendering engine

Screw them.

> and Java implementation..

Java is no problem.

> Word and Excel? Well open office of course...

For me, OO is as much bloatware as the crap from MS. Abiword is much more
robust.

> but will that print labels
> and envelopes?

Somehow, I'm sure it will. Abiword has something about printing onto
envelopes. Never used it myself. I have a mailing-list label-printing
setup under LyX which works for me.

> I have very little requirement in terms of interoperability with MS
> products, other than being able to spit out files that WORD can
> understand, and read my old WORD files.

Be advised that the other way has trouble. I have been sent some Word
documents from students that I couldn't read in OO or abiword; so I just
told them to send them in *.doc format and they worked. The new format
has a *.wps extension that file recognizes as a MS Office document, but OO
and abiword don't like.

>
> Other things I want to do involve graphics, and here things get
> trickier.
>
> I want to scan in stuff on my HP Scanjet 4100C...it LOOKS like there is
> support for this at least.
>
> I have a Nikon Coolpix camera with USB interface...I'd really like to be
> able to pull images off that and delete them on it without going mad...
>
Should be no problem. I've used a Canon and an Olympus camera and had
little trouble. The Olympus disk could mount as a hard drive, the Canon
is readable with gphoto2.

> I want to edit bitmap pictures - basically
Photoshop functionality..I
> guess GIMP will do?

gimp can do a lot more than just that. Editing pictures, say, removing
redeye, you can do with just xpaint.

You should also look at inkscape. I haven't used it much, but it seems to
have lots of options.

> Apart from that of course a decent C, C++

Sheesh. gcc and g++ are what you need, and there would be little by way
of linux without them. Excellent.

> Plus any extra software that would be needed to get functionality up to
> roughly what I have here, without crashing...;-) :-) Mind you, since
> installing Thunderbird it all seems more stable anyway..
>
Crashing?

--

David L. Johnson

__o | You will say Christ saith this and the apostles say this; but
_`\(,_ | what canst thou say? -- George Fox.
(_)/ (_) |


.

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