My 15 Year Old Sister is using Ubuntu

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ninethreeeleven

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Joined
Jul 16, 2004
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Thats the jist. Just got it last night from thier site, latest released build.

Now I personally have never used Ubuntu. I have used RedHat, SuSE, DSL, Lindows and Linspire and a few others but mostly whatever my then college roommate would give me to try out.

I am shocked at how well developed the OS is. It is pretty bloated if I do say so, 600MBs, but a painless install and a quick DL from thier server.

It came with everything we needed for her computer, including drivers for the WiFi network. Which is why its installed (Win 98 couldn't figure it out). Its a NIC card with a wireless adapter (had it for my XBOX). Worked right off the bat, all I had to do was assign it an IP, and tell it the routers IP.

I am shocked that it came with the programs we wanted (GAIM, Open Office, and FireFox). Its a bit slow but that computer is old (1999 old) I think its a PIII 450mhz, with either 128 or 64MBs of RAM. Ati Pci card works fine although the monitor in combination with the card make HardForum look like ass. Ugly yellow and red.

I guess the reason for my post is...
1. I think its funny that my 15 year old sister is using Linux
2. Is there any distro that you guys would recommend for her to use that has the 3 programs she wants already attached. (Open Office, GAIM, and FireFox) That is less bloated and will run better on such a old box.

I couldn't get Linspire (free ISO from a while ago) to load, but I think its because of a scratch on the disk.

PS. How is Ubuntu pronounced?
 
You might want to try using a more lightweight window manager than the Gnome desktop Ubuntu uses by default, that'd probably make things a touch snappier
 
Any one in particular you recommend? I guess since she is a gril she will give up speed for beauty, but it is slow. I am not sure if its slower than Windows 98 on that machine, but I do know that the network works and thats all she really wants.
 
2. Is there any distro that you guys would recommend for her to use that has the 3 programs she wants already attached. (Open Office, GAIM, and FireFox) That is less bloated and will run better on such a old box.
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If you're worried about hard disk space consumed, you can remove packages that you don't want using the package manager.

Any one in particular you recommend? I guess since she is a gril she will give up speed for beauty, but it is slow. I am not sure if its slower than Windows 98 on that machine, but I do know that the network works and thats all she really wants.
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There are so many out there that I can't pick one. Try anything but KDE as the window manager, most are configurable to one's tastes in colors, layout, etc.
 
ubuntu is great. If you want open office you can always download it from their site.
 
It has Open Office, and by bloated I mean I want the bare minimum so that it will run "smoother" its not bloated in an excess bullshit windows way. It just seems like this really isn't enough machine for it, which it probably isn't.

I guess she is happy with it, she just wants GAIM and FireFox, Open Office and its word processor are needed for school, but she doesn't really "want" that.

EDIT: What the guy above me said is what I meant. I just got sick of trying to get Windows 98 to work so walked down stairs and downloaded the first Linux Distro that came to mind (after I coulnd't get Linspire to work). "Ubuntoo" is what came to mind, but google corrected me and I got Ubuntu.
 
ninethreeeleven said:
Any one in particular you recommend? I guess since she is a gril she will give up speed for beauty, but it is slow. I am not sure if its slower than Windows 98 on that machine, but I do know that the network works and thats all she really wants.
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I recommend fluxbox or enlightenment or XFCE.
 
vote for xfce windowmanager, and if she just wants word processesing and spreadsheets, look at abiword and gnumeric.
 
ninethreeeleven said:
I am shocked at how well developed the OS is. It is pretty bloated if I do say so, 600MBs, but a painless install and a quick DL from thier server.

PS. How is Ubuntu pronounced?
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2 Things.


1) Uhm, last I checked, Fedora was what.. 3 or 4 cd's?

2) Ooh-Boon-Two
 
eeyrjmr said:
Oooo-Bun-Two
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Odd.. 2 people in here (me and one other) both said it's ooh boon two (or too) and I've hard at least 5 guys say it the same way in my life.

but i guess that's no different than asus

"a-zeus" [like the god]

or "a-SUS" like "sucks" without the "K" sound

or abit

"ah-bit"
"ey-bit" [like hey]

It is "mike row soft" right?
 
If the machine only has 64MB of ram that is your problem. It's pretty painful trying to run a full desktop environment in X with that little ram. You could probably run a lighter window manager faster, but if she's used to that "Windows feel" she probably won't like that. Open Office would also benefit with more ram. Do her a favor, and find a cheap 256MB stick of ram to put in there. You could also find a faster PIII to drop in.
 
Switching the DE/WM like others say would help. KDE and Gnome use more resources than something like Openbox or Fluxbox (KDE is probably the resource heaviest). OpenOffice also uses the JRE to run some of its components, which adds to its resource use since you have to start the JRE to run it. More RAM would be helpful if you want to go that route. Otherwise, use alternatives like another user has posted.
 
Try Enlightenment e17, its still under dev. but installing it with just the Engage module will give her an OS X type feel.

It is a little hard to figure out how to configure all the menus but if you get her three favorite programs in Engage it should make everything accessible with a click. E17 is very fast when loading stuff, it loads Firefox faster than windows on my athlon 2800+M laptop.
 
That's funny, Ubuntu or any other linux distro aside from Mandriva won't detect my wireless card. Even though there are linux drivers for it.

Which wireless card is your sister using?
 
Well that is the newest problem. My fathers Dell got so corrupt that we had to reinstall Windows (Windows Explorer would crash if you looked at it wrong).
Anyway after the install it would not pick up the wireless card (Netgear WG331) so we stole the wireless adapter from the linux box (Netgear ME101). Well now linux is not working with the new network card (the WG331) so I am going to try Linspire and see if that will work, other wise I am going to somehow make the Netgear WG331 work on the Dell.

The main problem is the computer itself is so old I don't recognize the RAM modules and am having a tough time getting more RAM (would like to bring it up to 512 from 128). Other than that and the network issue its running really good.

Like I said its only for GAIM, OOffice, and Firefox.

I also installed Kubuntu (ubuntu with KDE) and that sucked. I did not like any of it. I am used to Windows and some older linux (mostly whatever RedHat was around in 1999) and the whole setup was strange. I hated that I had to use all their "K" name software like Konquerer, or whatever their web browser was. That lasted all of 2 hours and then we went back to ubuntu and shes once again happy.
Most of the slowness has seemed to "die off" I swear its getting quicker, although OpenOffice still takes about 30 seconds to load, but Word take 15 seconds on my fathers 2ghz Dell. (this is a 550mhz PIII with 128 ram, 15GB HDD and a PCI video card, although it does have a AGP slot.
 
Don't expect blazing performance with OpenOffice. It seems slow on every machine I've used it on inclusing a dual 2.7 G5.
 
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