Transition Advice

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1

Background information:
Greetings. My parents who are both in their late 70’s and have been using Windows 98 for many years on their 1GHz Pentium-based machine with 512K of RAM. I have just put together a somewhat better computer using old parts (2.4GHz Pentium 4, 1.5GB RAM, ATA/100 40GB HD). Now it’s time to choose and install an OS! For a modest price I could obtain a legitimate copy of Windows XP which would be familiar ground for my parents and myself. However, XP is getting a bit long-in-the-tooth now and I don’t fancy spending big money on a new version of Windows. For this reason I am seriously considering openSUSE 11.

Questions:

  1. Will my dad’s digital camera (Fujifilm f50fd) connect to the computer okay?

  2. My mum is addicted to the Windows card games (Solitaire and FreeCell) are there equivalent games available for Linux or is there a way to make the Microsoft games run on this platform?

  3. In Windows my parent’s old computer was protected with free software from AVG (anti-virus) and ZoneAlarm (firewall). Once setup these updated themselves and needed little attention. What do openSUSE users do in this respect?

  4. Can anyone hazard a guess vis-à-vis performance, that is, will the new computer with Linux run a quickly at the old one with Windows 98?

Any other helpful advice would also be most welcome.

2

AKIDNER1 adjusted his/her AFDB on Sunday 24 May 2009 17:06 to write:

>
> Background information:
> Greetings. My parents who are both in their late 70’s and have been
> using Windows 98 for many years on their 1GHz Pentium-based machine with
> 512K of RAM. I have just put together a somewhat better computer using
> old parts (2.4GHz Pentium 4, 1.5GB RAM, ATA/100 40GB HD). Now it’s time
> to choose and install an OS! For a modest price I could obtain a
> legitimate copy of Windows XP which would be familiar ground for my
> parents and myself. However, XP is getting a bit long-in-the-tooth now
> and I don’t fancy spending big money on a new version of Windows. For
> this reason I am seriously considering openSUSE 11.
>
> Questions:
> 1) Will my dad’s digital camera (Fujifilm f50fd) connect to the
> computer okay?

not sure on that.

>
> 2) My mum is addicted to the Windows card games (Solitaire and
> FreeCell) are there equivalent games available for Linux or is there a
> way to make the Microsoft games run on this platform?

If you install wine these are usable, however if you install the kde games
there loads of equiv`s also many extra apps cam be got from packman, I
recommend PYSolFC which has more different versions of Patience than you
could ever need :wink:

>
> 3) In Windows my parent’s old computer was protected with free software
> from AVG (anti-virus) and ZoneAlarm (firewall). Once setup these
> updated themselves and needed little attention. What do openSUSE users
> do in this respect?
>
No need for AV, firewall is built in to SuSE and is easy configured through
YaST ( graphical SuSE config tool )

> 4) Can anyone hazard a guess vis-à-vis performance, that is, will the
> new computer with Linux run a quickly at the old one with Windows 98?
>

On that harware it will fly compared to the old machine :wink:

> Any other helpful advice would also be most welcome.
>
>
There is too much for a simple post but I dare say others will jump in with
them.

HTH

Mark

Nullus in verba
Nil illegitimi carborundum

3

I’d think about possible tripwires for those used to Windows, especially automatic update, make the desktop as Windows-like as possible, and avoid anything experimental (KDE4) or complicating (Compiz). As has already been said, SUSE will fly on that hardware compared to Windows 98 (although XP will be even faster, but not by enough to justify the expense or the virus issues).