On 03/30/2007 12:29 AM, Manuel Reimer wrote:

>
> I have two old PC systems. One is the internet and office machine of my
> uncle and one is my own PC, I'm using for many different things
> (including my SeaMonkey and PrefBar development and development for some
> other open source software). The machine of my uncle is a "pretty fast"
> 200 MHz Pentium machine with 96 MB RAM and my own machine has a Pentium
> III with 700 MHz built in and got a memory upgrade to 512 MB RAM some
> time ago. Both machines run pretty well and both machines are able to do
> what they have to.
>
> On my machine (700MHz!), I'm also doing the development of the new
> SeaMonkey theme, which is vector based graphic with some hundreds of
> vectors and I'm doing the smaller icons using an raster graphics
> software. I'm also doing audio-cutting, scan and modify photos, surf the
> web, do word processing, programming, webdesign, .... all with this
> reliable 700 MHz machine.
>
> And this is all possible as I *did* something! I even don't have to even
> think about updating the hardware in near future, as it works pretty
> well (OK, building SeaMonkey sucks on 700 MHz, but that's the only minor
> problem).
>
> To solve this riddle: I'm using Linux on all my boxes for over 2 years
> now, as I even didn't like Windows XP and decided, that all my boxes
> have to be on linux as soon as Windows 2000 support ends.
>

:-)

Ubuntu Linux (Dapper & Feisty) running on:
300MHZ/294MB PII - Feisty on the 6GB drive, Dapper on the 4GB drive
450MHZ/256MB PIII - Dapper on the 30GB, Win2KP (for testing & customer
support) on the 15GB
700MHZ/256MB PIII - Feisty (IBM A21M Thinkpad w/broken screen)
2.4GB/512MB P4 - Dapper (PC was a gift - broken & I fixed for $10) -
college son uses this one. WinXPPro on on partition for testing &
customer support).

All are used daily & work just fine (except dialup modems - Ubuntu
doen't support DUMs well).

Cost for junking windows & converting to linux on all of the above: $40
for the TurboPrint driver so that I could properly print & network my
Canon MP750 USB printer amongst all systems. $10 for a docking station
for the Thinkpad so that I can use an external monitor. And of course a
few weeks learning the basics.

E-mail: SeaMonkey/Thunderbird/Evolution - all free
PIM & Calendar: Evolution - free
Browser: SeaMonkey/Firefox - free
Office Suite: OpenOffice - free
Graphics: GIMP/Inkscape/Picasa/Scribus/XSane etc., - all free
etc., etc.,

Overall I'm pretty pleased :-)

Added note: there is an old 350MHZ/196MB PC at my in-law's house. It was
running Win2KP & slow as heck & would take at least 10 Min to boot
everything up. One day I took it home, loaded it w/linux, took it back;
boots up in about 2 Min, etc. Told them it was the new Vista OS & they
all ooh'ed & ah'ed and said how great it was. Didn't tell them that it
was linux until they'd used it for about a week (all the time telling me
how much better the new 'Vista' was)... :-)

On 03/30/2007 01:07 PM, NoOp wrote:

>
> Overall I'm pretty pleased :-)
>

Forgot to mention: Thanks for PrefBar Manuel! It's the only extention
that I *always* install on my, and my customer's machines by default.
Keep up the great work!

NoOp wrote:
> On 03/30/2007 01:07 PM, NoOp wrote:
>
>> Overall I'm pretty pleased :-)
>>
>
> Forgot to mention: Thanks for PrefBar Manuel! It's the only extention
> that I *always* install on my, and my customer's machines by default.
> Keep up the great work!

I must second those "Thanks". That's why I proposded making PrefBar an
integral part of the browser. See Mozilla bug #258881 and Mozdev bug
#7670.

--

David E. Ross


Concerned about someone (e.g., Pres. Bush) snooping
into your E-mail? Use PGP.
See my

On 04/01/2007 02:18 PM, John Boyle wrote:

> To Manuel: I am only learning to speak Spanish but I will say "Gracias"
> for your patience and understanding. The working version I have is SuSe
> 10.1 and my problem is after following an alleged experts advice I
> downloaded SuSe 10.2, because it was FREE! Well, problem is it erased
> all the data I had accumulated on my SuSe 10.1, including my Seamonkey
> and would not let me re-install the Seamonkey nor the version of
> OOoffice I was using. I went through a lot of frustration to install the
> 10.1 which included the fact I have 2 harddrives in the box to install
> on. Is it really worth trying to reinstall the 10.1 or what?

John, I suspect that you probably didn't follow instructions for
upgrading. I've not used SuSe, but I suspect that they had instructions
on how to prevent this. I doubt very much that the newer version would
not let you reinstall SM or OOo.

Upgrading from one linux distro to another, or from an old version while
skipping interim versions can be tricky sometimes. However, it is not
really much different from upgrading from say Win98 to Win2KP or WinXP;
you can easily lose data in the process if you are not careful & fail to
back up your user data.

I expect SuSe to be a very good linux distribution, in fact one of the
best. However, perhaps you should try another; there are quite a few and
most have a LiveCD that you can try before installing/committing to. I
like Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) others recommend PCLOS, Knoppix,
Mepis, Mandrake, etc. Like anything else; google is your friend and here
are some helpful links:

http://www.michaelhorowitz.com/Linux.vs.Windows.html
[dated but still a good reference]
http://distrowatch.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...2Bwhich+distro
http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Sw...tu/FromWindows

Linux is not a panacea for all, see:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/revi...dows-users.htm
it does take some work to set it up and it does have some limitations.
Hwoever, if you were new to computers and someone gave you a fully set
up linux box with:
SeaMonkey
OpenOffice
etc., etc.
fully setup, you'd proceed happily along.
I've done that for many folks & they are working just fine.

Given your hardware & financial resources & the impending MSVista push
(have you read their hardware recommendations?), I'd certainly look into
giving linux another try. Find a local group that can help you, check
the many usenet groups & forums on linux; you'll find most open source
advocates quite willing to assist (just like many of the folks here) in
making the transition.

But... we are now way off topic, so come back when you are running SM on
your new linux installation :-)

John Boyle schrieb:
> The working version I have is SuSe
> 10.1 and my problem is after following an alleged experts advice I
> downloaded SuSe 10.2, because it was FREE! Well, problem is it erased
> all the data I had accumulated on my SuSe 10.1, including my Seamonkey
> and would not let me re-install the Seamonkey nor the version of
> OOoffice I was using. I went through a lot of frustration to install the
> 10.1 which included the fact I have 2 harddrives in the box to install
> on. Is it really worth trying to reinstall the 10.1 or what?

I never had such problems when upgrading one SUSE to another, including
10.1->10.2 - and actually openSUSE 10.2 was the first official Linux
distro release that included SeaMonkey 1.1 in their set of packages. I
wonder if you downloaded corrupt packages/ISOs or something like that,
as that's very unusual behavior.

Robert Kaiser

Robert Kaiser wrote:
> John Boyle schrieb:
>> The working version I have is SuSe 10.1 and my problem is after
>> following an alleged experts advice I downloaded SuSe 10.2, because it
>> was FREE! Well, problem is it erased all the data I had accumulated on
>> my SuSe 10.1, including my Seamonkey and would not let me re-install
>> the Seamonkey nor the version of OOoffice I was using. I went through
>> a lot of frustration to install the 10.1 which included the fact I
>> have 2 harddrives in the box to install on. Is it really worth trying
>> to reinstall the 10.1 or what?
>
> I never had such problems when upgrading one SUSE to another, including
> 10.1->10.2 - and actually openSUSE 10.2 was the first official Linux
> distro release that included SeaMonkey 1.1 in their set of packages. I
> wonder if you downloaded corrupt packages/ISOs or something like that,
> as that's very unusual behavior.
>
> Robert Kaiser
To NOOP and Robert: I downloaded what my alleged SIG leader said to,
which was 10.2 but it did NOT include Seamonkey, only Firefox and
absolutely no way to install an email program! I guess the only thing is
for me to ignore him entirely and re-install my SuSe 10.1 and hope that
all this shenanigans does not make it impossible to do so!