[Ham-Computers] Linux and Firefox

[paul]

On Tue, 2004-12-14 at 16:43, Jerry K wrote:
> Question 1:
> I tried Red Hat about 3 years ago, but finding software and drivers for
> sound cards, various peripherals, etc. turned into more of an exercise than
> I was willing to put up with at the time. I'd like to give it another try,
> but was wondering if the newer versions of Linux are any easier to deal
> with, and if the available application and driver software has improved.
> Just for info, on a 10-point PC knowledge scale, I'm probably about a 7 or
> 8, but certainly don't qualify as a full geek. I run XP Pro, broadband via
> DHCP satellite, a router, and a local 100MB ethernet with a couple of other
> XP machines on it, one of which is 500' away via a switch installed halfway.
> Main machine is 2.8G Dell with 500MB/80G, network machines are a 1.2G Athlon
> w/296MB/30G/XP Home, and an old Dell PII/366 laptop, also XP Home. I am not
> in a big hurry to switch from XP (all are SP2), because I have fortunately
> had no significant hacker/virus/crash problems with my current setup. XP and
> IE seem to work fine, as long as I remember to reboot about once a week. I
> was just feeling the urge to experiment again with Linux.
> 

You'll get a real surprise when you install - just about any of the
current popular distributions (Mandrake, SuSE, Red Hat) will pick up
just about any of the hardware you use automatically (except for
'winmodems' and some wireless cards).

Might be best to just install on one machine to dual-boot MS or Linux at
first.

Check out Samba -  http://www.samba.org allows Windows to share
harddrives/printers with linux on networh (pretty good advice on
configuration at http://www.linuxorbit.com/howto/sambahowto.php3)

Check out the Linux radio applications & utilities page:

http://radio.linux.org.au/

> Question 2:
> How about some opinions from XP users who are on Firefox instead of IE? Is
> the switchover really worth it? Will Firefox run ok with Linux?

Mozilla Firefox runs fine with linux - at the Firefox website there's a
link to download 'Firefox for linux/English'.

You'll need to go to the 'other operating systems and languages' to get
an XP version.  8-)


-- 
prm
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