December 22, 2005
SUSE Me
About a month ago I picked up a circa 2000 Pentium PC, without an operating system, for $26 (it was for a good cause.) I figured that at the very least I had an 80 G hard drive from the deal, and even better, I might have another computer for the kids to IM and Runsescape the evening away.
I loaded SUSE linux on it -- because it's free and I wanted to see how workable it is for a desktop. Installation was a snap (as easy, and faster, than the recent reinstall of Win XP I did) and the resulting system was pretty nice: OpenOffice is functional and familiar, and it easily meets my modest mail, browsing and light office-app requirements for not-work stuff. It auto-updates patches, has a really usable interface, and is mostly plug-play are far as peripherals. It took a bit of digging to get it to find and use the remote printer, but otherwise, it's been surprisingly smooth sailing.
Bottom line: I deeded to the kids my (very similar) Windows desktop and I'm keeping the linux box for myself. I don't have to hear the cries of "This is different than the one my brother/sister is using!" and I get a perfectly functional replacement for the price of a wireless network card. Sweet.
A month into daily use, the only thing I miss is easy Nikon RAW photo editing, and I haven't solved lack of access to the data from my old computer -- the disk is mounted, but access is denied, for now. Even when allowed, it will be read-only, because of Window's HPFS. OK, that's 1.75 things. I guess I have to dust off those old and never really robust unix skills.
Misc. posted by Kelly at December 22, 2005 02:09 PM