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If any donated Pentium 3 machines come in with Win 98 and at least 6 gigabytes of RAM, how about dual booting them with Windows 98 using 2 gigs and Unbuntu on the remainder. And if they're older machines, keep in mind Ubuntu Lite (haven't tried the lite version yet myself but plan to in the next few days).
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/InstallingUbuntuLite
http://www.ubuntulite.org/

Those of us who want to clear the good name of Bittorrent should do things like seed our favorite Linux flavor, and get our music from places where artists share freely under the Creative Commons license.

It enables the root account, which is generally disabled in Ubuntu. Instead, it uses "sudo", which is useful to restrict root rights and such. By enabling root, it opens up a huge security hole. You can learn more about this at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RootSudo

And I'm hoping that biannual OS reinstalls aren't the price of a feature-complete OS, as Microsoft would have me believe.

From the Ubuntu website:

"The installer may not be GUI, but you only ever need to use it once, because we support ongoing upgrades via the network, from version to version. You never need to reinstall the operating system, just upgrade from each released version to the next when you want to."

At the most you should only have to reboot biannually... to use the new kernel that comes with each new Ubuntu release.

Is to grab an Ubuntu Dapper preview live CD (and best of all, it's not an install CD, so ubuntu won't email your cleartext password to world + dog [joke])

It's pretty nice! I've been using the pre-releases for a while....

SUSE was sold to Novell, founder of SUSE fired.

Mandrake was sold, founder fired.

Any Linux company for sale? How about Ubuntu? Tomahawk? may be you guys can earn lot of money by selling the company than trying to earn. who cares firing you then, if you get good enough money to go to moon.

Should I look at Ubuntu or Kanotix? One thing I really like about Mandr* is the PLF packages

I believe the Ubuntu equivalent to PLF is the Multiverse.

Really lame. I'd pen a post lamenting what Slashdot has come to these days, but that would only serve to convey an expectation of something greater, which, frankly, is just sad...

So SM posts this for shits and giggles. Fair enough. It brings the Gentoo Ricer crowd out, which is entertaining for the rest of us and generates page views ergo ad revenue. I can almost see a four steps to profit cliché here, but I'll leave that to someone else.

Seriously though, what a load of bollocks. I certainly can't claim to have the vintage of some of the 20+ years sysadmins on here, but I've been a Linux user for 7-8 years now and that is evidently long enough to come to understand the merits of package management. Yes, when you're fat and fifteen and still living in your parent['s|s'] basement with nothing better to do all day than stick it out watching makefile lines scroll by, Gentoo seems like a good idea. If you're really fucking sad, you might even notice a perceptible difference.

But fuck, please stop trolling like a bunch of Mac/Ogg/etc zealots telling the rest of us about it - we don't fucking care. We have jobs to do, partners to go home to, lives to get on with. If I did still care for Linux on my main machine, Ubuntu would have me up and running in an hour or so - I couldn't have my computer out of action for a day because it's...er...compiling.

Now don't get me wrong - I understand the mentality. I know the mentality. It's the same mentality that led me to reinstall Windows anything as frequently as once a week for a period in an attempt to get it running tip top. It's about the struggle, the fun of getting there, the war, the conflict, the strife - that's the fun part. I am of a computing generation that cut its teeth editing CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files with elaborate startup menu configurations to optimise memory availability for specific applications (remember expanded memory, anyone?).* And it was great - we loved it, well, some of us did - until we actually had to get some work done.

Now I have to get work done, so I use a Mac. And countless Linux sysadmins out there will say the same thing - in the real world, you have to deliver results. Real, actual results. Dependability. Not downing the server every evening for a recompile. Reliability. Actual rather than theoretical uptime. We simply don't have time to be sitting round waiting for X to build so we can just sling some graphics on the screen.

And if y'all were doing something useful with your lives, neither would you...

iqu :|

(* Kudos to John Gruber for reminding me (through quoting someone else) of the glory days of MS-DOS - choice quote: "As a PC user, enduring the grotesqueries of that experience is something that we are actually proud of.")

... I certainly could be wrong.

Wow, you weren't kidding there. Here are some things of which you should take note:

• It is called Ubuntu
• There is a company behind Ubuntu, and that company is Canonical
• Certification for Ubuntu on the horizon

their web-based interface to activate phones ONLY works on Internet Explorer. Period. They actually check for other browsers and REJECT ALL OTHERS.

Maybe firefox's nifty extension User Agent Switcher can help you on that one. The morons wont even notice in their log files.

Additionally, our point of sale requires Terminal Server Client (RDP)

In this one, RDesktop can help you. It even comes with Ubuntu and Novell's Suse.

You did not hear about canonical . Did you?
Please check also paid support options at ubuntu website.

It could be that your particular problem isn't seen by anyone else (they may have similar but subtley different kit and not see the problem). If you wander off and no one else mentions it the odds are when you come back in six weeks the problem will still be there (hint: looking at the HP Laptop Support page no one has mentioned the problem on your laptop model).

While it may be daunting, your best chance of having this fixed quickly is to head over and file a useful bug report (e.g. Description of the problem, simple step by step instructions indicating the lead up to the bug, what you expected to happen and what actually happened) over on Launchpad.

You want ubuntu unstable? Well that is dapper at the moment isn't?
Though when dapper is released you have to do a dist-upgrade to the next development release.

If you really want bleeding edge ubuntu, then perhaps this version is better: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDownUnder/BOFs/Grump yGroundhog ?

Anyway, if you want just more than security updates, then the backports repositories is enough for me.

Got released in April, but the CDs didn't come out until everything was polished?

If you roll out two releases, then you have to support two releases, which isn't very fun. If you REALLY want the latest Ubuntu in April, you can just install the latest snapshot. That way you can help test it, and file bug reports, etc!

get it here: http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/flight5 Live CD and .torrents available

Would be nice to see something like this for all platforms.

Well it's not exactly identical, but one of the people who works on SELinux has been running a test machine on and off since Fedora Core 2. Details are here. Similar to the OS X box that was hacked in 30 minutes he does have SSH open and provides you with local account access, the local account being root. I wouls suggest that that shows a certain amount of confidence in its security. Also note that SELinux is coming to Ubuntu soon.

Jedidiah.

BSD-style license and backed by Intel and Microsoft? You might as well write them a check with a note "here's some help in your crusade against Cisco".

No thanks, I'd rather contribute to a GPL project, like a router derivation of Embedded Ubuntu.

That is a sad story. That is definately not what Open Source is about. Unfortunately it is a result of you deciding to select Redhat as your first Linux Distrobution. Redhat is really an enterprise version of Linux that I would only recommend to medium-large businesses that want the reassurance of having a supported version of Linux.

If you want an easy to use, polished Linux Distrobution that *Just Works out of the box* with a thriving community I recommend that you try Ubuntu Linux (http://www.ubuntu.com/). You will like the Ubuntu difference (http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu):

"Ubuntu is Free Software, and available to you free of charge. It's also Free in the sense of giving you rights of Software Freedom, but you probably knew that already! Unlike many of the other commercial distributions in the free and open source world (Libranet, Lindows, Xandros, Red Hat) the Ubuntu team really does believe that Free software should be free of software licencing charges."

In fact they will even send you a copy free of charge (they will even pay for postage):
https://shipit.ubuntu.com/

You can safely use/deploy Ubuntu knowing that you will never be caught in an expensive update cycle. Ubuntu is tailored for the Desktop and as a result offers a superior Desktop experience than 'Redhat Enterprise Linux' which is more tailored for servers anyway.

Also you will always be able to get Firefox from the firefox website (http://www.getfirefox.com/ absolutely free of charge (although they do welcome donations). Firefox strives to be a free, standards compliant web browser that aims to work on many different platforms (i.e. ensuring that you don't have to buy Windows in order to surf the Internet).

That is a sad story. That is definately not what Open Source is about. Unfortunately it is a result of you deciding to select Redhat as your first Linux Distrobution. Redhat is really an enterprise version of Linux that I would only recommend to medium-large businesses that want the reassurance of having a supported version of Linux.

If you want an easy to use, polished Linux Distrobution that *Just Works out of the box* with a thriving community I recommend that you try Ubuntu Linux (http://www.ubuntu.com/). You will like the Ubuntu difference (http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu):

"Ubuntu is Free Software, and available to you free of charge. It's also Free in the sense of giving you rights of Software Freedom, but you probably knew that already! Unlike many of the other commercial distributions in the free and open source world (Libranet, Lindows, Xandros, Red Hat) the Ubuntu team really does believe that Free software should be free of software licencing charges."

In fact they will even send you a copy free of charge (they will even pay for postage):
https://shipit.ubuntu.com/

You can safely use/deploy Ubuntu knowing that you will never be caught in an expensive update cycle. Ubuntu is tailored for the Desktop and as a result offers a superior Desktop experience than 'Redhat Enterprise Linux' which is more tailored for servers anyway.

Also you will always be able to get Firefox from the firefox website (http://www.getfirefox.com/ absolutely free of charge (although they do welcome donations). Firefox strives to be a free, standards compliant web browser that aims to work on many different platforms (i.e. ensuring that you don't have to buy Windows in order to surf the Internet).

That is a sad story. That is definately not what Open Source is about. Unfortunately it is a result of you deciding to select Redhat as your first Linux Distrobution. Redhat is really an enterprise version of Linux that I would only recommend to medium-large businesses that want the reassurance of having a supported version of Linux.

If you want an easy to use, polished Linux Distrobution that *Just Works out of the box* with a thriving community I recommend that you try Ubuntu Linux (http://www.ubuntu.com/). You will like the Ubuntu difference (http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu):

"Ubuntu is Free Software, and available to you free of charge. It's also Free in the sense of giving you rights of Software Freedom, but you probably knew that already! Unlike many of the other commercial distributions in the free and open source world (Libranet, Lindows, Xandros, Red Hat) the Ubuntu team really does believe that Free software should be free of software licencing charges."

In fact they will even send you a copy free of charge (they will even pay for postage):
https://shipit.ubuntu.com/

You can safely use/deploy Ubuntu knowing that you will never be caught in an expensive update cycle. Ubuntu is tailored for the Desktop and as a result offers a superior Desktop experience than 'Redhat Enterprise Linux' which is more tailored for servers anyway.

Also you will always be able to get Firefox from the firefox website (http://www.getfirefox.com/ absolutely free of charge (although they do welcome donations). Firefox strives to be a free, standards compliant web browser that aims to work on many different platforms (i.e. ensuring that you don't have to buy Windows in order to surf the Internet).

Two hours to type in the simple commands from the Ubuntu restricted formats page?

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RestrictedFormats

It's interesting you asked that - I went to find the answer and it is actually documented in the faq:)

http://www.ubuntu.com/support/faq?action=show&redi rect=FAQ


How can I do Flash, Java or mp3 ?

Where are Flash / Java / mp3 support? Is there a Free and working DVD player or video player?

There are a number of commonly used formats and tools that we are unable to support because they have restrictive distribution rights, require special licenses, or are patent encumbered. We may be able to provide support for some of these in restricted, but in general, we would prefer to support Free software and Free formats. If you add the debian-marillat repository to your Ubuntu sources.list (use testing/main), you can use Synaptic or apt-get to install MPlayer, lame, and other tools to deal with non-free formats like DVD and MP3. A relatively clean way of getting Totem to work with all the proprietary file formats is to install totem-xine rather than totem-gstreamer. Then you can download the win32 codecs from elsewhere and install them in ~/.gnome2/totem-addons/ and everything works fine. Of course, this isn't as cool and integrated as using GStreamer for handling all the media, but it works well. If you wish to use the Java SDK/RE, see Java on Debian for an installation guide (it's also valid for Ubuntu). As an alternative to the above mentioned Java on Debian tutorial, you may wish to install some pre-packaged packages. The website http://z42.de/debian/ lists an apt source that lets you install for example Sun Java2 v1.5 with a single command:apt-get install sun-j2sdk1.5 sun-j2sdk1.5debian


It also links to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RestrictedFormats, which is much more in depth.

It's interesting you asked that - I went to find the answer and it is actually documented in the faq:)

http://www.ubuntu.com/support/faq?action=show&redi rect=FAQ


How can I do Flash, Java or mp3 ?

Where are Flash / Java / mp3 support? Is there a Free and working DVD player or video player?

There are a number of commonly used formats and tools that we are unable to support because they have restrictive distribution rights, require special licenses, or are patent encumbered. We may be able to provide support for some of these in restricted, but in general, we would prefer to support Free software and Free formats. If you add the debian-marillat repository to your Ubuntu sources.list (use testing/main), you can use Synaptic or apt-get to install MPlayer, lame, and other tools to deal with non-free formats like DVD and MP3. A relatively clean way of getting Totem to work with all the proprietary file formats is to install totem-xine rather than totem-gstreamer. Then you can download the win32 codecs from elsewhere and install them in ~/.gnome2/totem-addons/ and everything works fine. Of course, this isn't as cool and integrated as using GStreamer for handling all the media, but it works well. If you wish to use the Java SDK/RE, see Java on Debian for an installation guide (it's also valid for Ubuntu). As an alternative to the above mentioned Java on Debian tutorial, you may wish to install some pre-packaged packages. The website http://z42.de/debian/ lists an apt source that lets you install for example Sun Java2 v1.5 with a single command:apt-get install sun-j2sdk1.5 sun-j2sdk1.5debian


It also links to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RestrictedFormats, which is much more in depth.

If i'm a moron then you can obviously install MythTv and get it going using synaptic....

if you cant, then you too are a MORON.

Well, I've never tried, and I'm not about to for someone yelling on slashdot. But I certainly *found* mythtv on synaptic, yes.

Can you add the universe and multiverse with synaptic also? i must have missed that option..

Of course you can. Like I said in the post you're responding to, click on Settings -> Repositories. Now click on Add -- it gives you options to add things like Community Maintained (Universe) and Non-free (Multiverse).

Also, when i first turned it on, THIS MORON, had never heard the terms universe and multiverse... i just wanted the apps listed and they werent.

See, this is what bothers me. You know enough to know the names of the apps you want, but you can't read very much about how to add packages with your new system? No, I shouldn't say that -- you clearly read something to figure out about universe / multiverse package installation. I'm guessing it wasn't just from browsing around http://www.ubuntu.com/ reading about your new system, because you'd hear about the GUI method quickly enough if you looked.

What the hell is with 'dependencies' i just want the thing to install the crap it needs., Synaptic says "certain dependencies are not available".. what then NON-MORON.

Well, then I'd try to figure out what's going on. But this has never happened to me. I'm sorry it apparently happened to you. But, you're not a moron, you ought to be able to make some sense of it.

I'm not an idiot. I just didnt like having to re-learn command line crapola.

Nuf said.

You know, I think I agree with you -- you're probably not an idiot. But you're bashing Ubuntu for making you do things using the command line when they've provided a nice GUI front-end and a large support web site. That's not a way to make friends, convince people you're rational; it is, dare I say it, kind of moronic. But I sympathize with you (to a point). I've used lots of linux before and my first instinct is to try to do things with the command line. Time and time again I've struggled with things in Ubuntu only to find that Ubuntu has provided a simple GUI for exactly what I'm trying to do. It's an embarassingly good distribution and wonderfully easy to use. Please don't blame it just because you've made it hard to use.

It would have been nice if they tried Xubuntu too. Ubuntu based, XFCE as a light, yet feature rich (to some extent) desktop. Clean, good looking, very responsive. Some screenies here.

So of course it can run, and run well, on older hardware. The only question is what you have to give up to make it work well.

What you needed was the Koala Mini from System76.

It's the exact same size as a Mac mini, just as stylish, and the same price.

But lots of upgradable options and uses Ubuntu (or Kubuntu) Linux as the OS.

I just ordered one myself after a friend recommended their laptops (she loves the one she got from them).

It appears to be an official Ubuntu project:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EmbeddedUbuntu

Niagara version 2 has taped out and will have 8 floating point units (or so I hear). It should arrive in early 2007,

The later "Rock" processor offers true SMP capabilities, as a Sparc IV+ replacement for the really big boxes. (But expect a Fujitsu Sparc processor to fill in the gap while we wait for this).

PS I hold a few SUNW shares

I'm running a Ubuntu beta release, DapperFlight4 [...] This thing, (a damn BETA release!)

Alpha release, even. A beta release of Dapper won't happen for another month. Of course, that only makes your experience even more impressive.

I'd expect a security update that addresses this *very* soon. This is a bad one.

Security fix has been out for some time.

Available here

I do not believe dpkg provides an option for such a query based on a package not already installed. The only one I know that does is "apt-file", but it does not return changelog info, just file listings. I wish I had a better solution for you, as it would be nice to know as well.

I do not believe dpkg provides an option for such a query based on a package not already installed. The only one I know that does is "apt-file", but it does not return changelog info, just file listings. I wish I had a better solution for you, as it would be nice to know as well.

How do I use that with Ubuntu instead of OpenSuSE?

Downoad the latest ubuntu CD, then:

1 .Enable the universe repository (see AddingRepositoriesHowto)
2. Make sure that you have the latest mesa, libglitz1 and libglitz-glx1, xserver-xgl

            sudo apt-get update
            sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa libglitz1 libglitz-glx1 xserver-xgl

3. Install compiz-kde and/or compiz-gnome depending on your desktop

            sudo apt-get install compiz-gnome

4. Replace /etc/X11/X with a symlink to /usr/bin/Xgl

            sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/Xgl /etc/X11/X

5. Close all applications and restart gdm (This will log you out!)

            sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

6. Log in, then in a terminal start compiz and the Gnome window decorator (do NOT use sudo here)

            compiz --replace gconf decoration wobbly fade minimize move place resize scale switcher cube rotate zoom
            gnome-window-decorator

            Leave out the gconf plugin if you don't have compiz-gnome installed

7. Add these commands to ~/.gnomerc if you want this on every login (which you probably do)

Taken from the Ubuntu xgl howto wiki

How do I use that with Ubuntu instead of OpenSuSE?

Downoad the latest ubuntu CD, then:

1 .Enable the universe repository (see AddingRepositoriesHowto)
2. Make sure that you have the latest mesa, libglitz1 and libglitz-glx1, xserver-xgl

            sudo apt-get update
            sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa libglitz1 libglitz-glx1 xserver-xgl

3. Install compiz-kde and/or compiz-gnome depending on your desktop

            sudo apt-get install compiz-gnome

4. Replace /etc/X11/X with a symlink to /usr/bin/Xgl

            sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/Xgl /etc/X11/X

5. Close all applications and restart gdm (This will log you out!)

            sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

6. Log in, then in a terminal start compiz and the Gnome window decorator (do NOT use sudo here)

            compiz --replace gconf decoration wobbly fade minimize move place resize scale switcher cube rotate zoom
            gnome-window-decorator

            Leave out the gconf plugin if you don't have compiz-gnome installed

7. Add these commands to ~/.gnomerc if you want this on every login (which you probably do)

Taken from the Ubuntu xgl howto wiki

Works fine for me on a native AMD64 Ubuntu flight-4 install, admittedly I had to get some community debs from the Ubuntu forum to get compiz to work on AMD64 but it should be easy x86 I hear. Since I got it working it's fast and fun. It certainly rivals OS X in some ways and this is only the beginning ;)

Ubuntu has bounties.

Flathead

One suggestion I can make is to go to Ubuntu - in the menu - see Shipit - Free CDs - it means what it say...you can order as many CD's as you like and it is shipped over to you. Free. So order 1000 CD's - each case comes with a Installation CD and a Live CD. Hand them out at an University. They are free to get, free to hand out. That's one way of passing out free Linux distro's and Ubuntu make it as cheap as possible for you to pass it around - they ship it to you free. So for those uni students, why not get CD's, hand them out as if they are sweets? I've ordered about 100 CD's and gave 80 of them to the local library so people could help themselves - doing my little bit.

After all Aero Glass is mostly based on developments seen quite a while ago in OS X.

Repeating this again and again doesn't make it true. In fact, there are no significant features in Aqua that weren't known and used previously in UIs. In particular, Apple invented neither animation, nor hardware acceleration, nor transparency as part of the UI.

If anything, Apple deserves a good deal of criticism for misrepresenting the Aqua style of GUI as the result of Apple research.

if ya gotta buy a new box to run Vista, then why not just simply make the switch

Indeed, why not make the switch? After all, if it is cutting edge GUI features you desire, Gnome has both Vista and Aqua beat.

True Windows users mainly run as admin mainly because most programs require them to have that many rights.

Two of the biggest targets in Windows is Internet Explorer & Outlook which all Windows computers have at least Internet Explorer & Outlook Express. You can never truly remove either of these programs without causing major problems on the computer.

The reason Linux is even harder to target is you have several different e-mail apps to choose from & everybody isn't using the same app with the same secuirity flaw. This makes it harder to target Linux users although not impossible as I mentioned earlier. One package that seems to be in many flavors of Linux is the Apache web server which was targeted by several viruses.

So my point was Microsft would have to release 100+ different flavors of Windows that prefered a different set of software & had a different user interface. That would make it a harder target like Linux is right now, since flavors that prefer KDE for the GUI use mainly KDE apps & flavors that prefer Gnome use Gnome apps mainly. The other advantage I can think of for Linux is that because you can see the source when you post about a bug or flaw, assuming you know enough about programing, you can also include a patch for the problem. This happened with the 0-day exploit in Wine, when the flaw was posted a patch was posted at about the same time.

That is why I think making Windows safe by making it more like Linux would be bad in some ways. I think making admin right needed was a really bad idea for the programers who did it. I know that Intuit has learned from that mistake, in the 2003 version of TurboTax you needed Admin rights to install & run the program, while in the 2004 version & the 2005 version you only needed admin rights to install the app with regular user rights being enough to run it.

Windows Vista is supposed to fix the issue with users always running around as an admin evven though they almost never need it.

For an example of Linux running around as root check out Linspire Linux. Yes I know running as root is a bad idea which is why I'm considering either Kubuntu or Ubuntu when I make the switch to Linux, they both only give you sudo access & if you decided to install root support the forum users will assume you know enough to fix it yourself & will not help you other then tell you to re-install Linux, this is because running as root on that flavor of Linux causes problems if you are not an expert & know what you are doing with it.

My current problem is going to be reformating my data drives from NTFS to FAT32 without loosing any data, the reason for FAT32 is because they are external & I'd like to be able to use them on other Windows computers, currently I can because the other computers I connect them to are also running Windows XP which supports NTFS. That means I need to either move the data around & format one drive at a time or use a tool to convert the partitions. I will no longer use Partition Magic as it is now owned by the evil Symantec company.

I installed linux (ubuntu), and after 1 hour of trying to get my wireless trying to work (unsucessfully), and two hours of trying to figure things out and arrange things to my liking (unsucessfully) I am going to say linux is NOT ready for the desktop.

Ie, for anything in windows, you either right click or go to the control panel, and if you can't figure it out from there you have a really odd problem. I've only used a mac a few times, but whenever I try out my friends OS X laptop, everything seems intuitive and I never really have a problem getting things the way I like them. Linux is the exact opposite of this. I shouldn't have to search forums or read a dummy manual just to basic things for a desktop. I shouldn't have to spend hours searching for things or configuring things. The only distro I've heard that is nearly ready is linspire, but it's nearly the same freaking price as windows.

And if you look for the support contracts for any of the major distros, it is in the 100s of $s just for granny to make a phone call. IIRC, on windows basic support is free (at least, it was the last time I called). Source: $250 for a phone call for Ubuntu support. And no, grandma isn't going to use IRC.
http://www.ubuntu.com/support/supportoptions/paids upport

You can have a desktop linux NOW. Fetch a modern commercial distro (http://www.ubuntu.com/>Ubuntu, Mandrake, etc) or any of the free ones and you'll have an excellent desktop with little issues, if any.

    The people that bitch about the "linux desktop" haven't normally ever tried Linux and want something that feels like their WinXP desktop. If you're looking for that, yes, there's nothing like it now and probably won't be for a while. If you want an useable Unix desktop, there's a lot of excellent ones arround.
    You have a wide choice of desktops and window and managers, and there's a lot of excellent software for them. A linux desktop is useable today, and by anyone - i had Ubuntu on a desktop for a while and my mother, who's 'computer-imparied' had zero issues using it. Besides being unable to find the blue E icon ;)

I use a combination of them as well to run Linux on my windows box. If you use qemu to create the image file in vmware format you can then setup any vmplayer file to run any operating system. Currently I have the following image files, Ubuntu (Breezy), Ubuntu (Dapper), Windows 2003 Server, Debian, and BSD. All files were created first in qemu then I installed through VMPlayer. Runs as well as an official VM Player file available for download. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/VMwarePlayerAndQemu for more information.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

"what does Google plan to do that Ubuntu isn't already doing? ...|... How about live person tech support on the phone?"

I thought that sounded weird (the idea of a consumer Linux distro not offering phone support), so I just visited Ubuntu's website:

Support options, Premium package, "Phone support: Yes". $250 for 1 year of phone support for desktop PCs.

They also act as backup for other support options (such as local computer shops) who can answer simple questions themselves, and refer to Canonical for anything they don't know.

Most Linux distros have phone support now, I was tempted once to phone Mandrake (now Mandriva) but I got an answer from their paid support team via the web interface instead as it happens. I'm pretty sure that Suse, RedHat and all the rest will let you phone them if you pay for the person's time.

(Just as an order-of-magnitude reference, I googled "Microsoft support", and people are advertising "as low as £10 pcm", which is about $210 per year. I would look on support.microsoft.com, but I really don't have the bandwidth at the moment...)

Both Google and Ubuntu will be exhibiting at the Southern California Linux Expo February 11th and 12th at the Radisson hotel at Los Angeles Airport. In addition both Chris Dibona and Dan Kegal from Google will be speaking at the show.

Operating systems?
Office suites?
Web browsers?

The message from Microsoft: Never visit your grandma without your 512MB flash stick full of patches and antispyware progs.

Or just upgrade that crappy old Wintel to Ubuntu, or another distro provided you can trick it out for her. Get everything set up and neither of you will have to worry.

Then you can spend you visits being with your Grandma rather than with her computer. Odds are she only wants a computer to check/send e-mail, maybe write and print a letter, trade digital photos and listen to music. None of that requires MS Windows and all of is far easier to do on OS X (you know it is, just admit it) or even on a highly tuned desktop like Ubuntu (you know that, too). She won't love you any less when her computer no longer needs fixing. You'll get more good will drinking coffee (or harder) with her than from an age of MS Windows repairs.

It's not really my area but I thought I'd offer a few suggestions:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Team The Ubuntu accessibility team. "The Ubuntu Accessibility Team aims to raise the level of accessibilty support within Ubuntu and its derivatives." IMO, seems rather preliminary. There's no obvious links to screenreaders or replacements for any of the other programs that sight-impaired Windows users may have come to regard as 'standard.'

Obviously using Linux from the CLI through a Braille terminal isn't a big problem in terms of interface design (most braille terminals that I've seen mimic 80-column, 1-line displays, or fractions thereof). Apparently there is a kernel patch that needs to be applied for scrolling to work well. (http://www.linuxdocs.org/HOWTOs/Access-HOWTO-9.ht ml) That site seems somewhat out of date though, so what it describes may not be necessary anymore.

I'm just throwing these links out there as a starting point; I'm hopeful maybe someone who knows more about how Linux works from the perspective of someone with an accessibility issue will comment, as I'm quite interested also.

My rt2500 linksys wireless G card worked out-of-the-box with Ubuntu 5.10. A small config file change and WPA works fine out-of-the-box too. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WifiDocs/RalinkRT2500?acti on=show&redirect=Rt2500WirelessCardsHowTo