Doze to Tux

Extracted from mailing list thread "I want my wife to be a guinea pig", decide on a good page name and then revise to be a page about migrating from Doze to Tux.

Subject: [Surrey] I want my wife to be a guinea pig! 

No, not another of those spams! :-) 

Gill uses an old P200 running W98 (now THAT might qualify as spam 
around here!). It really struggles with Firefox and I've been 
thinking about moving her upmarket (something really modern, e.g. 
twice as fast and twice as much memory!). 

And then I got to thinking about Linux (at last the ObLinux bit). 
She's a typical non-techie user, few applications. Some of the 
modern Linux desktops I think would look as close to W98 as 
W2K does (or closer). 

She uses WinWord. The previous upgrade was a bit of a struggle, 
moving from Ventura. If OpenOffice or AbiWord can cope with her 
embedded .pcx graphics I think this should be a doddle. 

She uses Excel. But probably not in a very advanced way. She 
still regards Excel as a giant leap backwards from her previous 
spreadsheet, SuperCalc 5. 

She'll need something to drive her Mustek 12000P scanner, but 
if that's a problem I'd probably just spend some money. It 
would be nice to get one of those all-in-one copier/printer/scanners 
that are quite reasonably priced now. Anyone have any recs 
on which of them play nicely with penguins? 

And of course she'll need the really important apps, such as 
Solitaire (UK Patience) and Sudoku. Without Sudoku I suspect 
this migration would be a non-starter. 

Based on past experience, we've tried to tidy up files by NOT 
moving them all across in one go. Instead she copies directories 
as and when she needs them. If a year goes by and something 
still hasn't been needed then it's junked. 

That's the part that I find hard to visualise. I know that if 
I put Samba on the new machine I could access files from the 
old one. But is there anything that allows a Linux machine to 
see files across a network on a W98 machine -- I don't want to 
force her to go back to the W98 pc to do the copy. 

All comments gladly received and may be pasted into the wiki! 

JohnW 

SMB could still be the solution to the problem. Linux can mount SMB 
shares; share the directory in question over the network on the Windows 98 
machine and leave it switched on. Then on the Linux machine, you can mount 
the directory shared Windows 98 with the smbmount command. Also check out 
smb4k, which provides a GUI front end to smbmount. 

Ian Gibbs 

> That's the part that I find hard to visualise. I know that if 
> I put Samba on the new machine I could access files from the 
> old one. But is there anything that allows a Linux machine to 
> see files across a network on a W98 machine -- I don't want to 
> force her to go back to the W98 pc to do the copy. 

Probably best to try the cifs client, that allows you to map windows shares. It's built into recent kernels, under network file systems. 

Casper

>Gill uses an old P200 running W98 (now THAT might qualify as spam 
>around here!). It really struggles with Firefox and I've been 
>thinking about moving her upmarket (something really modern, e.g. 
>twice as fast and twice as much memory!). 

There are a few handhelds available that could do that. ;o)))) 
You could then make the P200 into an IPCop firewall. Waste not, want not. :o) 

>And then I got to thinking about Linux (at last the ObLinux bit). 
>She's a typical non-techie user, few applications. Some of the 
>modern Linux desktops I think would look as close to W98 as 
>W2K does (or closer). 

With all the effort spent getting hardware to work in the last couple of years I 
think you may find that a newer machine may give you better Linux compatability 
than an older machine if it contains unpopular old cards. I'd probably steer 
clear of nVidia graohics too as I got my fingers burned with their binary drivers 
on a kernel update. 

>She uses WinWord. The previous upgrade was a bit of a struggle, 
>moving from Ventura. If OpenOffice or AbiWord can cope with her 
>embedded .pcx graphics I thinks should be a doddle. 

I just created what Gimp calls a pcx file and it inserted fine into a text 
document in Openoffice 2 Beta (Build 1.9.113) 

>She uses Excel. But probably not in a very advanced way. She 
>still regards Excel as a giant leap backwards from her previous 
>spreadsheet, SuperCalc 5. 

I do all my invoicing on Openoffice Calc. I use it in a noddy way and it seems to 
do everything I need. 

>She'll need something to drive her Mustek 12000P scanner, but 
>if that's a problem I'd probably just spend some money. It 
>would be nice to get one of those all-in-one copier/printer/scanners 
>that are quite reasonably priced now. Anyone have any recs 
>on which of them play nicely with penguins? 

I've always found Epson scanners are really well supported. They bend over 
backwards to provide technical specs to the OS developer community. Epson Avasys 
(formerly Epson Kowa) even produce proper Linux drivers for Epson printers, 
scanners and all-in-ones. See http://www.avasys.jp/english/linux_e/index.html I'm 
running an Epson Perfection 1650 scanner with an old version of their driver and 
I find it very satisfactory. For new scanners I would recommend you go to that 
site and check driver availability before purchase. Their software even seems to 
support scanning from a networked scanner on Linux or Windows or offering a local 
scaner as a network resource. 

>And of course she'll need the really important apps, such as 
>Solitaire (UK Patience) and Sudoku. Without Sudoku I suspect 
>this migration would be a non-starter. 

KPatience plays 15 different game types (18 variants) so hopefully one of them is 
the one Gill likes to play. It came in the games package when I installed KDE 
onto Ubuntu and runs under both KDE and Gnome. 

I haven't tried it but there seems to be a Ruby Sudoku app 
sudoku.rubyforge.org/ There also seems to be another one here 
http://www.tucows.com/get/410519_152023 

>That's the part that I find hard to visualise. I know that if 
>I put Samba on the new machine I could access files from the 
>old one. But is there anything that allows a Linux machine to 
>see files across a network on a W98 machine -- I don't want to 
>force her to go back to the W98 pc to do the copy. 

If you can share a folder on your copy of W98 you should be able to open it 
across the LAN with smbclient. You shouldn't need to install full Samba for that 
to work. 

Good luck, Let me know how you get on. 

PaulStimpson

Further stuff from the same thread, but about video drivers:

> I'd probably steer clear of nVidia graphics too 

I disagree with this. 

Much as I dislike them, the binary drivers are excellent when they work. I've 
had AGP stability issues on some machines, but that can be worked around. 

The nvidia installer is better than any any other binary driver I've ever 
seen. Many distributions come with the nvidia binary drivers prepackaged. 

You've also the option of using the open source "nv" driver if you don't need 
3D or dualhead. I've had good results with this. 

I believe the open source ATI drivers are OK, but they only work with the 
low-end Radeon cards. 
The ATI binary drivers are truly awful. 

Really old ATI cards (Rage series) seem ok. It took some hacking to get video 
overlays working on the card in my old laptop working, but it worked 
eventually. 

Modern Matrox cards also require a binary "HAL" kernel layer, which seems to 
be fairly problematic. Old Matrox cards (G100, G200, G400 cards) have good 
open source drivers, though IIRC 2D only. 

Support for onboard SiS/Intel chipsets seems to fairly poor in general. 

In short my recommendation would be a Matrox G200 (you can find them on ebay 
for almost nothing), or a nVidia card. 

Paul at nowt

> Much as I dislike them, the binary drivers are excellent when they work. I've 
> had AGP stability issues on some machines, but that can be worked around. 
> 
> The nvidia installer is better than any any other binary driver I've ever 
> seen. Many distributions come with the nvidia binary drivers prepackaged. 

I have to second this. When I ran Linux, I'd use nVidia stuff 
everytime - ran perfectly, and it had great performance. The only 
thing I'd do was every time there was a kernel update, or a new distro 
I wanted to upgrade to (eg:- Jumping from Fedora 1 to Fedora 2) was 
wait a few weeks until the new drivers were released from nVidia. OK, 
they're binary only so if this goes against your principles, then fair 
enough. 

Mark R