I'm thinking of giving CentOS to a non-tech user for her new desktop. He needs are small. She has been used to Mozilla for both mail and browsing, so equivalents there are not a problem. She needs grip and lame, for her mp3s - again no problem. In fact the only problem I can see is that gwenview doesn't appear to have the kipi-plugins. I can see libkipi listed, but no plugins, and a pbone search didn't find it for me. Perhaps it's available from a repo that I don't have? This is the tool of choice for me, for photo-printing. I think I've covered the areas that she's interested in. Can anyone point out any other things I should consider? Once I have the system set up as she needs I shall set up cron jobs to keep her up to date. Anne -- New to KDE4? - get help from http://userbase.kde.org Just found a cool new feature? Add it to UserBase -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20090924/e106183d/attachment.sig>
>-----Original Message----- >From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On Behalf >Of Anne Wilson >Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 11:11 AM >To: CentOS mailing list >Subject: [CentOS] CentOS for non-tech user > >I'm thinking of giving CentOS to a non-tech user for her new desktop. He >needs are small. She has been used to Mozilla for both mail and browsing, so >equivalents there are not a problem. She needs grip and lame, for her mp3s - >again no problem. In fact the only problem I can see is that gwenview >doesn't >appear to have the kipi-plugins. I can see libkipi listed, but no plugins, >and a pbone search didn't find it for me. Perhaps it's available from a repo >that I don't have? This is the tool of choice for me, for photo-printing. > >I think I've covered the areas that she's interested in. Can anyone point >out >any other things I should consider?OpenOffice? The RPMforge and Epel repos are always good bets, at least they have been for me. Just make sure you use the yum-priorities plugin. You break it, you buy it - kind of. ;-) -- /Sorin -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature Size: 5106 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20090924/64d0ba4f/attachment.bin>
Anne Wilson a ?crit :> I'm thinking of giving CentOS to a non-tech user for her new desktop.I'm running a small computer business in South France, installing desktops and servers for professionals like small companies. I have almost exclusively non-tech users, and CentOS + RPMForge + the odd self-built package suits the job perfectly. Though I do admit GNOME integration is way better than KDE (no flames intended). http://www.microlinux.fr Cheers, Niki
Anne Wilson wrote:> I'm thinking of giving CentOS to a non-tech user for her new desktop. He > needs are small. She has been used to Mozilla for both mail and browsing, > so > equivalents there are not a problem. She needs grip and lame, for her > mp3s - > again no problem. In fact the only problem I can see is that gwenview > doesn't > appear to have the kipi-plugins. I can see libkipi listed, but no > plugins, > and a pbone search didn't find it for me.Why CentOS, as a matter of interest. I'm a great fan of CentOS for servers, but I would have thought Fedora would be more suitable for the purpose you are talking about. -- Timothy Murphy e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366 s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
I have always used Ubuntu for desktop linux and CentOS for servers. Have never tried CentOS as a desktop. Perhaps I should? Matt On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 4:11 AM, Anne Wilson <cannewilson at googlemail.com> wrote:> I'm thinking of giving CentOS to a non-tech user for her new desktop. ?He > needs are small. ?She has been used to Mozilla for both mail and browsing, so > equivalents there are not a problem. ?She needs grip and lame, for her mp3s - > again no problem. ?In fact the only problem I can see is that gwenview doesn't > appear to have the kipi-plugins. ?I can see libkipi listed, but no plugins, > and a pbone search didn't find it for me. ?Perhaps it's available from a repo > that I don't have? ?This is the tool of choice for me, for photo-printing. > > I think I've covered the areas that she's interested in. ?Can anyone point out > any other things I should consider? > > Once I have the system set up as she needs I shall set up cron jobs to keep > her up to date. > > Anne > -- > New to KDE4? - get help from http://userbase.kde.org > Just found a cool new feature? ?Add it to UserBase
Anne Wilson wrote:> I'm thinking of giving CentOS to a non-tech user for her new desktop. He > needs are small. She has been used to Mozilla for both mail and browsing, so > equivalents there are not a problem. She needs grip and lame, for her mp3s - > again no problem.Desktop, non-techie - use Ubuntu instead. I'm a big CentOS fan, I joined even the Facebook group (lol), but its place is on the server or, perhaps, on a workstation for a power user (or for things like running scientific apps on the desktop). If you're a PhD running quantum theory equations with Mathematica on your Xeon multicore workstation, I can very well see why you would prefer CentOS, or even Red Hat Enterprise proper. But non-tech persons, they will be much more comfortable with Ubuntu. Much, much more comfortable. It will do more things for them, they may even be able to tinker with it, in a small way. Your support calls will be much reduced. ;-) CentOS (any RHE derivative, basically) is a less good choice for this particular situation. Heck, I consider myself very knowledgeable (been using Linux since Slackware came on a stack of floppies and I had it dual-boot with a novelty OS called Windows 95; made my own distribution once from scratch; been using Red Hat nearly since the beginning) and I still don't run CentOS on my desktop - I use Ubuntu instead. (actually, as I'm getting more and more involved with higher-end-ish digital photo and digital video processing, I find myself booting Vista a lot more often on my home PC - it's a long story and yes I am aware of all the wonderful Linux video apps) -- Florin Andrei http://florin.myip.org/
On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 4:11 AM, Anne Wilson <cannewilson at googlemail.com> wrote:> I'm thinking of giving CentOS to a non-tech user for her new desktop. ?He > needs are small. ?She has been used to Mozilla for both mail and browsing, soI believe if you install all the multimedia stuff that's described on the CentOS Wiki and K3b, and the other things previous responses have mentioned, OpenOffice.org, etc., she will be fine. The one thing I suggest you teach her is where her files are and how to backup to a CD or DVD. I ran into an issue with K3b (which otherwise works perfectly for me), where it couldn't automatically erase a CD-RW (which I think it claims it can do), so I need to su - and as root "umount /dev/hdd" before it can erase a CD-RW. Hopefully she won't need to do that, as running as root is probably not something she should be doing. I have installed one package from the FC6 DVD (KDEEDU) on CentOS 5 (32 bit) to get KStars and that worked fine. But, as Phil pointed out, maybe better to rebuild from the srpm.
I've been generally unhappy with my CentOS desktop both at home and at
work, when it comes to thinks like sound and video.
I'd recommend going with Fedora Core, to be honest. Much as I love
CentOS on my servers.
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