[NBLUG/talk] nblug newbie here, distro+applic. query...

sms at sonic.net sms at sonic.net
Mon Dec 8 12:47:00 PST 2003


Hi, all... did a quick scan of the past couple months' archives,
found 1 "which distro?" thread which didn't answer my questions.
Saw no obvious answers via nblug's "links" & "documents" pages.

My background is strong to UNIX SysAdmin, mostly Solaris; & while
I've run Linux bat home I was happy to install-&-forget... so long
as it did what I wanted, I didn't feel the need to update/etc; IIRC,
I was still on Kernel 1.something, via Corel (I went with Corel
back when their WordPerfect was (IMO) a pretty unique offering in
Linuxspace).

My longtime box seems to be getting pretty iffy, & I'm looking to
replace it.  It _appears_ that, of local vendors, CompUSA will get
me the most box/$; I'm planning on getting XP Pro & multibooting
that (for the few Windows apps I can't replace), likely via GRUB
(the Corel install used LILO & I multibooted to Win95).  I've yet
to profess undying devotion to any distro (I'll join in flaming
the infidels later (or maybe not)); at this point, I'm more about
the apps that the distro, but I _do_ want a solid/stable distro
(nothing bleeding-edge).

I plan to run OpenOffice 1.1 & Samba3 ('cos I'd like to add Samba
to my resume).  The Office requirements seem clear enough from
their page (Gnome 2.2, Glibc2.2.0+, JDK/JRE 1.4.0_02 or 1.4.1_01,
&c), but it's not so clear to me what I need for Samba3.

Can anyone point me at a app/distro dependency page?  I'm (very
tentatively) thinking of Debian's "Sarge" (testing) distro... does
anyone know if this will be a needlessly roundabout base for my
Office+Samba (i.e. will I have to spend 50 hour's apt-get'ing before
I can run these (I'm in rural west-county, modem-only))?  Can anyone
tell me how I could get a pre-burned CD with Sarge (& GRUB, I hope)?

Is there anything "obvious" that I'm overlooking?

Many thanks!

- Steve S.






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