[ILUG] Re: Reccomend a distro for the offline user.

[Rory Browne]

I'm running SuSE on a lan at the minute, that isn't connected to the
internet. I reckon it's ideal for newbies, as well as the fact that
SuSE is famous for packing just about everything on to the
Professional version dvd. I'm not sure if it's still on the shelves,
but if you find the may copy of Linux Magzine, I believe SuSE 9.2 Pro
is on the cover with 7.5 gigs of sw, which probably includes Video
Editing Software(Lives I believe it's called), as well as all the
usual desktop software.



On 4/20/05, Gavin McCullagh <ilug_gmc at fiachra.ucd.ie> wrote:
> Hi Jarlath,
> 
> In gmane.user-groups.linux.ilug.general, you wrote:
> 
> > A friend of mine wants to try linux, and is looking to me.
> 
> > But he has no internet connection, so it must be stable (ish) from the start.
> 
> It's probably not an ideal way to pick a distro but if it will never be
> online, you might have to think in terms of what he might needs but certain
> distros cannot distribute.  For example:
> 
>  - libcss (dvd decryption)
>  - MP3 encoding/decoding support
>  - win32 codecs
>  - ....
> 
> If you pick a Free distro such as Debian, Fedora or Ubuntu, these will
> definitely not be on the cd.  I'm unsure whether a commercial distro such
> as lindows, xandros or suse might provide some/all of these.  Otherwise
> will have to go online somewhere to get them.  I guess you could make a
> cdrom of Christian Marillat's unofficial archive in order to add these
> packages to debian/ubuntu.
> 
> Basically what I'm saying is you need a distro which is as self-contained
> on cdrom as possible and that if he requires patented/proprietary stuff
> that may be an issue.
> 
> > He wants to edit videos from his digital camcorder and do regular desktop
> > stuff.
> 
> I don't know too much about what video codec encoder/decoders are
> distributed but you might have some difficulties there too.
> 
> A friend is using ubuntu offline.  I set it up for her and added much of
> the above stuff.  I recently made the mistake of upgrading from the Hoary
> cd.  This broke all gstreamer mp3 stuff :-( and I had to bring it online to
> upgrade the proprietary stuff.  Be careful with offline upgrades like this.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> 
> Gavin
> 
> 
> --
> Irish Linux Users' Group
> http://www.linux.ie/mailman/listinfo/ilug/
> 
> 
> 
>