Migrating from WinXP Pro to Ubuntu 10.10
Richard Owlett
rowlett at pcnetinc.com
Fri Oct 15 16:48:54 UTC 2010
I'm a senior citizen migrating to *nix whose last formal course
work used 026's and line printers for I/O. My personal systems
have progressed from CPM80 (Digital Research) thru Win 3.1 to
WinXP Pro. Some of my personal preferences are shaped by that.
I have Ubuntu 10.10 up and running in test mode from a USB drive.
My first impression is that the default installation tries to be
"all things to all people" while NOT supplying some specific
tools that I want.
I asked essentially these questions on another forum. After
receiving some generic Linux answers I was pointed to this list.
INSTALLATION QUESTIONS:
Can I have a pruned configuration be my typical boot?
Can I modify anything on the test configuration?
I discovered that on reboot I had lost changes made to desktop.
Can I install to the USB drive *WITHOUT* writing ANYTHING to the
hard-drive?
Related to my motivation for running the test from USB.
ACCESSING INTERNET:
While browsing files available thru the default desktop, one
seemed to say that internet access via an external RS-232 dial up
modem was not available with standard drivers. BUT when browsing
the descriptions of installed software it appeared that pppcfg
(IIRC) handled that. I'm confused. My modem is a U.S. Robotics
5686 model 0701 {V.90 56k - yes is old}
I didn't spot any reference to firewalls or ant-virus tools. Is
that accomplished in a different manner in the Linux world?
GENERAL:
I wish to end up with
GUI - exists
Open Office - exists
Tcl/Tk - have appropriate executables on CD?
Scilab/SciosLab - will have to download
SeaMonkey - have strong preference for the suite approach
Thank you.
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