Migrating from WinXP Pro to Ubuntu 10.10

[Joao Ferreira gmail]

On Fri, 2010-10-15 at 11:48 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> 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.
> 

Sometimes it's a great thing just to wonder "how would my personnal
preferences be nowadays if I'dd started earlier with something else, the
car, the type of house, the type of phone, the place we live, the job we
have..."

New people coming to Linux environments usually have a ramp-up time when
they feel a bit lost, but after some time they say "man, how could I
have missed this for so long" :)

> I have Ubuntu 10.10 up and running in test mode from a USB drive.
> 

Go for it. You will not regret... there's a great risk you'll never want
to see Win* ever again.

Ubuntu is an amazing Linux distribution, with an enourmous magnetic
power...

> 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.

Yes. Ubuntu and Linux distributions in general give you choices you
would not be used to. In the Win world there is typically less to choose
from. But just make an initial choice. Start with Gnome. Time and
experience will show you the way.


> 


> 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

fireup a command line console and type "sudo synaptic" and search what
you need....



> 
> Thank you.
> 
>