Migrating from WinXP Pro to Ubuntu 10.10

[Tony Pursell]

On Fri, 2010-10-15 at 19:17 +0100, Joao Ferreira gmail wrote:
> 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....
> 

Shouldn't we be advising people to use Software centre these days?