A parent`s box

[mitschel]

Hi,

I want to setup my parents a gentoo box. So I bought an amd64 3000, 1gb of ram and a geforce 6200. So far my parents can deal with windows for browsing or to manage their digicam. Sometimes they watch a movie or burn a cd. So you can see, normal pc usage. So my question is, what kind of window manager and apps could you recommend. I´m using ion3 with a lot of curses stuff, so I`m not really familiar with mouse clicking systems. Another point is, that "all" has to be rock stable, because I don`t live anymore at home. So once the system is installed, it has to run for a couple of time without strange things goin on.

So I`m really interessted in your suggestions!

[nixnut]

If you're parents are used to MS-Windows, kde (optionally with an xp theme) would be most familiar to use for them.

[PaulBredbury]

has to be rock stable

Then why Gentoo?

Horrendous analogy: Don't buy your grandma a Ferrari to do the weekly shopping

[mitschel]

Then why Gentoo?

It`s the distro I`m knowing the best and therefore I tought I can make the best system out of it. What else do you think is suitable? (I hate Suse)

[PaulBredbury]

It`s the distro I`m knowing the best

Cool, that's a good-enough reason. I use that reason also, to run Gentoo on a server.

[zietbukuel]

Maby GNOME, with Firefox, Brasero (cd burning), aMSN o Gaim for chatting, Rhythmbox for Music, Mplayer or Totem for movies, etc. I don't know about Digicam, sorry. Hope it helps.

[SirYes]

Then why Gentoo?

It`s the distro I`m knowing the best and therefore I tought I can make the best system out of it. What else do you think is suitable? (I hate Suse)

If your parents were native English speakers, I'd recommend PCLinuxOS (great KDE desktop, wonderful out-of-box experience, very well configured). But since you live in Germany, maybe Kubuntu/Ubuntu?

However, each of the latter two needs to be additionally configured to play multimedia, install codecs and other useful programs. It's done using the Debian/Ubuntu way: synaptics, aptitude, and apt-get. If you know where to look (http://wiki.ubuntu.com and especially http://wiki.ubuntu.com/RestrictedFormats) it may be worth to extend your horizons by spending some time setting a Linux distro in a Quick Way (tm). But if you feel the most comfortable with Gentoo, then stick with it.

[zxy]

I guess KDE is the best for this.

I overlook a few gentoo boxes, family and from friends. No problem, I ssh to their machine, setup software, update and do any necesary work. I don't see their machine for months. I don't need to.

[mitschel]

I ssh to their machine, setup software, update and do any necesary work. I don't see their machine for months. I don't need to.

Thats` quite one of the big points, why I want to install my family a linux box.

Thank`s for your supply so far. I surfed around a bit myself and also tested the Sabayon LiveDvd. Now I think I have beta plan.
The base will be an Evolution Mission system, because I run it and I`m satisfied.
The windows manager will be Kde with Xgl (know it`s stupid, but must give it a try )
Apps will be:
Firefox and Thunderbird
Kaffeine
Amarok
DigiKam
Skype

But there are still a few questions left.
Is Xgl buggy? On the Sabayon Live Dvd it runs quite well..
Is Kde able to automount usb device so far? Or is there the need of ivman, too?
Are there any experiences with Crossover office? Does it work as good, as it is promoted on their page? I´m thinking about, stuckin with Ms Office2003 and maybe Photoshop7.

So long

[i92guboj]

I ssh to their machine, setup software, update and do any necesary work. I don't see their machine for months. I don't need to.

Thats` quite one of the big points, why I want to install my family a linux box.

Thank`s for your supply so far. I surfed around a bit myself and also tested the Sabayon LiveDvd. Now I think I have beta plan.
The base will be an Evolution Mission system, because I run it and I`m satisfied.
The windows manager will be Kde with Xgl (know it`s stupid, but must give it a try )

Mmmm, that is plain incompatible with the "rock solid" term that you used in your first post, maybe it could be said to be usable, but not rock solid. No composite stuff is rock solid, starting with beryl and following with kwin and kicker (and yes, I know that some will say that never failed for them, good for them ).

But there are still a few questions left.
Is Xgl buggy? On the Sabayon Live Dvd it runs quite well..

Already answered.

Is Kde able to automount usb device so far? Or is there the need of ivman, too?

Yes, you can also define a set of actions that will appear in a menu when inserting the device. Or even define a default behaviour depending on its contents. No need to install nor run ivman, kde uses pmount and kioslaves to manage that stuff. There's also a nice applet that you can put in kicker, and where the removable media will appear when inserted (you can also configure it to always show the device icon, even when it is not inserted/mounted) and can display any device, including usb stuff, optical media and harddrives and floppy disks.

Are there any experiences with Crossover office? Does it work as good, as it is promoted on their page? I´m thinking about, stuckin with Ms Office2003 and maybe Photoshop7.

So long

No idea.

[zxy]

Openoffice/Gimp - I like it much more, but tastes differ

For graphics take a look at XaraLX (as soon as it is finished porting, but it works even now and it's fantastic)

[SirYes]

As a plan B I'd recommend putting /home on a separate partition. Three reasons:

1. Easier backups (both system and users' data).
2. Can be handy if you ever need to replace one Linux distro in favor of another one.
3. It's definitely handy when you have several Linux distros installed on the same machine (shared mail/browser settings, same files on Desktop, etc.)

Personally I'm on point three, so I guess I know what I'm talking about.

Good luck and make a good plan - your solution will be in "production" use a lot longer than you spend planning it anyway.

[a16b03]

I recommend KDE for your parents!

[a16b03]

Oh forgot to mention, that for your parents I would recommend kubuntu linux.
Easy to install/update. Gentoo should be maintained often.

[batistuta]

just to throw some more ideas.
I've installed Linux on my girlfriend's computer, and I've decided for Ubuntu: reasoning was that Gentoo x86 is a bit outdated, and ~x86 breakes too often for someone else's computer. Plus I don't mind leaving my computer running overnight to compile, but they like to shut them off. And compiling during video playback or browsing is kind of silly... too much overhead. So I would definitely go for a binary distro when using machines that power-off.

My experience with Ubuntu for non-technical people
Ubuntu is bit different, but learning it is a snap. The only "trick" to learn is that you need to add some other repositories (kind of like overlays) where all the multimedia, beryl, Picasa, skype, etc etc packages are. But this is easy to grasp. You get Ubuntu up and running quickly. And maintaining it is just three apt-get commands.

With respect to KDE vs Gnome, I think both are OK. KDE is more windows-like because of the menu. But I find Gnome easier to use for non-technical people. Less options, but they don't want options. Every option is a question, that they don't know how to answer and frustrates them. So less options is better. My girlfriend needed one week to learn gnome and she's quite happy.

If you want to convince them, give them eye candy:
- install the OSX icon set (Gnomes original is not the nicest)
- Beryl
- kiba-dock

they will like it, and be happy

[mitschel]

I just finished setting up the system so far. And with a big thanks to the developer and helper, I have to say it`s runnning really great. I`ve decided to make the basic installation steps, like it is described in the wiki.evolution-mission.org/Install_Guide_4.0. But with gentoo_sources instead of the emission ones, because there are problems running sata.
Until now I`ve only installed kdebase-meta and added the following packages:

Code: Select all

x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers
net-www/netscape-flash

Code: Select all

x11-wm/beryl
media-sound/alsa-utils
www-client/mozilla-firefox
mail-client/mozilla-thunderbird
media-video/kaffeine
net-www/kaffeine-mozilla-plugin
media-sound/amarok
media-gfx/digikam
net-im/skype
media-tv/tvbrowser
app-misc/screen

Code: Select all

USE=
"
-arts -esd -gnome -gtk  

a52 aac acpi alsa apm asf
bluetooth
cdda cddb cdinstall cdparanoia cdr curl
divx4linux dvd dvdr dvdread
encode
firefox flac flash
gtk2
irmc
java javascript jpeg
kde
mozilla mp3 mpeg
ncurses nls nptl nptlonly nsplugin nvidia
ogg oggvorbis opengl oss
pda pdflib perl
qt quicktime
unicode userlocales
real
samba stream
truetype truetype-fonts
vcd
win32codecs wxwindows
xine xvid
"

VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia"
INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse"

LINGUAS="de"

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=athlon64 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -fweb -frename-registers -fgcse-after-reload"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--hash-style=both -Wl,-znow"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"



PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage
/usr/local/overlays/xeffects
/usr/local/overlays/kernels_overlay
/usr/local/overlays/toolchain_overlay
/usr/local/overlays/emission
"
source /usr/portage/local/layman/make.conf

Even Skype works good.

The only thing, which didn`t work out, was kiba-dock, because the filesize of the mirrored archives does not match. If anybodys wants to mail kiba-dock-20060817.tar.bz2, send to mitschel at gmx.li .

Things left to do, are configuring a qemu installtion of a small win98 se for canon printing and deciding which office suite I will use.

As a plan B I'd recommend putting /home on a separate partition.

On my own system I configuired it just like you and I know what you`re talkin about.
But here is only a 80gb harddisk, so I decided to make one root partion and so I can add a home drive, when my parents want to buy a new disk.

For graphics take a look at XaraLX

I keep a eye on the that. Looks really nice.

[a16b03]

When setting up qemu don't forget to emerge kqemu and load it in kernel.

This will increase qemu emulation speed.

I haven't tired, but i read that you can make image with qemu (+setup basic system) and then run it on vmware-player (it's free), which is much faster.

[i92guboj]

Just a quick note, bash sources the scripts -like make.conf- by taking each carry return as a command separator, that is, unless you escape it with a slash in the end of line. So,

Code: Select all

 USE= 
 " 
 -arts -esd -gnome -gtk  
 
 a52 aac acpi alsa apm asf 
 bluetooth 
 cdda cddb cdinstall cdparanoia cdr curl 
 divx4linux dvd dvdr dvdread 
 encode 
 firefox flac flash 
 gtk2 
 irmc 
 java javascript jpeg 
 kde 
 mozilla mp3 mpeg 
 ncurses nls nptl nptlonly nsplugin nvidia 
 ogg oggvorbis opengl oss 
 pda pdflib perl 
 qt quicktime 
 unicode userlocales 
 real 
 samba stream 
 truetype truetype-fonts 
 vcd 
 win32codecs wxwindows 
 xine xv
"

Is not correct, since the first line would be sourced and you would get an empty use var. The correct way would be

Code: Select all

 USE=" \
 -arts -esd -gnome -gtk  \
 \
....\
"

Same for the rest of vars. I hope you did that when pasting to fix the formatting in the forum and not in your real make.conf. You can check if the syntax is correct by sourcing make.conf in command line, if it is not correct it would output something like

Code: Select all

$ sh pepe.sh 
pepe.sh: line 27:  
 -arts -esd -gnome -gtk  
 
 a52 aac acpi alsa apm asf 
 bluetooth 
 cdda cddb cdinstall cdparanoia cdr curl 
 divx4linux dvd dvdr dvdread 
 encode 
 firefox flac flash 
 gtk2 
 irmc 
 java javascript jpeg 
 kde 
 mozilla mp3 mpeg 
 ncurses nls nptl nptlonly nsplugin nvidia 
 ogg oggvorbis opengl oss 
 pda pdflib perl 
 qt quicktime 
 unicode userlocales 
 real 
 samba stream 
 truetype truetype-fonts 
 vcd 
 win32codecs wxwindows 
 xine xvid 
 : command not found

[mitschel]

The use flags in the make.conf look like I`ve posted it. I always do it like this and it runs well for 2 years know. 0o

[i92guboj]

Strange, maybe emerge sources the make.conf script in any obscure way. I dont know anything about the emerge scripts internals. In bash terms, that way to declare variables is plainly incorrect.