Everyone likes a success story, so here's one, plus a story of
the work in progress: the first from a Windows 9x user (and
embedded Linux website editor) who first realized he wanted a Linux
desktop in late 1999 and finally had his wish come true in the form
of Red Hat 7.1; and another from a Windows NT devotee who's still
in transition, thanks to the window of opportunity opened by some
hardware problems.
From Rick Lehrbaum of LinuxDevices.com's account:
"...The real breakthrough came with the arrival of Red
Hat 7.1 which, of course, includes up-to-date versions of GNOME,
KDE, XFree86 (including a working font-server), and -- as I was
about to discover -- a later version of Netscape than the one I'd
been struggling with for the past year.
To be sure I hadn't created any bogus problems, I backed up my
valuable data and performed a "new install" of Red Hat 7.1. This
way, I'd be clearing away the residue of all my previous
experiments and starting fresh.
The installation process went smoothly, and my system booted
crisply with the new Linux 2.4 kernel that is a standard feature of
RH 7.1. Wanting to be sure networking and the Internet were
installed properly, I tried out my "favorite" browser -- Netscape.
Not expecting anything to be different, since Linux Netscape seemed
frozen in time like some prehistoric mammoth buried in ice at the
North Pole, I configured and tested Netscape's email client and
checked it out."
And the first part of a series comes from William Henning of
AboutLinux.com:
"Since I am in the midst of reviewing Mandrake 8 for
now I'll use that as my desktop test bed."
[Impression so far: a lot of nice software, but it could have
used a bit more quality control before release - there are several
minor configuration issues that need to be solved after an
installation. See Mandrake 8.0: Running Apache / SSL / PHP /
PostgeSQL for some of the configuration issues and their
solutions.]
...Replacing HotMetal Pro is more of a problem. I've reviewed
TopPage for Linux, and it seemed like a decent program - I guess
I'll try IBM's WebSphere Builder. There is always Netscape Composer
if all else fails."
