[NTLUG:Discuss] A 'Halfway' Distribution

[Mike]

Recently, I got upset enough with Mandrake 9 that I decided 
I am going to change distros. So... it's back into 
evaluation mode for the next few weeks. First up is red hat 
8. I'd love to hear comments on whats wrong with red hat 8 
and suggestions of other distros to try on a 500mhz - 1g 
box. 

I ordered my copy of red hat from a CD vendor, and also got 
a copy of a distro I hadn't seen before--'GNUWin'. (I 
always try at least one distro that I've never seen when 
upgrading.) This gem arrived, and it's something I've been 
wanting for a while. GNUWin is a sort of preview of what 
linux is about without the linux kernal. That is, GNUWin is 
about as close to linux as you can get while still booting 
the win32 kernal. 

(I'll stop right here and say I'm mentioning this as a 
suggestion for your friends. I am NOT trying to convert 
anyone on the list back to windows.  I see this disc as a 
very powerful tool in convincing the people you know to 
switch.)

GNUWin is a very nicely packaged collection of programs 
compiled to run on windows.  It includes windows versions 
of core apps found in most linux distributions: The Gimp, 
Mozilla, Open Office, etc.  I've tried several and they are 
almost exact versions of their linux counterparts. I'm 
especially happy with ABI-Word; it starts 3x faster in 
windows than it does in linux and still supports read/write 
in palm-doc format. 

GNUWin also has windows versions of the more unix like 
features found in linux, such as a "UNX command line", a 
"Litestep" shell that replaces the windows interface with a 
next-step look, and of course 'xemacs', 'vim', and your 
favorite GNU gamelettes. There are about 100 programs 
total, including engineering, science, games, networking, 
office, kids apps. 

While this is nowhere near a complete linux distribution, it 
does make a nice CD to give your windows friends to let 
them see how good 'free' can be without having to worry 
about partitions or reboots or wine. It also makes a decent 
alternative for those people that wouldn't do so well 
switching to linux cold turkey (people like Mom or 
Grandpa.)

According to the CD's info on downloading, ISO's are 
available at: 

ftp://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/mirror/gnuwin/ 
http://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/ftp/mirror/gnuwin/ 
http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/gnuwin.epfl.ch/iso/ 
http://www.pctip.ch/downloads/dl/22197.asp 
http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/gnu/gnuwin2/iso/ 
ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/gnu/gnuwin2/iso/ 
ftp://ftp.is.co.za/mirrors/GnuWin/ 
http://ftp.u-strasbg.fr/windows/gnuwin/ 
http://khazad.dyndns.org/pub/win32/ 
http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/iso/ 

If you're like me and still on a dialup account, CD's can be 
found for sale at linuxcentral. 

I'll volunteer to meet someone to contribute to the linux 
install project's library. (I'm not normally available for 
the meetings.)