Another Windows vs. Linux Decision

Had to do some serious thinking this weekend. My in-laws are here for a few days (we’re a way-station between their summer and winter homes). Part of their stop here involves the twice-a-year checkup I do on their laptop. The laptop has been running Windows 98 for years. And, as of this year, Windows 98 is no longer supported by Microsoft.

So… A newer version of Windows or would this be a good time to move them to Linux?

Looked over the laptop and the in-law’s usage is very easy to discern: Everything they do is in the browser. Nothing else really happens on this machine. No documents, no image editing; email is browser-based too.

Seems like a linux distro would be a no brainer, doesn’t it? Now keep in mind that this laptop is one of my old ones and isn’t exactly muscular by today’s standards. PII – 233 with 256MB. Damn Small Linux runs like a dream on it. Xubuntu is borderline.

Now for the wrinkle: They’re dialup and the telphony rules (area codes, dial 10 digits, +1 or not) and access number change twice a year.

For now we’re going with Windows 2000. The telphony/dial-up thing is a breeze to work with. Support effort (mine) is minimized.

Why not Linux? Keep in mind the specs — a “modern” linux distro won’t run for beans on this thing. And I’ve managed to train the in-laws on how to click a few buttons twice a year to dial the correct ISP number. I’ve got no clue how to go about that in linux – especially one aimed at older machines – and a 3 hour window to get everything ready. By going with Win2K now, I’ve bought a few months to calmly research that angle. Maybe this spring I’ll revisit the choice ( and hopefully get them on something a bit faster).

Gotta say that if they were broadband instead of dialup this would’ve been a much more difficult decision to make.

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Vox

October 8th, 2006 at 2:48 pm · Reply

The thing with linux is that you can automatizise that kind of thing. You could have configured wvdial to do the dialup, and then written a small script in bash, python, perl or almost anything you like, with a frontend in glade that just asked for the new phone and that would modify the wvdial config file for them. One click in an icon in the “start” menu, write the phone, hit OK, done. That’s the beauty of configuration files in text format.

Chris

October 8th, 2006 at 2:53 pm · Reply

Well… a neat idea, but no. I don’t see that flying at all!

See, they don’t really even think about dialing. They don’t even initiate the connection! I just have windows configured to dial on demand (and timeout). So, to my father-in-law, getting on the internet means opening the browser.

And, if I gotta be writing shell scripts for stuff like this it’ll probably never happen. That may be uber-geeky, but it’s also uber-inefficient. I’m a coder, not a scripter.

October 8th, 2006 at 3:22 pm · Reply

wvdial can do DoD too, that’s not a problem at all.

As for the scripting…ok, you prefer to code instead of script? Write a 20 lines C program to do the config changing then wvdial actually has one, but it’s a console program, so I doubt you want to get your father to go that route.

On the other hand, you can get him configured with…uhm…the kde thingy for dialup…it’s simpler than the one in windows. What I don’t know is if it can do DoD while on a non-kde desktop environment, which is why I hadn’t proposed that.

Alex

October 8th, 2006 at 4:51 pm · Reply

There’s also graphic and fully integrated tools like kppp to handle dial-up fully automatic. No need to bash-script or klick around each time you want to browse the web.

On older machines, I’d go with XFCE as Desktop environment, and I’d suggest Opera as browser. Although it’s not Free Software, it’s much faster than Firefox (and still has more features).

October 8th, 2006 at 5:15 pm · Reply

is kppp that “kde thingy” that vox had mentioned in the comment above yours? I looked at adding that to my xubuntu laptop (I do like XFCE), but it seems I’d have to install quite a bit of dependencies (19MB!).

Must ponder how much KDE I wish to introduce to this little prototype machine, but I like the idea of automated.

Oh, I managed to get Xubuntu and Opera going a while back: http://www.solo-technology.com/blog/2006/06/13/xubuntu-and-opera/

October 8th, 2006 at 5:16 pm · Reply

kppp! that’s the name of the kde dialup thingy

As I said, the only doubt I’d have about that would be the fact that I don’t know if it does DoD when you aren’t running kde…outside of that, I agree, it’s a very good dialup tool.

October 8th, 2006 at 5:34 pm · Reply

Honestly, I would never use KDE apps without KDE — just because of the sheer amount of installation an runtime dependencies. I just mentioned kppp because it was the first that came in my mind.

There’s also gnome-ppp, which is actually a frontend to wvdial (afaik), and Gnome apps are also good for use under XFCE, as the additional dependencies are in a sensible range.

October 9th, 2006 at 8:55 am · Reply

Thanks both Alex and Vox. You guys have given me some great ideas to mull over. I may try and run with ‘em next spring when the in-laws (and computer) come back through town.