Who currently uses Linux?

[Harrison]

And 'user-friendly' has been important for me since......?

Very true! You do like to try and make life as hard as possible whenever you see the opportunity.

BTW, After using Debian on a old world macintosh (which are harder to get working with Linux than PCs and new world macs), Debian was the only one which i could successfully get to work. I couldn't get SuSE or YellowDog to even install properly (I'm not saying they arn't good - reason for them not working properly I'm sure was entirely down to the Macintosh not really being suited to linux. I would also be tempted to try SuSE on the PC some time.)

What you describe is exactly the issues most people encountered a couple of years ago trying to get most Linux distros to install, regardless of the underlying hardware or the distribution itself.

But this has now started to quickly change which is really the reason why I questioned your choice of Debian. It is a hardcore DIY OS where you have to get your hands dirty to get everything to run smoothly. Other distro developers use it as a basis to start building their own versions, so in this respect Debian is great, but it is not great to use as an OS in itself as you have to do a lot of work to get it how most people need it. In contrast others like SUSE and Ubuntu have done this hard work for you and created very polished distros compared to Debian and both install on nearly every PC I've ever tried without the need for much intervention at all from the user except to enter an admin name and password at the end of the install.

Why do a lot of work that has already been completed by someone else? It's an exercise in futility. It would be like me trying to code my own version of Joomla. Pointless.

[v85rawdeal]

Why do a lot of work that has already been completed by someone else? It's am exercise in futility.

I used that excuse at school regarding homework... The teacher didn't buy it!

[Harrison]

Well, there is a difference between learning and using!

[Stephen Coates]

Well, there is a difference between learning and using!

Exactly.

[Stephen Coates]

I finally got Debian installed. I don't understand this thing about it being difficult. It was dead easy. The only thing I really had to do was partition the disk and tell it where to install GRUB (which didn't work at first - I don't think I installed it properly, but it is fine now).

I installed the KDE version but would like to put GNOME on it as well so I will do that later.

I'm posting this from Konqueror.

[AlexJ]

Cool. Although you'll probably be liking Konqueror because it's different, personally I'd go with Iceweasel (which is Firefox).

Probably your next step will be to get codecs for MP3 and AVI playback sorted. Again, for MP3 at least, you'll have to look outside the standard Debian packages, but for AVI playback, the easiest solution is to use VLC player, which has pretty much all the standard video codecs (DivX, XviD, X264, MPEG etc.) built in.

I'm not sure if E-UAE is available as a package within Debian as standard, but if you wasn't and you wanted to give it a go, there's my quick guide to doing it with Ubuntu which would probably work with Debian as well.

[Stephen Coates]

I actually went and downloaded Opera soon after, so I didn't even bother with Iceweasel.

Not sure why I need to play MP3s or videos on Debian though .

I would be interested in trying E-UAE and comparing it to WinUAE.