On 02/17/2007 08:52:31 AM, Jan Sneep wrote:
Well two weeks ago I successfully installed Debian for the first time (first time for any Linux OS for that matter) and thanks to the replies to my last question I've got Samba up and working beautifully and this week-end I'm going to get CUPS configured ... again many thanks to those that offered advice.
Congrats on getting it to work.
Now for another question ... Inspired with my recent success installing Debian on one machine I was thinking about changing the OS on the kids computer. It is currently running Windows ME and all they use it for is chatting with their friends and listening to music. It's a Compaq Presario with a 500 MHz AMD Athlon processor, 20 Gig hard drive and 256 Meg of RAM. Currently they use MSN Messenger 7.0 for chatting and Windows Media Player for listening to music. I'm assuming there are Linux equivalents? Perhaps more than one choice? What is recommended for using with the Debian GUI? I wrote my first PC program on an Apple back in 1983 and yes spent many years running programs before Windows was even a twinkle in Bill Gates' eye, however I'm not likely going to convince my kids to use a command line, they already think I'm ancient enough, so looking for apps that they can run from the GUI.
The Linux "equivalent" to MSN Messenger is called "amsn", I have no experience using it but from what I understand it's a MSN clone. For listening to music your children will have many choices, ranging from XMMS to Amarok and beyond. There are some "full" programs (With a whole lot of options) but XMMS in my opinion offers the bare minimum of what you need to listen to audio.
and for the second part to my question ... How about iTunes for loading songs onto their iPods? At the moment they use my Windows Xp machine to fill up their iPods, because of course iTunes doesn't run on ME. I have to re-boot my machine after they're done because some iTunes service just grinds my processor down to a walk through molasses. It would be great if they could use their own machine to load up their iPods, however looking at the iTunes site I don't see a Linux version available for download. I figure there must be at least a few of you that have an iPod and have figured out how to load up tunes with your Debian OS?
If you use iTunes to download music you're out of luck, because there are almost no Linux equivalents. If your kids only use iTunes to update their iPods, then there is always gtkpod, which is what I personally use to update my mom and sister's iPods (I don't own one myself).
