Hi,

I just installed linux mandrake 9.1 (finally) and it seems pretty cool. I just wanted some suggestions of things i could do to see it's power over windows or some neat things in linux (mandrake specifically). Cuase' i'm running a trial on Linux to see if i should stick with it... Any suggesstions about some neat things would be great.


Thanks..

Google, links, Google, links.

Seriously, the best thing to do is go to www.google.com/linux and type in keywords of things you think would be interesting to do in Linux and voila! there will be numerous links that should keep you busy for days if not longer.

rberry88

That is kind of an open ended question, but here are some things to think about:

Open and edit a *.doc, *.ppt, or *.xls file in openoffice. The cost to do that with MSOffice will be more than $300 plus the time of installing new software.

Using openoffice 1.1, export any file to a pdf document. The cost to do that with adobe acrobat standard will be $300 plus the time of installing new software.

Open a *tiff image, do some minor editing in The Gimp, then save it as a compressed *.jpg file. The cost of doing that with Photoshop will be about $650 plus the time of installing more software.

Open your checking account data in *.qif format and balance your checkbook using Gnucash. The cost of doing that with Quicken will be about $70 plus the time of installing new software.

Use mozilla to block popup windows, allow tabbed browsing, and navigate with mouse gestures. None of those features are available in Internet Explorer.

Try compiling computer code using gcc. I don't have the costs, but windows compilers are exprensive. gcc is free and supports all major languages.

Download any compressed file (like *.zip, *.tgz, *.tar.gz, etc.). Decompress it in Konqueror by right click and selecting "extract here". Try doing that in windows.

The list could go on.

Well let's see first off I would highly recommend you make sure you have your kernel source installed and all gcc-devel and gtk-devel packages installed. This will enable you to actually install stuff. I had a hell of a time figuring out that I needed gtk-devel and gcc-devel installed to compile the newest gaim and xine and other much needed programs.

Then you can install webmin that will enable you to remotely administer your computer and install server and such and also if you are on a LAN you can install LinNeighborhood to see all the Windows computers that have shared resouces.

With Mandrake you can easily set it up to be a dhcp server for the rest of your network and provide DNS for your network. Heck install either Proftpd or WUftpd and use it as a ftp server. Install Samba and show Windows computers how they are really supposed to network. Install a mail server and give your self your own email address. That is as long as you have a static IP address.

Mandrake is one of the easiest Linux distro's to configure and use generally and as a server, the only distro I recommend over Mandrake is the one and only SuSE. Slackware and RedHat are great too, but Mandrake and SuSE are by far the best when it comes to configuration. For example I installed SuSE on my laptop and it automatically detected all my devices except for my WLAN PCMCIA card which I found out that is not supported at this time by any Linux Distro.

you can surf the internet! woohoo!