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sorry wrong forum

How much RAM is in the machine? If you have less than 256MB, you may want to opt for a lightweight distro or a command line only version.

What model printer? Some printers have very poor linux support. Although you could always share it from the windows machine and just access it from linux.

File sharing is typically achieved via Samba, which is in most multipurpose distros or can be setup easily.

But basically, any of the top multipurpose distros should work fine for you. I'd just pick one and give it a whirl. You can try out many of them as Live CD's (Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, etc) ahead of time and then install it when you see it detects all your hardware and stuff.

Thanks for the reply. I went ahead and posted this in the proper forum:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...1/#post3017099

To answer your question. The machine has a 2.4GHz P4 with 1gb ram.
The printer is a Lexmark Z65, I was able to locate linux drivers for it. If they will work, well that's another issue.

I will do some reading on Samba and go from there. Thank you!

If you don't really want to dig in and learn everything there is to learn (and there is a great deal!), then, yes, Ubuntu might be a good choice: it's fully GUI, easy to install, pretty much self-configures, and keeps the inner workings fairly well hidden. And, most importantly, to all reports it works just fine for lots and lots of people who want Linux but don't want to become system administrators in the process (and there's nothing wrong with that!).

All distributions that I know of include one or more desktop managers (the GUI for a user); most typically, KDE. That gives you the GUI that you work with all the time (there are other desktop managers, GNOME among them, and you can usually try different ones included with the distribution to find one you like).

There are many distributions and all of them have their advantages and disadvantages and many are free (when you pay for a distribution, you're getting CD-ROM's or DVD's rather than downloading and burning your own) -- $30 to $50 or so pretty much covers the cost of the media, manual and perhaps some form of support if you have a problem). Personally, I prefer Slackware because I find it the most useful for me (it doesn't "do things" for you [or is that "to you?"] and I can configure it to do what I want when I want and stay out of my way); Slackware may not be the right distribution for you but it wouldn't hurt to look at it, too.

Other than that, it's easy to download, burn a CD and try as many distributions as you wish -- and you might find the perfect fit.

Hope this helps some.

How to install lexmark z600 series on a linux system

http://www.slackbr.org/forum/viewtop...?f=201&t=13841

As soon as possible... I'll translate that into english.

Please post your thread in only one forum. Posting a single thread in the most relevant forum will make it easier for members to help you and will keep the discussion in one place. This thread is being closed because it is a duplicate.


Closed in favour of the dupe with the better suited location in Distributions - Follow-ups to there, please:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...listed-612431/