Look:
Why on earth would anyone recommend distros like Slackware or debian to someone who can't manage what I have emphasised above? Do you honestly think he will fare any better...?

Debian was my first distro. Slackware was my second. Never had any problems. Slackware is sometimes called a distro for advanced users. It is that, but it is also fine for new users IMHO. It installed without a glitch for me. No so for SUSE, Fedora, and a few others I tried at the time. I got those others installed, but they didn't install themselves, that's for sure. Debian went on just as smoothly as Slackware for me. I was new to Linux back in those days. And I was using LVM too boot (just because I wanted to learn it). That was back in the days when you had your boot (and sometimes root) partitions not on LVM because of booting difficulties. Still, I just did a little reading on the net, asked a few questions here on LQ.org, and off I went. Personally, I don't see Debian and Slackware as being difficult. I will admit that I had been a Unix programmer for decades before trying Linux, and no doubt that helped.

OP should install red hat linux 5.2 , because that was my first distro and I had no real problems, certainly dvd playback was never an issue .

But then it isn't about me or you and what we are comfortable with.

Personally I think they had the right Distro in Mint.
Just a shame they got confused by codecs / no codecs and went googling and found scrappy blogs instead of looking at official Mint site for documentation/support.

My question is where the OP found a link describing two weeks of commandline work to install Skype.

It's true, when searching for something in Linux you often times find Google hits on some procedure that is massively deprecated. A procedure once used in years past, that is no longer relevant, and possibly even counterproductive or harmful. I agree, there is an issue with that. But this problem occurs everywhere, not just related to Linux. Once something is posted, pretty much it's out there forever, just waiting for you to uncover it with Google, no matter how irrelevant it may be to current-day practices.

Yeah, two weeks seems alot, but I think we are missing something here.

Lets assume 2hrs each evening for 2 weeks, 14 hrs, but take away 30min for each session as catch up / get in zone
That is 7hrs hands on, which isn't unreasonable if something is alien to you.

Of course , I have had to make those numbers up.
To me it makes more sense than two weeks, yet 'two weeks' still fits.


Edit:
err, my numbers make no sense
2hrs a day for 2 weeks, = 28 hrs
minus 30min/day back to speed = 21hrs
5 tasks, DVD , flash, skype, pen drive drive and New Environment
===
between 4 and 5 hours each task

OP is long gone, guys ... Seems like a lot of typing could be saved if this "thread to nowhere" was closed.

^ windows vs linux superthread, anyone ?

linked @ top of page2 http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ml#post4988223

This thread is closed. The OP is already gone and the discussion is offtopic and it does not get back on track. If you want to continue one of the multiple subjects raised in this thread, please create a new one.

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