Re: newbie questions

[Frank Carmickle <frankiec dryrose com>]

Hi there Chris.  I will reply in line.


At 07:22 PM 12/3/99 -0500, you wrote:
snip
>1. I want to use speakup and install with speech on either of these
>systems:
>a. My Pentium 2/266 with 64 mb ram, about 5 free gigs, and an Accent PC
>internal synth. or
>b. A 486 DX4/100 with 16 MB ram, 540 mb, and a Litetalk external synth.
>The first system has a 32x cd-rom and the second has a 6x. 
>
>I list both systems because I'm not sure if the 486 will have performance
>problems. If I'm not using a graphical interface, will the 486 be
>sufficient? Also, could I partision my free 5 gigs on the Pentium 2
>machine and choose at bootup which operating system to load? If so, how
>would I go about setting this up?

Well the answer to these questions is yes.  You can put speakup on either
machine.  A 486 will work just fine. And yes you can choose at boot up
which operating system you would like to boot.
 
>I should mention that I have Windows 95 on the bigger system, and want to
>keep this intact, primarily for scanning and OCR. I'm assuming that there
>isn't anything yet for Linux that has recognition capabilities similar to
>Openbook Ruby edition.

There is an OCR package for Linux but I am not sure how good it is.  You
would do well to stick with what you have for now.

>Ok, yet another question.  which distro should I get? Does it matter? Are
>there differences between the Linux you get from Slackware, Redhat, and
>others? I hope that isn't a bad question to ask on a Redhat-hosted list.
>*grins*

No that is a perfectly acceptable question to ask.  A bit off topic here
but I will answer it anyway.  I would personally choose Debian.  I have a
slackware system right now and when I talk to my friends who are running
Debian I wish that I was.  There are some cool ways to update packages and
get new ones.  It just automates things a little bit more then any of the
other distros.

>Thanks for any help.

Any time.  Just ask!

Frank who was a newbie recently also