Another Dave gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:
I'm not altogether surprised that you can't install onto a liveCD session. The default mail client on Ubuntu is Evolution (I'm sure it's lovely, I just prefer T'bird), so that's what you'll get on a liveCD session.
Default browser is Firefox, though - even on Kubuntu (the difference being KDE, rather than Gnome, as the desktop manager)
The OP is talking about a 9 year old. You are talking about a "terminal". What does that mean?
Another Dave
Another Dave gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:
Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal.
The Linux equivalent of a DOS shell.
huge@amun:~$ dpkg --list | grep thunderbird | head ii thunderbird 3.0.4+nobinonly-0ubuntu4 mail/news client with RSS and integrated spa
huge@amun:~$ dpkg --list | grep firefox | head ii firefox 3.6.3+nobinonly-0ubuntu4 safe and easy web browser from Mozilla
huge@amun:~$ uname -a Linux amun 2.6.32-21-generic #32-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 16 08:10:02 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux
Ubuntu detected my ATI Radeon graphics card and offered to install the non-free driver. It gave me the choice.
Huge gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:
Likewise here, with nVidia.
In fact, on my other laptop, Ubuntu 10.04 fully supports the nVidia graphics card which is totally unsupported by Win7...
Only equivalent in that you type in commands as text. Unix shell scripting can do much much more than DOS (and its XP/Vista replacement command shell) can.
Oh sorry. I've only been programming under *nix for 25 years. I didn't realise that ;-)
A 9yr old that sounds like he's keen.
That's like the command prompt in Windows and something he will find out about pretty quickly. ;-)
Cheers, T i m
Mint Linux / Pan ;-)
Another Dave wibbled on Thursday 06 May 2010 22:11
So? Back in the 80's, 9 year olds could hack around with far more basic kit. They're not necessarily stupid unless you encourage them to be ;->
PS Terminal, aka dumb serial terminal on old mainframes. Well, linux behaves like "old mainframes" (but it does much more). You could stick an old VT100 on it and it would look like something out of the late 70's. But you also get virtual dumb terminal modes directly from the screen and keyboard on aPC (linux general has around 5 or 6 virtual consoles set up on CTRL-ALT-F1 to F6) and even in windows mode (X) you just run a little terminal program to get a "dumb terminal in a window".
Think DOS box on MS windows.
It's good to know, because that's all you get if you boot the system without any disks mounted read-write in order to fix some serious problem (unlike a DOS box which is rather less useful).
Another Tim.
Mike Clarke wibbled on Thursday 06 May 2010 22:52
And you get a choice of shells. Bash is the most common default, but religious wars exists over tcsh. And for people like me, you can get a perl shell.
Tim Watts gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:
I had a ZX80 at that age...
Well that's not true.. They can all run programs and make decisions based on the program so they can all do the same. If anything powershell does more than any of the linux shells can do before they have to run an external program. And you can get windows versions of the linux shells too.
dennis@home wibbled on Thursday 06 May 2010 23:27
psh
So what's wrong with zsh hmmm, hmmmmmm?
The first statement is unbelievable. The second all too believeable.
and the third statement?
We always believed that sh was for scripting, and csh for interactive work. Which is what I still do.
Although I lean towards REXX for many scripting solutions now...
Newbie...!
I vote for linux mint. Its worth dling a few versions of it, if one doesnt fire up just try another. Mint is an ubuntu derivative.
If the box is old enough, eg pentium 2, you'd need something a lot lighter than ubuntu, such as DSL or puppy linux.
NT
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