[wplug] Question on ISP rec's for Ligonier Area

John Harrold jmh17 at pitt.edu
Thu Oct 2 17:07:11 EDT 2003


Sometime in October griffisb at bellsouth.net assaulted the keyboard and produced:

| Hey all,
| 
|    I'm a member of Atlanta's Linux User's Group - Ale. Not a
|    meeting-goer, but I do participate in the list. Anyway - my sister is
|    up in Ligonier and I am putting together a laptop for her. I'm
|    weighing the advantages/disadvantages of a few distributions and
|    researching dial-up connectivity in Ligonier PA.
| 
|    My sister is a Windows person, but I was thinking of installing Linux
|    on the laptop (I purchased a Dell laptop off Dell Financial Services
|    on E-Bay. They come with no OS installed - plus I think Linux is a
|    GOOD thing). I have experience in Mandrake and SuSE, and just a little
|    bit of experience in Debian. 
| 
|    My questions are: 
|
| 1. If you were to install a Linux OS for a remote newbie, what would you
| install? I'm leaning towards RH or SuSE as their manuals are very easy to
| follow. She would mainly be doing web surfing, e-mail, and writing
| documents (so Open Office would be installed).

well if you're going to be support it, i would install something that you
are pretty familiar with. i would lean towards redhat, but i'm familiar
with that. 

| 2. If you were to pre-pay an ISP for 6 months or a year, what ISP would
| you pick? I have good experiences with AT&T and Earthlink, but have no
| experience with any local ISP's that might have better prices.

i've used verizon since i got here a few years ago. it was the most
affordable dsl at the time, and it's not worth the hassle to change. while
many people don't like them for varying reasons, i've had a pretty pleasant
expirence. i understand that stargate is fairly linux friendly, you might
want to give them a chance. as i understand it, they are a local company
and they have a dialup number in ligonier:

https://account.stargate.net/cgi-bin/popsearch5.cgi?group_id=SGI-1

i think they give discounts to pitt students, though i don't know if that
applies to your sister.

| 3. Would you find if I point my sis at your LUG? She would be completely
| new to Linux and I don't want her floundering. I'll work on answering
| questions for her, and pointing her to appropriate documentation sources
| and google - but local sources of information could probably help her
| out. I'd ask her to call/e-mail me with any tech support questions first,
| to cut down on overwhelming your group with newbie questions.

that's what we're here for. send us your meek, your hungary, your victims
of the monopoly. this world domination thing is only going to happen one
person at a time. everyone was a newbie once, and people here are fairly
civil. wrt the support stuff above. there are people here that are familiar
with almost any thing you would install on her computer. we also have
installfeasts every other month. so if she was having trouble, she could
bring the laptop down and someone would probably be more than happy to help
her.

-- 
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                                               | /"\
 john harrold                                  | \ / ASCII ribbon campaign
      jmh at member.fsf.org                    |  X  against HTML mail
           the most useful idiot               | / \
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 What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless,
 whether the mad destruction is brought under the name of totalitarianism or
 the holy name of liberty and democracy?
 --Gandhi
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