[Coco] OT: Computer for a newbie

[Frank Swygert]

Date: Sat, 18 May 2013 22:52:00 -0400
From: Louis Ciotti<lciotti1 at gmail.com>

I think I know the answer to this, but thought I would toss it out to
the group, totally off topic, but I am wondering what OS someone would recomment
for a total computer newbie.  I have built up an old Gateway PC and gave
it to someone wanting a PC but no cash to get anything.  Well I  had put
XP on it, but after about three day they had it totally hosed, with more
spam/maleware you can shake a stick at.  So I am at a delema, I want to
help the person out, but I am leary about putting anything but windows
on it since they want to "play games" did not get into detail on this,
but really think I am stuck putting XP back on it.  Any thoughts?  I
would love to just throw a simple linux distro on it and call it a day,
but I fear that will just be too complicated in the end, especially with
him wanting do some gaming on it.
===============================================

How old is the computer? What processor? What kind of gaming? If you're talking about card games and other relatively simple games Linux will work fine. I'd use Mint because it's the easiest and most complete to install (all the proprietary - but free to use - codecs and such are included). There is a good selection of games, and a simple software manager that lest you review and install. There aren't a LOT of action type games, but there are a couple -- Nexuiz and Alien Arena are pretty good, can be played stand-alone or on-line. Might be worth a try. If the computer is at least a dual core I'd go with the latest release. If it's an older single core machine Mint 9 is probably the newest you'll want to run. I'm still running 9 on a Sony Vaio P4 3.0 GHz machine, but only run Mint 7 on my old HP P3 2.0 GHz laptop.

-- 
Frank Swygert
Editor - American Motors Cars Magazine
www.amc-mag.com