Alternative Operating Systems - Techie help

[Tjobbe]

Hi,

My girlfriend has just gone to University and I have an old windows 98 computer here that I want her to have.

I'm thinking of installing a Linux based O/S onto it as I don't have the win98 discs anymore! Plus I think it would be a fun project to install something new.

She has to be able to get onto the Uni Network, whatever happens, via the usb ethernet adapator she has been given.

What O/S could handle this - steering well clear from the Windows based O/S's please - and also would it still handle s/w like microsoft word or are there linux based alternatives?

Any information would be appreciated right now, I'm not techincall - but think I ca handle downloading, burning, reformatting and installation of a new o/s so fire away with anythingh you may have to help me!

 

[Scott]

I use Gentoo, however you should have a look here at RedHat/Fedora to possibly start with. http://www.openoffice.org/ is an alternative to MS Office, however you could use Wine to run Office on Linux.

 

[Brian]

most colleges/universities here have certain requirements for the computers if they are on the schools network, might want to check with that first