Chilean Monks Need Linux Help?

Inexile2002 asks: "Ok, I'm going to Chile this Xmas season, and a distant second cousin of mine, a monk in a Dominican monastary emailed me requesting that I bring copies of and set up Linux on their machines and network. I've NEVER set up a Linux network before, won't have reliable internet access when I'm there (if I have it at all) and to top it all off, would really rather set this up in Spanish for the non bi-lingual monks. (My spanish, of course, is weak and useless when discussing computers) For someone who doesn't know Linux well and won't be able to check online help, what is the best hard copy Linux help out there? Is there a Spanish Linux? Will the monks, once they do have reliable net connections, be able to seek bilingual online help?" We've all been in this position before, but the multi-lingual angle is a new twist. Do any of you have any hints, or suggestions to pass along to Inexile2002?

Linux in spanish

[digitalmuse]

hmmm, well, for starters you might wish to look at www.linuxdoc.org/linuxfocus/Castellano [linuxdoc.org] which I would assume is a repository of Spanish-language documentation for Linux.
There is also the Debian translation repository at: www.debian.org/international/Spanish [debian.org]

And if you're interested in a Red-Hat based distribution that is supposed to have a fairly complete collection of spanish instructions, check out: conectiva.com [conectiva.com]. These guys also have a spanish-language publication that you might be interested in looking into. You might even want to sign up your new admin for a year or so.

hmmm, it's amazing what you can find in 15 seconds with Google, isn't it?

SuSE

[scotpurl]

SuSE in Brazilan: http://www.suse.de/br/
SuSE in Spanish: http://www.suse.de/es/

Haven't tried either, but kudos to the company in recognizing that Portugese and Spanish aren't the same language.

Best stuff

[Graymalkin]

Two of the best Liux books I've read are Running Linux and Learning GNU/Debian Linux both published by O'Reilly. Running Linux has tons of info for new Linux users, most of it is day to day stuff but is really great for somebody who isn't going to have access to alot of online resources. Learning GDL, has alot of info about installing and administering Linux (specifically Debian of course) and is the book that would be included with Debian if it included a book. Your distribution of choice isn't really so important as they offer so many of the same things. People will argue until they're blue in the face about it but thats true. I might suggest FreeBSD but the documentation that's easy to pack with you on a trip can be hard to come by and I don't know many books written about it for novice users. I suggest hitting up somewhere like Cheapbytes of LSL and getting several CDs. Learning GDL comes with a Debian 2.1 (x86) CD (the edition I have has 2.1 at least) You might even want to pick up CDs for different architectures because you never know when someone's going to find some old 68k Mac or something lying around.

More on Conectiva Re:Linux in spanish

[morcego]

Conectiva has an office in Santiago, Chile.
I think that can help you a lot, once you can phone then.

URL: http://www.conectiva.cl/
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Internet access.

[mfarah]

won't have reliable internet access when I'm there (if I have it at all)

That won't be a problem. As long as you have access to a phone line, you'll be able to get dial-up Internet access in Chile - there are many... er... "on-the-fly & no previous contract" plans from ISPs here that are charged on the phone bill. On the other hand, broadband access is expensive.

As for distros: Conectiva would be the choice here.

try SuSE...

[pwagland]

Hi there,

You may want to consider using SuSE. They have pretty good multilingual support (I use the dutch), you can buy it with Spanish manuals (or at least you could with 7.2, probably still can) and they also have spanish how-tos on the disk. And, assuming the program supports it, it comes with spanish translations for KDE ang GNOME programs as well.

If you are going to be without the internet, this could be an interesting choice I think.

Some of the intersting ones are:
Name : howtoes
Summary : Collection of HOWTOs from the 'Linux Documentation Project' (Spanish)

Name : network_es
Summary : SuSE Linux Manual: Network (spanish)

Name : qappl_es
Summary : SuSE Applikation Manual (spanish)

Name : qconfig_es
Summary : Configuration Manual (spanish)

Name : sdb_es
Summary : SuSE Support-Database (spanish)

Name : susehelp_es
Summary : SuSE Help-System (base)

Name : suselinux-reference_es
Summary : System and Reference Manual (es)

Name : susetour_es
Summary : SuSE Tour spanish

Name : books_es
Summary : Several Linux Books translated to spanish

Things to take into account

[mfos.org]

The systems you are dealing with may have special needs. Depending on the age they may not have very much memory at all. You may want to consider canabalizing some of the computers for there parts to boost ram.

Sometimes ram can be so problematical that the installation media won't fit into ram. In this case, make one computer with enough ram (canabalize if you have to) that you can install linux on it. It should be nearly identical to all the other computers. Then use that disk image to create the other hard disks for the other machines.

If you have problems with init running out of memory before the system is loaded, use this command at the lilo prompt

lilo: linux init=/bin/ash

That will just load up the ash command prompt (ash has a very tiny memory profile)

You can remount the drives with `mount / -o rw, remount`

Also, you may need to use an earlier kernel, as they take up less space in memory (The entire kernel must be loaded into ram)

It'll be slow, with all the swapping but it should get the job done.

Also read the Small Memory howto at the LDP

Re:What do they need it for?

[Inexile2002]

They want it because they're sick of Microsoft, they hear good things and well... who knows - they're monks - I don't pretend to understand how they think. My cousin emailed me and asked me to spend a few days helping him out. I agreed.

debian Spanish-speaking fan

[neripunk]

I switched to Debian a while ago, so it's been some time since I used RedHat or SuSE, but from the point of view of a native speaker of Spanish, I'm quite happy with what they provide. Of course I have a pretty good command of English, so it's tough for me to judge how it would be for a monolingual speaker...

Personally, I'd burn CD images with all the Deian packages. You'd probably want to go with Woody, since it is almost frozen and Potato is quite outdated. Find pointers and instructions at http://cdimage.debian.org/ [debian.org]. This way, you can make the install in English yourself and then install the appropriate packages. There is a very convenient "spanish" task package containing doc-linux-es, manpages-es, ispanish, wspanish and user-es. Then, run the "castellanizar" script found in user-es to have all the possible defaults in Spanish.

Another suggestion is for you to start to practice your Spanish now and make the same question on http://barrapunto.com [barrapunto.com], a Spanish-speaking slashdot copycat site. Best luck, anyway, I hope you make good converts...