I'm looking for some expert advice...
Anyway my question is about Linux. I need a new computer sys. for a small "one-man" business involved in multimedia advertisement consulting working with midsize publishers of print media. Their adds contain a variety of text& images ranging from high quality b/w to full colored photographic pictures.
The business also performs the following tasks:
*Receives text & Images from the publisher in e-form , or hard-copy form (photos and printed pages).
*determines the best combos of text/image attributes...using a special custom designed prop/software package which allows text and images to be manipulated and displayed on monitor accurately, for the printed media.
*Produce a hard-copy of the ad that is a near perfect rep. of what ad will look like in print.
* The business owner also hopes to expand to do very custom work: conceptualizing,designing, creating appropriate text,creating digital photos/videos
* Needs a security system
*Maintains electronic form of accts.recivable/payable, but sends hard-copy invoices to clients
* would like to switch to CD-RW disks for use in exchanging large files
Do you think Linux is the way to go...and would it support the custom software already used by the owner?
It was an expensive investment for him. If so, how can he set it up to suit his needs?
He's currently using an old pc with little memory left and also uses a reg.phone line for access, but is planning to have a faster connection soon...hopefully a Tline. Looking for the best ideas...at best price!

Any help is much appreciated.
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by comstup105 on 10/29/02 09:45 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

Yeah, you can do that.

But you'll have to compile your own kernal to do that. Download the kernal source, and the complier. You can do it under windows, but there's not much point to that, so burn the Linux boot disk off, and use that instead.

You'll have to look up the switches for that particular card, though. And make sure you turn off everything you're not using (printer, scanner) so it doesn't interfere with the processing time.

Figure, under 10 minutes.

Tops.

"I personally think filesystems should be rewritten from scratch every 5 years..." --- Hans Reiser

The root of my question is, what kind of operating system would you the experts recommend to us for this application. A Windows, MAC or Linux or other?

curious student with too many questions:

Given the work that is being done, I would recommend a Macintosh, preferably a grunty G4 with OSX and lots of RAM.

Linux can do all that stuff to some degree, but it'll be hard work, especially when it comes to interacting with clients (who will probably use Freehand / Pagemaker / Word / Photoshop / etc).

If the system will spend a lot of time online, maybe use Linux or OpenBSD as a firewall (you can use the old box for that) but for the core functions, I'd go with a Mac.



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