Linux

Hello everyone,I wonder if anyone can help,my daughters laptop has just come out of repair,when it went in she had windows vista on,now for some reason the repairer has installed Linux and she cannot get onto msn to chat to her friends.

Is there anyway to get onto msn with linux installed?

If not is there anywhere I can get a windows XP gratis??

I have 2 XP discs in a plastic holder in a box here at my house however dont know if they need an activation key before they cvan be installed...any suggestions???


many thanks

 

Which Linux? A lot of them come with an open-source IM program that can connect to the MSN servers. Ubuntu comes with Pidgin, or it used to back when I was using it anyway.

 

I'd, for one, would ask the repair guy why he installed a Operating System not many people are familiar with. He should have at least asked (unless he did but it does not sound like it) if you have the disks for Vista for him to re-install and then if not, ask if you would like to install Linux.

As for MSN, yes it is possible but as Mimsy stated we would need to know what distribution.

Here is a place you could try. http://kmess.org/

 

Thanks for that however the Laptop was taken in by the ex wife who I have no contact with,the laptop was 2nd hand when purchased so vista was already installed,as far as distribution is concerned I am not familiar with what that means...please elaborate????:-o

 

"Distribution" is essentially the version of Linux that is on the laptop. There's hundreds of them, the most popular ones are listed here.

 

Open a Terminal.

Run this command

Code:

uname -a && cat /etc/*release

 

9.10 came with Pidgin. Pidgin had weird issues with MSN connectivity though.

10.04 uses Empathy. I haven't noticed any issues in that program.

 

best bet is aMSN, its a messenger clone, does all that the other messenger can,

although in my distribution (mandriva) the video conferencing doesn't work

aMSN
http://www.amsn-project.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMSN

you will find aMSN in your software manager,

how to install software
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/installingsoftware
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Applications

 

Right, you are! And, that computer may have had a recovery partition on it which could have been used to reinstall Windows Vista. This is a real case of bad service or incompetence by a repair shop.