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"Brough, Tom" <Tom.Brough@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Kai Hendry wrote:I have first hand experience of recovering old hardware into a setup for a parent's friend. The amount of time I had to spend configuring and working out the slow legacy cranky old hardware was frankly unbelievable. Don't repeat my mistake.It may interest some of our members (at the risk of yet another flame war ) Subject Machine: Model : Gateway P200 (G5-233) Born: 1995 (Circa) Ram: 64Mb Options: 1. Skip it -> cost to the environment in pollutants (unacceptable) 2. Local School -> "Yer but wheres my support mate" 3. LTSP to Third World School -> "Great When can U deliver"
Applications: Anything that will run on the LTSP server = anything the open source community produces
Personally I think its worth spending 15 minutes per a machine. Im sure the kids would agree too ! I do what I can to promote Open Source, but I do get upset when people (some of whom should know better) cast FUD about old boxes and linux. There is an easy way to recycle old machines using linux USE IT. If this is a MISTAKE then I intend to continue making it !
That, great and worthwile though it is, is somewhat different to setting up a standalone linux box on the same hardware, with a usable GUI and apps, and configuring the modem[1] etc. You *can* get something usable on there, but you are going to be using something like FVWM, or Blackbox, even XFCE is a bit lardy to run on that spec. even then any apps like Mozilla or OOo are going to send the harddrive thrashing, so youd have to use something like Dillo for browsing, and abiword for word type stuff. How many people looking at buying a dirtcheap computers like that are going to take one look at a set up like that, and go running as fast as they can screaming "linux is shit, give me back my windows!"? Hell, the debian box I set up at work, which is a 400Mhz celeron with 90-something mb of RAM is great if you use the command line, and is working fine as a test server for stuff, but it is barely usable under gnome, and if you fancy using mozilla to browse a webpage with it you had better not be in a hurry, cos it isn't fast. Its one thing to be using old kit as a thin client, thats a great use for them, brilliant for schools, community centres or anything similar that needs a few computers to run on a network for as little money as possible. They are even great for someone who knows linux a bit to use as a cheap server, or a second box running either an extremely lightweight WM[2] or no X server at all. But as a way of introducing nontechnical people to Linux on a budget they are rather less useful, depending on the spec etc,especially as many people have unreasonable expectations of what you can do with a computer that old. I don't see installing an old version of Linux as any better than installing an old version of windows, one of the advantages of using linux is that it is more secure than windows, but if you install an old version that advantage is usually negated at a stroke, though you are safe from massmailling worms and viruses, which is always a bonus. [1] Invariably a winmodem, which can be an incredible pain in the arse to get working, and if the person who wants the computer so they can browse the internet then it is quite a mojor stumbling block. [2] Depends on the spec really though, Red Hat & Gnome2 runs reasonably happily on a 600Mhz laptop here, that does have 256MB of ram though. -- James jamesk[at]homeric[dot]co[dot]uk "Thinking to get at once all the gold the goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find - nothing." Aesop -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.