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Re: [LUG] Old hardware costings WAS: Promoting GNU/Linux through computer shop



Brough, Tom wrote:

If this is a MISTAKE then I intend to continue making it !

I hope you will as well.

I think Kai's point is if you want to use a full Linux desktop you don't
want to be going back to even 5 year old hardware. LTSP isn't running
the whole desktop.

Certainly for Office use you probably want Open Office and Mozilla, or
similar applications, on top of something like KDE3, and my 400MHz
Celeron laptop runs these tolerably.

Whilst my 5 year old desktop box is still usable, it is running 4 year
old version of KDE, and I wouldn't recommend Linux newbies run anything
but the latest software with all the patches (which I guess means
something like Debian stable).

Similarly if you do keep upto date on software releases, you'll get
better functionality as it becomes available. The spell checking in KDE
3.2 is my favourite new feature this week - kind of makes Microsoft's
approach to same look a little lame (not all my desktops are 4 years old).

Also these older boxes may make perfectly adequate servers for various
things. Running a modern window manager is far more strenous than
holding a few dozen moderately busy websites (unless you've gone very
heavyweight in your content management software).

Simon

PS: Folks - if you must disagree please do it politely like Tom, I'd
like to keep this a forum parents would be happy to let their children
read - whatever age - we need more bright 4 year olds to explain PHP to
me. And whilst it usually is such a forum, you never know what the first
message someone will see is.

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