Rebuilding old hardware [was: Looking for new business oportunities]

[Kenneth Hawkins]

Howdy Bob

For low-end hardware, and if you are not connecting to internet (as security is bypassed - no login req'd) Puppy linux cannot be beat for small footprint & speed. It's package management is a bit different, but it enjoys a large community, with many deriviatives. Some are very specifically a desktop copy of XP. If you can load the machine with over 256MB of RAM, you can set the whole OS to load in RAM at start, and enjoy blazing fast app loading & switching.

The recent versions have Samba tools that are fairly easy to use for LAN services.

If a bit of security, or login scripting functions are needed, then Vector linux also works well on older hardware; based on slackware, which is generally acknowledged to be the fastest base for general PC operations.

Could also consider AntiX, a derivative of MEPIS that uses IceWM, that also works well on the PIII generation.

HTH
Ken, the distro hopping mad-man




________________________________
From: Bob Jonkman <bjonkman at sobac.com>
To: The Canadian Ubuntu Users Community <ubuntu-ca at lists.ubuntu.com>
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2009 2:18:32 PM
Subject: Rebuilding old hardware [was: Looking for new business oportunities]

I'm rebuilding a couple of low-end PCs (PIII, less than 256Mb RAM), 
and looking for a distro slightly more advanced than Debian 2.1.

These boxes are network-enabled, but will  not be connected to the 
Internet. It sounds like GOS is dependent on  Cloud Computing; is GOS 
useful for non-Internet connected computers?  If not, what OS is 
recommended for low-powered obsolete hardware?

--Bob.

-- -- -- --
Bob Jonkman <bjonkman at sobac.com>        http://sobac.com/sobac/
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On 23 Feb 2009 at 12:02 Kenneth Hawkins <ubuntu-ca at lists.ubuntu.com> 
wrote about "Re: Looking for new business oportunities[...]"  

>FWIW, I recently threw GOS onto an older PIII-600 Toshiba
>Portege I have, that just never dies. I had trouble with XP, even after I
>roto-root the septic sludge they force on us. I did not have high
>expectations, as the max RAM on this thing is only 384MB, and it has no
>special graphics chip. I confess that I was TOTALLY blown away! Every
>component worked by default, including every PCMCIA wireless card I have
>thrown at it so far. Best of all...it is WAY FASTER than XP was on the
>same hardware in its DEFAULT config. Youtube worked without having to
>bitch-slap flash onto the machine, I can watch ripped videos if they are
>not too compressed, stream audio/MP3/ogg right out of the box. Now if they
>could just do somehting about the
> crappy default desktop theme........If you are rebuilding PC's for
> people, try GOS (its ubuntu based, so sources work)
>



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