Open office might be abit to slow but what about abiword and Gnumeric? They seem to have much lower sys requirements and load much faster! Also if Linux was to be installed your'd want to use Mandrake as it's i586 compiled and you want every drop of speed you can get from those older machines.
Mandrake 8.2 or 9.1 (you'll probably have to do text based install for 9.1) with Abiword, Gnumeric and IceWM should run resonablly well on those machines. Or if thats still a problem you could use the terminal server pacakge for Mandrake to run the apps on the slower Machines from the PIII550. Chad > On Mon, 30 Jun 2003 09:28, you wrote: > > Christopher Sawtell wrote: > > > I have offered our services to install a Linux distro on two > > > identical machines for the Spreydon Baptist Pre-School on that evening. > > > These are the machines which will be used by the children. Suggestions > > > as to what child oriented packages should go into the software load, > > > and a volunteer to do that would be much appreciated. Somebody from > > > there will be bringing the machines etc. > > > > > > I have not heard anything more about this one. They may or not be > > > coming. I will have a Knoppix with the install script and the stickers > > > program ready in case they turn up. Anybody else got any good ideas > > > about KidWare for pre-schoolers? > > > > Ken McAllister comments: Alison told me at the time that "someone from > > the Club would arrange to get the children's machines working." This > > was not quite what CS said above. > > It's a rough enough correlation to my understanding of the arrangement. > > > "Can I take the machines for you?" I asked Alison yesterday (Sunday). > > > > She told me that no machines need be dealt with now for the children, > > Do they need a visit from the BSA? > > > thanks, and that the officeware for the staff is more important. It > > seems - I am guessing - that people around Alison have not been wholly > > Linux-oriented. > > She is not Linux oriented in the very least. > > > OSS nil, Microsoft nil. Will this match go into extra time, or shall we > > default gracefully? > > The latter, the last thing we, or Linux generally, need is to try to > support users who are resentful of having it forced on them. > > > Did we establish that OpenOffice would, or > > wouldn't, run on any two of these? > > OpenOffice won't run satisfactorily in a machine with less than 128 Mbytes > of memory. > > > Pentium I, 133 Mhz, 64 Mb, no HD, no floppy, no CD > > Off to Molten Media. > > > Pentium I, 133 Mhz, 32 Mb > > If they get networked, I'd suggest this one as a firewall. > Take the RAM out of the other one above. > > > Pentium II, 233 Mhz, 64 Mb > > Pentium II, 233 Mhz, 64 Mb (that makes two) > > I thought these two for the Children. > > > Pentium III, speed not noted, no Ram > > Therefore stuffed? Off to Molten Media. > > > Pentium III, 550 Mhz, 128 Mb > > Open office would run well on this P III, but not the ones above. > > > Scanner and assorted printers > > More details required to interface these. > > -- > Christopher Sawtell.
