On Sun, 2003-08-10 at 10:41, Terry Collins wrote: > Ken Foskey wrote: > > > ...snip...... > > > > I am doubly interested when he discusses the use of these techniques to > > eek more performance out of very old computers for computer bank. > > Is there a distro for 486, etc?
Here are two: Damn Small Linux based on Knoppix at http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ and Deli Linux based on Slack 7.1 at http://delilinux.berlios.de/ Quoting directly from their pages - from Damn Small Linux: Damn Small Linux is a business card size (50MB) Live CD Linux distribution. Despite its minuscule size it strives to have a functional and easy to use desktop. Damn Small Linux has a nearly complete desktop, including XMMS (MP3, and MPEG), FTP client, links-hacked web browser, spreadsheet, Sylpheed email, spellcheck (US English), a word-processor, three editors (Nedit, nVi, Zile [emacs clone]), graphics editing and viewing (Xpaint, and xzgv), Xpdf, emelFM (file manager), Naim (AIM, ICQ, IRC), VNCviwer, SSH/SCP server and client, DHCP client, PPP, PPPoE, a web server, calculator, Fluxbox window manager, system monitoring apps, USB support, and pcmcia support as well. X? is a combo of Debian packages and the Kdrive Xvesa and Xfbdev servers. It works beautifully on most computers but it runs slower than what most Linux users are use to. That's the cost of keeping it all small and lite. and this from Deli Linux: DeLi Linux stands for "Desktop Light" Linux. It is a Linux Distribution for old computers, from 486 to Pentium MMX 166 or so. It's focused on desktop usage. It includes email clients, graphical web browser, an office package with word processor and spreadsheet, and so on. A full install, including XFree and development tools, needs not more than 300 MB of harddisk space. The trick is, that DeLi Linux uses only "lightweight" alternative software. If you are looking for the newest KDE, GNOME or Mozilla, DeLi Linux will not make you happy. The test computer is a 486 laptop with 16 MB RAM, and all apps which comes with DeLi Linux are running smoothly. Kernel 2.2.25 is a rock solid kernel of the 2.2 branch and it should recognize all hardware which is available for old computers. 2.4.x is newer, but it's also larger. Same for XFree 3.3.6: Xfree 4.x has dropped support for many old graphic chips and cards, so I chose 3.3.6. Siag Office with the Pathetic Writer word processor and the Siag spreadsheet is the Office package of DeLi Linux. Dillo and links2 are the available web browsers. dillo is gtk based, links2 is usable on console and as graphic version under XFree. With mutt and sylpheed there are 2 email clients, one for console, one graphical for XFree. Slrn is the standard news reader for console. For small (local) server tasks, there are masqmail (a very small sendmail replacement but easy to configure), sn (a small news server) and mokey (a very small http demon with PHP support). Lots of development tools are provided: gcc 2.95, perl, python, ruby and PHP for web development. The standard widget set on DeLi Linux is gtk 1.2.x For printing, there is ghostscript, including stp, the gimp print addon, which supports many modern printers. Many window managers: icewm and XFCE. The "classics" for spartanic people: aewm, cwwm, larswm. And, as first distribution, introducing XD640, a desktop environment especially written for old computers with a word processor, notepad, ppp-dialer and many other apps. --------------------------------------------------------------------- "Grrr...Arrgh!" -- Mutant -- 12:08:25 up 15 days, 1:19, 3 users, load average: 0.10, 0.06, 0.01-- -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
