Re: [Debian-NP] What's the big idea?
Alex de Landgraaf wrote:
Also reusing old equipment, keeping the memory usage trim would be a good
idea: iceWM.
Here's a report from the field for those interested. Random thoughts on
windows managers and some software thoughts...
We're working with complete and total newbies and lower end recycled
systems.
As a WM, we're using IceWM here at FREE GEEK. < http://freegeek.org >
(XFCe is a favorite of some people who are already counted amongst the
unafraid, but IceWM is what makes our end users happy.)
We've put very simple icons on the desktop ("Web Browser", "Word
Processer", "CD Files", "Play a CD", etc). We created a simple menu that
matches the desktop pretty closely and a way to use the menu to switch
between this "basic" menu (the default) and a "detailed" menu (lets you
get to all the programs).
This seems to be very usable for our clients, but our clients skew even
less technically advanced than my impression of the average (U.S.)
nonprofit worker.
We have put into place a similar interface setup (behind a dialup
connection) at a coffeehouse in town (here in Portland, OR, USA), and
the UI feedback is relatively positive. That's mostly web browsing, and
the shared modem connection is what makes for it being slow -- the chief
complaint).
Specs:
P-200, P-233, P-Pro-200, or P-Pro-233 (was as low as P-166 with the
above software)
80 MB RAM (this is our bottleneck)
2.0-2.9 GB HD
Sound card, modem, 10BT NIC, etc.
This runs the KDE CD Player, Konqueror (as a file browser), PySol and
Galeon acceptably (for our users), but really slows down on (though does
run) OpenOffice.org. An interesting other browser that we use for our
online documentation is dillo -- really light and fast, if you can
control the content. (That makes for a plethora of browsers on these
FreekBoxen, but oh well...)
Switching over to KDE or Gnome slowed things down considerably.
Also, I heartily endorse the concept of throwing your highest end
hardware at a back end server, and using diskless terminals (P100s with
64 MB of RAM is quite adequate) to connect to the higher end machine. We
experimented with LTSP, and rather went with a simpler system we grew in
house (called "lessdisks") that seems more ammenable to mix and match
old, crappy hardware. One thing about this kind of set up (security
warning) is people's usernames and passwords fly over the ether in clear
text between the terminals and the server. We're using (again in house
created) "sdm", a secure display manager. I'm not the main guy on either
"lessdisks" or "sdm", but I think debian packages can be made available
for those interested.
A lessdisks/sdm setup on a bunch of tiny P100s was used by thousands of
folks at an anti genetically modified foods series of protests in
Sacremento over a period of several days a few weeks ago. Usability
reports coming back were positive over all as well. There may be people
on this list who experienced it and can comment with more authority.
--
Oil can what?
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Richard Seymour, That Man Behind the Curtain
FREE GEEK
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