RE: Can Debian be used instead of Redhat ?

["Joyce, Matthew" <MJoyce@ccia.org.au>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matthew Weier O'Phinney [mailto:matthew@weierophinney.net] 
> Sent: Tuesday, 29 April 2003 12:55 PM
> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Re: Can Debian be used instead of Redhat ?
> 
> 
> -- Joyce, Matthew <MJoyce@ccia.org.au> wrote
> (on Tuesday, 29 April 2003, 10:44 AM +1000):
> > I need to build a box to run Materials Studio 2.0, it will run on 
> > either Win2k or Redhat.
> > 
> > I'm happy to use win2k, but the only spare box is quite old, 
> > PII/350/MMX/96Mb and as it does not need any gui, linux might be 
> > appropriate.
> 
> Others answered your question regarding whether or not you 
> could run the program on Debian vs Red Hat. I just want to 
> weigh in my 2 cents worth regarding your "spare box". My main 
> machine is a Celeron 366 with 256MB RAM -- and I can run a 
> GUI just fine; better than I did with W98SE. I don't run a 
> full desktop environment like GNOME or KDE, but I have 
> equivalent functionality with a number of other tools 
> (blackbox or xfwm for window manager; rox for desktop icons 
> and/or panel; gkrellm for monitors and a number of applets). 
> Don't get caught in the "older hardware = lesser functionality" trap.

Well, this box will only be doing sums in it's head an giving back the
answers to client PCs, so no gui needed.
But regards using old equipment, I am a great believer of recycling
hardware, moving it down the line to less intense tasks.

I have several old PCs doing useful things, a 486 as a mail server, a p133
as imp/horde webmail server and a p200 as a jukebox/streamer thing.

However, when it comes to guis, I think old equipment is quite awful.  The
video cards aren't usually agp, often with only 4mb memory.  yuk no thanks.

At home I did try Gnome and KDE and a few 'lite' desktops, but I was not
very impressed.  In the end I went back to MS for my main PC, I play a lot
of games so really it was the only choice.

For me linux is best kept in a cupboard or comms room doing something
useful, every day, reliably.

I digress.