Re: Recommendations for donated machines
Kevin Mark wrote:
Hello D-u's,
I need a recommendation for some donated machines. Here are the specs:
P I/75 32MB 2GB
(may upgrade memory to 64/96MB)
That is good, the more the merrier to help buffer your slow IDE disk. Of
course the 33mhz (?) FSB isn't going to be a speed demon for even memory
access.
(also may try cpu upgrade.)
Good luck. I wouldn't stress on this unless you're thinking of doing the
main board, then you'll need different memory which will be faster and a
newer power supply oh, UDMA 66+ 80 pin cables, hmm, might as well get a
bigger UDMA capable drive... etc. ;)
Which version of Debian (or possibly Slackware) would work?
I think Woody should work.
Kernel 2.2 or 2.4, X 4 or 3, Abiword, gnumeric or OO? KDE, Gnome, XFCE or ?
I would expect 2.2 to use less resources than 2.4 but I've never tested
or read about it.
X - depends on the video card(s). v4 drops support for older cards.
KDE vs Gnome... I don't know which is 'heavier', WindowMaker is pretty
light weight.
If you chose KDE, then you may as well use KOffice.
If you chose Gnome, then Abiword/Gnumeric/etc
OO is pretty heavy, but after you waited a year each time you start it,
maybe it would run be ok on a P75. *shrug*
Or anything that would help get the most out of this setup.
I think of graphical web browsers Netscape 4.x loads the fastest,
possbily because it had a rendering engine that only followed Netscape's
standards ;P If you're using KDE, Konquerer should be a fair choice. I
haven't really tried too many others. I like Mozilla, but I like it much
better on a 1.8ghz machine than I did on a 450mhz. Gallleon was OK, but
since Mozilla has tabs and works how I like, I dont use Galleon much.
Lynx is definatly one of the fastest! :)
I think lighter is better. If people are going to expect the machines to
work like a 1.5+ Ghz machine, and load software that runs "just fine"
on those systems, they are going to be _very_ disappointed. Evaluating
what these machines will be used for and sharing that would help. It
seems you want to do standard office type applications in a graphical
environment.
My first linux setup was on a P120, and compared to Win95 on another
P120 starting X and Gnome was sluggish (this was Gnome 1x on RH 6.2),
Netscape 4.x was OK. I used gedit for notes and Netscape Mail for
mail/news. i was very happy with it but others cringed at the lack of
"pretty spinning graphics" on every action.
I have a neighbor who still uses WordPerfect for DOS. Loves it. They
have a hard time (and I agree) with the whole black text on a white
background because it's hard for them to read. Up on campus they had
lots of terminal email machines. Lots of people used them. They've since
gone to web based email with only the web, and I see the lines to use
the terminals being no longer or shorter.
There's a lot to be said for a good curses based application...
--
Jacob
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