Which distro can anyone recommend for low end hardware ?

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Oren,

I have some old PI (both 133 and 166 respectively) systems that have 1.2 
and 2.0 Gig HD's in them that could be taken out and used in their 
current box. I'd be happy to donate them to the center (and my wife 
would be happy to get rid of another one of the 10 or so boxes in the 
garage!).

As for the OS, I have installed Red Hat 8.0 on one of the 166 boxes and 
it ran rather sluggishly, but these boxes only have 16 Meg of RAM, if 
memory servers me correctly. I have since switched to using Debian or 
Knoppix as an OS for most all my boxes. I find that these have been the 
most stable and secure of the flavors I have tried.

Knoppix really was designed for older boxes and is really a very sweet 
install especially for GUI interfaced boxes. The debian auto 
configuration does tend to take a few extra seconds to boot the system, 
but becomes a breeze when the older hardware fails and different 
hardware is installed as no manual reconfiguration is necessary.

With the 64 Meg of RAM they currently have, they should not run into the 
same trouble with the X-windows. Since the knoppix runs with an 
on-the-fly compression system, a 2 Gig HD would be more than enough, 
especially if one of the 1.2 Gig drives was added for data storage. 
Knoppix also comes with Open Office pre installed to satisfy the need 
for MS Office compatible Office Suite.

Either way you go, let me know about the drive(s), I'd be happy to help out!

Oren Beck wrote:

> Ok folks- This one is not the usual "could have googled for it " question .
> 
> A day care center worker wants to buy cheap used hardware and have me or 
> someone else make it work .
> This center is a not-for-profit so Surplus Exchange is a viable hardware 
> source .
> Here's where KCLUG can come in . Showing that Open Source is truly 
> viable for this person's need .
> What is needed ? Single user single desktop maybe not even networked or 
> if so only at the printer share level Compatibility with Msword and 
> Excel in both directions , Printing flyers . Archiving all flyers etc .
> Likely this system may never be internet connected !
> 
> So from that outline- What distro is suggested,
> And more importantly why ?
> 
> Presently owned system is a P2/200 with 64 meg ram and 840 meg HD .
> Suggestions for what to use on this would be appreciated from anyone 
> having had experience with the suggested distro.

-- 
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