Which distro can anyone recommend for low end hardware ?

[Brian Kelsay]

  I've said it before, DamnSmall Linux.  Now also known as DSL and the boot menus reflect this for the clean crowd.  Flux box is the default on DSL and it is easily customizable.  If you want, I can make a custom DSL with Open Office, it would take about 5 minutes as I already have all the pieces.  If you want to install to the HDD, there are decent instructions on damnsmalllinux.org and on the index.html page that comes up when you boot DSL.   It is a bit harder than Knoppix to get set up, but for older hardware, it can't be beat.  
  Installing DSL to HDD will make it much faster and you will have plenty of room on a 1.2GB or 2GB HDD.   Knoppix may not quite fit on a 2GB drive.   It decompresses to around 2.2GB when installed.  You would have to do the poorman's or frugal install to HDD.  This involves leaving the compressed filesystem from the CD, which is about 700MB.  This would work for the 1-2GB drive, but you will still have tons of stuff they will never need.  After installing DSL to HDD you will need to do a "dpkg restore" or enable apt-get from the menu and then "apt-get install openoffice-en", I think.   Since it is for a daycare, you may also want to "apt-get install gcompris."  That is a package of kids learning games.  Gcompris could also beincluded on the CD as there is a DSL package for it.
  If you were dead set on using full Knoppix, I would install to HDD, if room permits.  Then you will want to set lilo, or grub if the current one uses it, to start in fluxbox.  Then you would want to "apt-get remove kdevelop" and any other pkgs that might save you space, that are unneeded.  You could remove some 3d games that won't even play on old hardware, koffice, palm pilot apps, email, extra browsers, irc clients, ftp clients, lots of stuff.
  Hope this helps.



Brian Kelsay

>>> Oren Beck <> 09/26/04 05:28PM >>>
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.