Political Blather

[Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO]

 You want "damn smaller", again look to DamnSmall, but with a twist.  A
guy saw a need for EXACTLY what you are talking about and he tweaked
DamnSmall with a user-created extension.  First he created a
booth-0.3.7.dsl that turns a DSL boot disk with this extension added
into an Internet kiosk.  Then he went further and created a website to
distribute it, and built the fully integrated KioskCD, based on DSL.
Then he went even further to build a tool to let you customize it.
http://www.kioskcd.com/   It works great, boots directly to Firefox,
locks the desktop out, won't let you make changes, no chance for
viruses, restarts the desktop in 60 minutes, includes Flash and Java or
can come without it.   Maybe THAT will be to your liking?
I would like to update KioskCD to a newer version of DSL soon to support
more network cards, wireless cards and possibly the new Flash 9 for
Linux.  I'm going to poke around more on the forums since the holidays
have passed.

There has also been a remaster of this one to make a disaster relief
kiosk called EZwebPC, but it is not as cool for our uses.  It has a
default homepage to some Red Cross pages and pages to apply for relief
funds, but you might like that it has favorites saved for all major
webmail sites.  In a few minutes I had customized KioskCD to do this and
better.

Oh yeah, I HAVE mentioned this to you before.


>-----Original Message-----
>From: Oren Beck
>Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 11:48 AM
>To: Phil Thayer


>> Fr: Phil Thayer
>> > My example is a Pentium 75 thru 233 laptop with under 50 
>MB ram and 
>> > under 1gig HDD. The  concept of a GUI distro that will have an 
>> > acceptable user response time and run on laptops such as described 
>> > has not yet been demonstrated to me.
>>
>>
>> Wow.  I really don't understand this one.  It sounds to me like you 
>> have things a little backwards.  *nix OS's have traditionally been 
>> smaller and run much better on lower end hardware then does 
>MS OS's.  
>> This has almost always been the case.  Either you are not installing 
>> things properly or your hardware is having problems because *nix 
>> against any MS OS will run better on older and less powerful 
>machines.
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>See above comments regarding usability and response time to 
>the user's perceptions.
>As to the "not installing properly" issue- yes the guru level 
>folks can tweak, recompile, hand select components and every 
>metric of performance can only be improved by doing so. That 
>however does not cover the box stock units .
>The piles of retired laptops that won't even load newer 
>windows let alone our standards of Knoppix and it's full size 
>siblings. DSL as Brian mentioned does "work" but is almost 
>painful to use in it's "insert cd, power on  wait for desktop"
>modes. OR "hand user an old laptop with CD in drive, they turn 
>it on and it just works.
>I do NOT doubt that there may be ways of hacking down unused 
>cruft to gain speed, but then we re-enter the world of "us" 
>and upper level "us" at that.
>
>I'd like to see perhaps a "damn smaller" concept whacked down 
>to maybe even only a browser and networking in GUI even 
>lacking audio.  So turning an otherwise dumpster bait laptop 
>into a functional net interface. Yes- we won't have eye candy 
>or idiot videos but the basic web itself before ADD/ADHD 
>audiences demanded all the crap will work.
>After all- much of the crap we have been despising in some 
>other threads won't work on 95/98 either.
>
>ALL of my comments are based on my self observations and 
>personal experiences as to "what I and many others REALLY use 
>a computer for the most clock hours of any day.
>For me- most of the time my mail is web based. It is simply 
>the most hassle free default.
>And most of the daily reading sites are often chosen for a 
>lack of flashies.
>SO we have me spending my time on webmail, a few websites,  and 
>some Usenet often thru Google. All of which shows that a mail 
>client, a news client etc , audio capacity all cruft?
>IS an integrated browser suite like Mozilla embracing or 
>missing the best way to do this?

>"In trying to be all things to all people there lies a chance 
>of becoming nothing to anyone"