[NBLUG/talk] Cheap Computers for All

[Walter Hansen]

Just ran across this in one of the tech journals I get and thought it might
be of interest to you and yours.

There is a project to make an install of Linux that will work very well on a
very low power computer. Sounds like they have it working with computers
such as 486s (might even work with 386s) with as little as 6megs memory. The
idea is that there is no real reason why such junk computers need to fill up
landfills when people who can't afford much could be using them.

I've got a couple of Pentium 100 laptops with 1-gig drives that I might
install this onto. Their idea is to use modern distributions but with memory
and hard drive minimal programs that will run fast on older hardware.
They've got a desktop/browser and such all working along with office
applications and such. Also these are secure modern distributions
(fedora/kde), not old software.

It kina boils down to the fact that you don't need a P4 2ghz machine with a
gig of ram to run minesweeper or check email. In the windows world these
computers are not supported and are only good for the trash. (Just try
getting patches for win 95). But in the linux world that may not have to be
the case.


http://www.rule-project.org/