Question on good Linux for the masses on older hardware

[mikeh]

Hello all,

I chatted with a few people a couple weeks ago in #techshow on IRC and was talking about how I am just starting talks with a local organization where we are going to get old computers donated from local businesses and individuals. The ultimate goal is to get the PC into hands of families or individuals in need who could use the computer.

Anyway I am going to be installing Linux on almost all of them. The only situation where this wouldn't be the case are the possibility of some individuals who are disabled that have some specific software needs that might only be filled with Windows. In which case we will go the Windows route for them.

I suspect most of the systems we get will be without Windows licenses, so it made it real easy to convince the organization to use Linux.

Anyway my main question is what is a good Linux OS to run on some of the older hardware? I'm talking Pentium's running at 333MHZ or so. With 64MB of memory or so. I have played with Xubuntu and found it sluggish on these systems. Newer hardware is no problem and we can run Ubuntu/Kubuntu or the like.

Ideally I want to go with something as "windows like" as possible since the majority of people are familiar with it. I don't want something too geeky since most of these people are going to be pretty green when it comes to computers in general.

Damn Small Linux seems to run very nice on older systems, not quite sure about Fluxbox for the masses though. And the big reason I probably wouldn't use it is the name. The organization I am looking at working with on this has ties to various religious organizations and the Damn Small Linux name might not go over too well.

So any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. We are still very early in discussions on this project. My goal is to get people in the organization to help with the PC work. Hopefully get anyone interested young and old on getting these systems up and running, and then getting them out to people who need them. The group I am talking to has various teen programs and think it could be a great opportunity to some of the interested teens in learning about computers.

Worst thing we haven't gotten a solution on yet is Internet access. The people who would get these systems probably can't afford internet access. We are hoping to get some local DSL/Cable providers to help us out, or at a minimum we could setup a dial up modem pool and maybe let them dial into us for Internet access (albeit slow).

So any thoughts or feedback would be greatly appreciated. My fingers are crossed that this project gets off the ground.

[dpkgregor]

That's some pretty weak hardware you're working with, but this is my advice:
- Try to find a DSL deerivative. There's bound to be a rebranded one.
- Don't use Puppy. It gives the user root access by default. Bad dog.

From my experience in the school, Debian won't run very fast, even with the slimmest possible configuration, so I suggest you take a look at some light Slackware variants or maybe someone here who knows a lot about Slackware could help you (Dann?).

I'd personally go with SliTaz though. The whole OS is about 25 megabytes, but quite surprisingly doesnt' look like *ss.

[eddie]

Just because a distro has a certain desktop does not mean you have to live with it. fvwm/fvwm95 looks sort of like mswindows and is light weight. If you had at least 128 meg of ram I would definitely use Mepis antix. As for people with disabilities there are packages to deal with that. Of course you can always set a low resolution to begin with. The latest knoppix even has speech synthesis built in so that everything is spoken by the computer. I sure that could be adapted to any distro.

[mikeh]

Thanks for some feedback guys.

I hope we don't get too many low end systems, but I know we are going to get some.

I want to minimize the amount of work needed for an install. So that is one reason I was asking about distros already geared for low end systems. The other reason is I don't want to do all the installs myself. I want to involve those who want to help and I doubt many will know Linux, so if I can give them a simple install (say Ubuntu or Kubuntu) things will be easy for them. Eventually they will get comfortable with Linux and doing installs. I may do the low end systems myself and leave the installs on more capable systems to the helpers until they get use to Linux.

As for Linux and disabled people. I mentioned that because they have one person who has a very very old Windows 95 system that he uses. I know little about his situation but I know he has some special software he uses, and a special input device. I was told it was Windows only. So if that is the case I will probably stick with that route for him. But again this is an extreme case.

I am hoping this project takes off and gets some systems out there to people who need them (and they are running Linux!). I also think it is going to get some of the people helping interested in Linux too. Time will tell though.

[dann]

don't forget about icewm; that is a great window manager for the look and feel of windows and it's very low resources.

[MattKingUSA]

don't forget about icewm; that is a great window manager for the look and feel of windows and it's very low resources.

I like IceWM. It's pimpin.

[dpkgregor]

IceWM has some nice skins, but LXDE is cool too.

[spotslayer]

http://tinycorelinux.com/welcome.html

This may be the smallest distro yet!

[MattKingUSA]

IceWM has some nice skins, but LXDE is cool too.

Changing the background in IceWM is too difficult too. When I first started using IceWM it took me hours to get a new background up and tons of reading on the web. I wasn't using Linux full time then either so that made it more difficult. But I still think it's a good window manager.