Re: [school-discuss] Knoppix vs. Freeduc vs. ???

["Dave Prentice" <prentice@instruction.com>]

Hello all,
    <begin rant> One of the big selling points of Linux I keep hearing
is that it will run on older hardware. In fact, two years ago I was
able to load RH 6.2 on some 486s with as little as 24meg of RAM, 512k
of video RAM, and 500meg hard drives. They didn't have blazing
performance, but at least they worked and were cheap.
    What's happened since then? It seems like every Linux distro has
become as much of a resource hog as Windows. Now they all want at
least 128 meg of RAM and 2 gig hard drive space. I still have old
machines that use SIMMs. It's a stretch to try to get them up to 64meg
of RAM, let alone buying bigger hard drives.
    I wonder if Freeduc is in this category of "resource hog." I spent
almost 4 frustrating hours today trying to load it on 3 separate IBM
P-133s with 64 meg of RAM and 2gig of HD space. It would boot from CD
OK, but only got a little way before giving kernel panics. It never
got around to giving me the option to install to hard drive. Will
freeduc even run on less than 128meg?
    Yes, I know that you can set up a thin client network if you have
the resources and expertise, but I have neither. I tried and tried
with K12LTSP but never could make it work, and haven't been able to
find anybody to give me local support. All I want is some distro that
will be useful to students and will still run as a standalone on old,
limited hardware. Is there no hope for me?
</end rant>
Thanks,
Dave Prentice
prentice@instruction.com