Re: [seul-edu] Lean and Clean Linux

[Michael Viron <mviron@wsdo.sao.uwf.edu>]

At 07:46 AM 07/09/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>Dear Educator Friends:
>
>I am working at a small parochial elementary school, teaching technology
>and installing networked computers. Previously we have had W95 machines
>loaded with Netscape, Word, and All the Right Type.  This has worked fine.
>However, I have decided to convert the school (gradually) to Linux.  I'm
>sure you all know the multiple good reasons for doing this.  The problem I
>am having is that the standard machine at the school has 16mg RAM and 450
>HD (Pentium 90).  Linux will load on this, but things really slow down if I
>use a desktop such as KDE or Gnome. Yet, such a desktop is important for
>those of our teachers who are only beginners, and have some reservations
>about computer use.
>
>I started with Debian 6.1 and all went reasonably well.  But Debian has a
>steep curve when it comes to detecting network cards (we have many generic
>brands).  I tried Red Hat, which is much better about detecting network
>cards, but which has no support for the micro-channel machines we have.  I
>then discovered that Debian will not work with the micro-channel token ring
>cards we have, so I went back to Red Hat and decided to forget the
>micro-channel machines.
>
>The problem with Red Hat is that it loads all sorts of stuff into memory
>and on the hard drive that are not essential.  This is fine on our few
>Pentium 300s.  But for the 16mg ram machines it really slows things down. I
>end up running much of the basic desktop in virtual memory (on the HD).  My
>hope is to find a way of loading Red Hat or some other distribution so that
>only what is necessary for KDE is loaded.  I do not need all the
>development tools, desktop backgrounds, etc.  And yet, I would prefer not
>to do all the modification by hand, re-loading the kernal and deleting
>packages.  We have over 50 machines, but most of them are older and
>smaller. Upgrading ram is out of the question because the cost of 72 pin
>memory has skyrocketed beyond imagination.  
>
>I thought that perhaps someone had traveled this road before, and had some
>suggestions...
Well...one suggestion would be to make the lower-end P90's
XTerminals...(and use nfs to export the "home directory" for the users on a
machine that'll handle the "larger" disk drive...)  To make administration
easier, you could also set up nis (which allows you to make changes to the
user database (essentially the passwd file) without going to each and every
single machine...
You could try helix gnome (http://www.helixcode.com/)--supposed to work
well with lower end machines (we were running it on 2 486/66's with 16MB
ram until recently)

During the install you can also select "custom"--this doesn't necessarily
mean that you'll have to select individual packages--but you can de-select
the "groups" of packages that you don't need (such as the development
packages)

If you have any further questions, please let me know,

Michael Viron
President / Chief System Administrator
Web Spinners
University of West Florida

>Any help would be greatly appreciated!
>
>
>Robert Maynord
>
>
>