SEUL: Re: Your mandate.

[Roger R Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

> Hi,
> I really like where you are trying to go.  I was told by many people
> that Linux was going to be an important operating system, so I went to
> purchase, and try to learn it.  I(with much difficulty with the disc
> druid) installed Redhat(I think it was 5.2) on my system, and in 2 weeks
> only managed to learn how to run configurator, turn X on, and get lost
> and stuck in vi.  This was much better than my previous try, which
> resulted in only fortune cookie type things being presented to me when I
> turned the machine on.
> 
> I presently have an old 486, 50Mhz. IBM microchannel machine with a 4??
> MB HDD, and 16 MB of RAM sitting around with nothing to do.  It is a
> SCSI drive, and a 2.88MB FDD.  Is there any sense in my trying your
> distribution?  I'd like to learn something about this, but would like to
> use as friendly an interface as Mr. Gates provides.  The disc druid,
> Redhat people, etc. were just too much for me.  Cheers.
> Larry
 
Currently SEUL does not have a production-grade distribution for you
to try. We are fostering the development of two distributions:
Independence (http://independence.seul.org/) is based on Redhat 6.1
with some improvements for end-users, mostly in the realm of better
packages and better applications. I'm not sure if a 486/50 has
sufficient horsepower for redhat 6.1, though. It probably does if you
choose your packages carefully. (Don't choose KDE or Gnome, for
instance.)

TINY (http://tiny.seul.org/) is based on slackware, and is designed
for really small computers (386 or better with at least 12 megs of
ram and 80 megs of drive space). This might be a good choice for you,
but if you're trying Linux for the first time, be sure to keep an
open mind and remember it's an alpha distribution. :)

I'm tempted to recommend Debian (http://www.debian.org/) to you, since
it scales much better than other distributions I've seen. Meaning, it
can make good use of a really powerful computer, but you can also
install it on a 486 and not have it be slow. You can probably get this
with Redhat too if you work at it, but RH6.1 expects your computer to
be fast, and you have to consciously go through and make sure it
doesn't install anything (and make it the default) that will cripple
your machine. On the other hand, Debian is notoriously difficult to
install, and your decision to try it should be based on how comfortable
you are with trying new things.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling response. Hope this is useful,
--Roger