[oclug] Uses for older computers

[Brad Barnett]

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 18:13:51 -0400
Andy Civil <andycivil at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi
> 
> Without wishing to start another distro war, I'm looking for suggestions
> 
> for some old computers I have in the 200 - 400 MHz range. Bear in mind 
> that I'm only a novice to medium Linux user (I never did manage to get 
> sound working before ALSA came along...). These computers are really too
> 
> slow to run Win98/Firefox because the flash and adobe plugins make it 
> grind to a halt. I'm hoping that by upgrading to Linux, I can get some 
> use out of them for someone. Here are two ideas I have:
> 
> 1. Completely basic games computer; sound would be nice, some kind of 
> Window system (Gnome/KDE) that came with games like tetris, solitaire. 
> No connectivity.
> 
> 2. Internet access computer; would require modem support (if you can 
> afford broadband you're not going to use it with an old computer) and 
> hopefully sound. Would need to be able to run Firefox and Thunderbird.
> 
> I'm already thinking Xubuntu, but even that needs 1.5Gb disk, and 64Mb 
> RAM (128 strongly recommended). I'm sure Win98 didn't need that much :-)
> 
> Thanks for any suggestions
> 

Well, it would be nice if you could find a security updated distro that
used older software.  Frankly, modern kernels are memory / resource pigs. 
2.2 or 2.4 would be preferable especially for older hardware as listed
above.

Walking away from KDE or Gnome and moving to a leaner window manger would
help quite a bit too.

If you're not planning any connectivity, you could just use a really old
Debian (or whatever) distro....