Re: donated computers lab setup

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Geoffrey Leach wrote:
On 12.27 13:59, Tom Poe wrote:
I recently received 10 computers from an organization that wants them put to use. They're PI and PII boxes, which surely can be useful in many ways. First thing, though, I need to see how many actually work. Then I need to have a barebones OS to put on them. If the drives work, they'll be really small. Any suggestions? Anyone doing something similar?

There are a number of distos designed to minimize disk requirements. For example, http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/. If the BIOSs support booting from CD, I'd try that with a live CD -- Knopix, for example.

Not only is it a waste to turf an operating piece of electronics but also it is good for the environment to keep old computers out of the dump for as long as possible. Between the heavy metals in the computer and toxins in the plastic, used computers are one of the worst things to put in a land fill I have refurbished several computers and turned them over to economically disadvantaged persons. I use a variety of distros from RH9 through Ubunto 6.10 and of course one version or another of Fedora. In all cases so far I have set the box up as a basic desktop, on occassion there are a few driver issues and it is easier to find a distro that works rather than work through the driver issue. A s a general recommendation I recommend testing the box with a live CD to see if it will run that distro. I have found that frequently the older boxes appear to have a problem displaying the graphics during a live cd boot, as long as the CD is spinning it is a bit of a wait (go for coffee) but they usually finally make the grade and when installed on the hardrive they still appear to have a problem but there is only time to make the coffee before it completes its boot. If I had a group of ten I would consider setting them up in a thin client configuration and donate them to a charitable organisation that had a computer that could be reconfigured as a server for the thin clients, haven't tried this yet but it is similar to another project on my todo list.

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