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.
