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Thread: New kid in town

  1. #1
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    Apr 2008
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    Keswick, Ontario, Canada
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    Xubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

    Smile New kid in town

    I'm the new kid on the block, and I have been a Windows user since win95. I refurbish older computers, clean them and assemble "packages" including CPU, keyboard, mouse and monitor. I receive these older units from corporate as well as private donations.
    These "packages" are then given to families who are less fortunate, to help keep their children from falling behind.
    I am wondering which Linux Operating system would be best to put on these machines, as Windows costs are prohibitive.

    Thank you, Paddy

  2. #2
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    Jun 2006
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    Switzerland
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    Hidden!
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    Kubuntu Jaunty Jackalope (testing)

    Re: New kid in town

    Without any specs it's really hard to say something

  3. #3
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    Jan 2007
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    Re: New kid in town

    edubuntu or xubuntu would be good!!

  4. #4
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    Sep 2007
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    USA
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    Hardy Heron (Ubuntu Development)

    Re: New kid in town

    Quote Originally Posted by paddy1 View Post
    I'm the new kid on the block, and I have been a Windows user since win95. I refurbish older computers, clean them and assemble "packages" including CPU, keyboard, mouse and monitor. I receive these older units from corporate as well as private donations.
    These "packages" are then given to families who are less fortunate, to help keep their children from falling behind.
    I am wondering which Linux Operating system would be best to put on these machines, as Windows costs are prohibitive.

    Thank you, Paddy
    I am not saying this cause it's ubuntu forums but if I were you I would use ubuntu/Linux Mint as both of these versions are in active development, great community support here(FREE !!) and will run most old hardware out of the box.

    For version of ubuntu I would use Xubuntu cause XFCE can work on very low end machines also(I have been surprised)

    Ohter good distros to try are Feodra(fully open source), OpenSUSE(IMO) but I have always come back to ubuntu eventually.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    May 2007
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    1,091

    Re: New kid in town

    Quote Originally Posted by superprash2003 View Post
    edubuntu or xubuntu would be good!!
    exactly
    if you are getting donated systems ie older computers, ubuntu has been known to raise dinosaurs from extinction.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Nov 2006
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    Mumbai, India
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    Re: New kid in town

    On older computers, Xubuntu is worth installing.
    btw, why has Google Spider thanked paddy1?
    [Arch + KDE]

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
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    164

    Re: New kid in town

    Quote Originally Posted by vishzilla View Post
    On older computers, Xubuntu is worth installing.
    btw, why has Google Spider thanked paddy1?

    These "packages" are then given to families who are less fortunate, to help keep their children from falling behind.
    =D>
    Do NOT run any command resembling sudo rm -rf /. It is the 10-character code of death

  8. #8
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    West Midlands, England
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    Re: New kid in town

    If these computers are for children, you should be careful that they don't get confused by the different operating systems! The sad fact is that schools insist on paying extortionate amounts to Microsoft, and by default, ubuntu is a bit... brown... whereas XP is blue ^^

    You'd be surprised how much difference that seems to make.

    Fortunately, OpenOffice.org is very similar to Microsoft Office 2003, and compatible with its file types, so from the application side of things, there's no difference.

    Edubuntu is based on ubuntu, so it comes with the same excellent free community support you'd expect, but it's designed specifically for children, http://www.edubuntu.org/

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Nov 2006
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    Mumbai, India
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    Re: New kid in town

    Quote Originally Posted by Google Spider View Post
    =D>
    [Arch + KDE]

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
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    226

    Re: New kid in town

    Hey there! I have seriously wanted to do this for some time.

    The thing that always stops me- nowadays if education is the point, internet and printer are almost mandatory. How do you handle those two things which cost money above the donated computer? The internet especially is a hangup for me. There is an area near us where my wife sometimes teaches that where almost no families in the school have a computer at home. I'd love to set something up like you are doing but I can't figure out the internet access for them in a way that would be affordable to them.

    Anyway, to answer your question- it depends on how old the computer is, and how much of the operating system you want the kids to learn to be able to use the machine.

    My personal favorite is pcfluxboxos. It is lightweight and fast enough to run on my old p 333mhz with 128 mb ram at good speed, yet run the latest software like the latest firefox and open office and gimp, and it also has a huge software repository from pclinuxos with literally thousands of packages of the latest software available for free. BUT- the menu system can be a little confusing- and see there is an automenu creation tool which works pretty well, but I still find I need to hand edit the menu file. That could be a good thing for a smart student who will benefit from the educational part of that experience, but one who is not so intelligent may find that task impossible.

    Other good lightweight choices are puppy linux and damn small linux. Of the two, I prefer puppy (I've tried damn small numberous times and any time I start adding more than a little software the system becomes unstable). Puppy is easier to use and more stable. Both of these systems are very limited in that they use non-standard file systems and versions of software (for example puppy uses sea monkey for a web browser, and dsl uses an older version of firefox) and they also have greatly limited software available compared to pcfluxboxos or ubuntu, but they do have the most popular softwares, like gimp, firefox, open office available in their repositories. I haven't found these to be any faster than pcfluxboxos either. But the desktop in puppy is more familiar to windows users.

    If the machine has a little more horsepower (pentium 3 and up) and you decide fluxbox menu is too much for a kid to handle, zenwalk is very fast and uses xfce which is more like windows. the repository system is a little confusing when you look to add software compared to anything I've suggested so far, and it is somewhat limited. But like pcfluxboxos, it's standard linux, not hacked like puppy or dsl.

    If the machine doesn't have at least 1000mhz, I wouldn't even try an ubuntu derivitive like xubuntu. I've tried it on my 700 mhz laptop and it ran like a slug- pcfluxboxos, zenwalk, puppy and dsl all are very fast by comparison. To be fair, this was a couple of releases ago that I tried xubuntu- it may be faster now- hardy ubuntu seems faster on my amd 2800+ desktop than gutsy was.

    At 1000mhz you can probably run pclinuxos just fine which has a full kde desktop which is going to be much easier and more full featured for a novice compared to xfce or fluxbox.

    There are a couple of ubuntu derivitives I've only tried in virtualbox and not on real equipment that are supposed to be good for older hardware- fluxbuntu, elbuntu and gOS. Fluxbuntu I found much more difficult to set up and actually use than pcfluxboxos even though both use fluxbox. gOS might be a good choice, but I have no idea how it does on older machines.

    If the machine has about 1500 mhz cpu you have a lot more options- most linux will run fine. My folks run kubuntu for example with beryl and the "cube" 3d window manager and it runs just fine on an amd athlon 1800+.

    The big thing is you want as much ram as you possibly can get. 128 megs seems to be a good minimum to shoot for, and anything over that preferable. Most linux can run on 256 without problem - again my folks computer with all the bells and whistles of kubuntu and a 3d desktop runs fine on 256 mb.

    You are going to hear puppy and damn small linux over and over- give them a try but try the others I mentioned and compare the features. IMO unless the child can't handle the menu editing you are better off with a "real unhacked" linux with a standard file structure and full compliment of software availalbe through synaptic if possible like pcfluxboxos. ANd to be honest, I haven't used the automenu generator in pcfluxboxos in several months because I like to set up my menu by hand the way I like it- it's likely that it's improved a lot in that time to the point that the menu might not even be a problem.

    There are a couple of other lightweight linux that I don't have experience with that are newer- someoone else might comment. Biggest advice get familiar with these and others you can find that are lightwieght, burn the disks and keep them around so you can try them out on the hardware that you are working with at the moment- give each according to what works best on the hardware you have assembled that day specifically and according to the needs of the user. You might choose puppy for one user and machine, and pcfluxboxos for another.
    Last edited by linuxlizard; April 28th, 2008 at 01:39 PM.

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