[ale] building a Linux lowend web browsing station

[Watson F. McKeel]

Hello all,


I do volunteer work for a local nonprofit, and we have a BIG task that has been set before us. We are going to build 500-700 computers that will serve as web browsing stations. We want to use Linux to do it because it is so configurable. 

The hardware involved:

        many different makes and models 

        Pentium 90 to 133MHz

        32 MB RAM

        500-800MB HD

        sometimes NICs, sometimes modems

        printer


We don't want these boxes to do anything other than surf the web and print. 

My questions:

What distributions should we look at to get started on this? Are there any out there that pride themselves on their ability to run on lowend systems? Also, I do not relish installing anything 500-700 times, even if it is Linux. Any tips on how to do mass installs (like a generic disk image of some kind, or maybe network installs)?


Any thoughts at all are greatly appreciated,


Watson McKeel    -volunteer at Free Bytes