[ale] open source solutions for Win 98 on an old laptop

[Brian]

Considering that I have have put it on machines with 32Mb and 64MB, I
would make a stab at putting a rather sparse load of Debian on it.
Or, for that matter, move on over to OpenBSD (definitely have done
some 32mb installs here, as well) or FreeBSD making sure to exclude
the bells and whistles.

Brian





On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 8:27 PM, Daniel Howard <dhhoward at comcast.net> wrote:
> OK, I know this is going to lead to some interesting responses, but it's
> actually a serious question.  I've got a donated Toshiba Satellite Pro
> 225CDS (Pentium CPU, 80MB RAM, 1 GB HDD) I'm working with again because
> I have a needy person who would like to sell some of their stuff on
> eBay.  I can't seem to turn it into a thin client (no built in Ethernet,
> no CD ROM drive, only USB 1.1 and a floppy drive), and I've tried Puppy
> Linux and DSL (Damn Small Linux) on it with a variety of issues in both:
> Puppy can't launch X on the screen (and I've tried every combination of
> xorg.conf fixes I could find), and DSL is really slow on the Dillo web
> browser, word processor and spreadsheet (believe it or not, MS Office 97
> loads pretty fast and runs well on this machine), plus DSL also freezes
> up after a few hours of being left on.  As a stand alone machine for
> this person, I'm really tempted to leave it as a Win98 platform with an
> earlier version of Opera as web browser (say 6.0), and ClamAV and/or
> Avast antivirus, both of which still run in 98, and just put newer USB
> drivers on it so new USB memory sticks can be used.  The intended user
> is likely to use an ad-supported dialup service with their handful of
> free hours per month until she gets enough money to upgrade Internet
> access and/or the PC.  But this would be a start for her to get some
> revenue flowing, and you guys know I hate to toss one that could be put
> to use.
>
> With 80 MB RAM and only 1 GB HDD, any other suggestions of Linux
> versions to try on it?  If I do leave it Win98, any other other open
> source or other recommendations to protect it (e.g., shutting down any
> specific TCP/IP ports, etc.)  I think if she could go to Google for
> gmail and eBay to sell stuff, as well as write letters for job
> interviews, and do spreadsheets for budget minding, it'd be very useful.
>
> Thanks, Daniel
>
> --
> Daniel Howard
> President and CEO
> Georgia Open Source Education Foundation
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>