Quick poll

[David A. Bandel]

On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 12:46 PM, Collins Richey <crichey at gmail.com> wrote:

[snip]

>
> Back to the original post.
>
> The major distros and hardware manufacturers are not producing
> products for the third world. You have to go to the niche distros and
> manufacturers to find stripped down systems that will run on 10 year
> old hardware or that third world users can afford. Now that Vista has
> taken over the retail PC market, you aren't going to find any PCs at
> the local retailer with less than 2G ram and 150G disk, and by next
> year everything will be quad-core processors.

Most of the systems sold here today have 512Mb RAM, 80Gb SATA, Celeron
processor.

Consider:  it costs $40 extra to upgrade to 1Gb RAM, $10 extra to go
for a 160Gb SATA.  But they spend $600 for M$ Office and $30 for
anti-virus software.  In fact, the software costs more than the
system.

>
> There are organizations that support Linux on older hardware (I
> haven't kept track, google for info), and there is the OLPC movement
> to produce laptops for the third world, but that's about it. I
> understand your position and your needs, but very few in the Linux
> community are working towards that type of support.

No, Debian works just fine in old hardware.  It's only stressed by
things like Gnome/KDE or certain other programs (squid comes to mind).

>
> We just had a lengthy thread (40-50 posts) on our local LUG on this
> very topic. The primary complainer appears to be a complet Luddite
> when it comes to Linux. He seems to think that Linux has gone straight
> downhill since about the RH6/7 days when you could run Linux on the
> ancient hardware available in places like Panama. It doesn't matter
> that Linux now supports modern hardware. If you can't run it on a
> 64-128M PC, it's no good.

No, but what's wrong with a low memory install?  Linux still runs in
64Mb and less.  No graphics, but for certain applications (firewall,
for example) who cares?

Ciao,

David A. Bandel
-- 
Focus on the dream, not the competition.
            - Nemesis Air Racing Team motto