[KLUG Members] Old boxes

[Bruce Smith]

> I have a few old boxes and was wondering how well they
> would support Linux, X, and an office suite.
> 486/80Mhz
> 16MB Ram
> 480MB HD
> VGA or SVGA video
> 
> I have about 8 of these machines. (only have monitors
> for about 2 or 3 of them... :)
> 
> I was also thinking of putting a 2nd hard drive in
> some of them and doing perhaps RAID-0 to gain some
> disk space/speed.
> 
> I was thinking of using these computers as simple work
> stations for typing up papers or surfing the web.
> 
> Does any of this make sense? :)

Not really.  :-)  

That isn't enough machine for a modern Linux distribution.
You might be able to run an old distribution (you still may have to
increase your memory), but you'll be stuck with old versions of software
(Netscape, ...), and X-Windows applications will run SLOW.

I don't think that's even enough memory to run them as LTSP clients
(you'd also need a big Linux box as their server).

You _may_ be able to run a dedicated firewall on them, like ipcop.org.
Although you may have to _temporally_ increase the memory and add a
CDROM drive for the install process to run.


--------------------------------------------
Bruce Smith                bruce@armintl.com
System Administrator / Network Administrator
Armstrong International, Inc.
Three Rivers, Michigan  49093  USA
http://www.armstrong-intl.com/
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