This really P***es me off

[KernelPanic]

Of the top of my head I can think of at least 5-10 small businesses and schools near me  that have recently thrown out perfectly good and working PC's when they upgraded their systems. I try and give a home to as many as i can but there's only so much i can do. My point is that this doesn't just happen near me, it happens everywhere, worldwide. All it is is WASTE. Why can these companies make the effort to get the systems or components recycled, refurbished or given a new home? If they are going to be suckers and rush to buy the latest shit they could at least take care of their old stuff that is nowhere near obsolete. I'm hoping now though that i find a company throwing away some Sparcs because i want one of them    

Anyway rant over, you are dismissed...

[pkd_lives]

I agree 100%. I mean take a nice Linux distro and you can throw it on older machines and have a serviceable machine, and you bet there are people who want these systems, who can't afford to get on-line at latest rates. I mean if all you want to do is surf, use newsgroups and word process, Why-The-F**K do you need the latest offering from Intel, AMD or M$. Most of the latest developments are only really required for high-end packages, and games.

I am currently salvaging a P133 Laptop. I tried to put Mandrake on it, but there is something wrong with the display, so I am now trying to put on Red hat. I may have to track down an old Linux distro for it, as it only has 40MB of memory, 1GB hard drive, oh and the battery does not work, but I thought it would be a good teaching aid (to myself who is still only just learning all this wonderful *nix stuff), Gonna try all sorts of stuff, maybe throw on a unix setup and try it out, or even put os/2 on it, I have never used that OS for surfing, I think it would be funny.

Which reminds me of a question, does anywhere offer for download old versions of Linux?

[jtpenrod]

quote:I am currently salvaging a P133 Laptop. I tried to put Mandrake on it, but there is something wrong with the display, so I am now trying to put on Red hat. I may have to track down an old Linux distro for it, as it only has 40MB of memory, 1GB hard drive...

Actually, that should be plenty. And Red Hat is a good choice in that it seems to be very laptop-friendly. I installed Mandrake on an old Dell OptiPlex GSa with 32MB of RAM. It worked just fine, the only problem being that Konqueror ran very slow, and I couldn't open a whole bunch of apps at once. Other than that, no problem. The 1.0GB HD is a bit small, so you'll have to select your apps carefully, but there is no reason it shouldn't work.
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Live Free or Die: Linux

"There: now you'll never have to look at those dirty Windows anymore"  --  Daffy Duck  

[choasmaster]

hmmm, i think i will take the time to break down how and what i install on which machines

HIGH END
i normally install some ultra modern version of redhat, mandrake would probably work. FreeBSD also does quite nice if you are some sort of UN*X wizard/*im getting there, FreeBSD kicks alot of ass, so much infact, that microsoft even rapes it*/

MEDIUM END
stuff like the 233mhz system i had while it ran, i used redhat 7.2 with silicon graphics mods

LOWEND
ill normally use say, debian/*its the killer app of lowend machines, it has a bit older software so it runs pretty good and i say that becuase im using it on a 60mhz pentium*/ also, slackware is a great linux for the low end say 100-166 mhz. any of the popular *BSD's, OpenBSD and NetBSD/*last time i checked OpenBSD was a fork of NetBSD*/ will install comfortable with X on a 500meg drive. FreeBSD will also do this. i have never tried windrivers BSDi/*it costs money*/

so there there go, my list of ways and methods to make any machine better/*better as in no bill gates shitware*/ and this is a list for x86 only. don't have any decent ppc hardware or anything else

[Master of Reality]

I tried running FreeBSD for my proxy/webserver on a 1GB drive and it took me quite a while to get it down to just fitting within it wihtout X. I am using redhat7.3 now and got a 3 GB hard drive.