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What about PuppyLinux or DamnSmallLinux?

http://puppylinux.org/ http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Both are tiny, and boot in less than a minute.

1. Download a VM like Virtalbox.
2. Download Puppy Linux .iso
3. Install Puppy Linux in Virtalbox. 4 gig dynamic drive with 128 megs of RAM will suffice.
4. Inside puppy download and install the pet package Hiawatha
5. Setup FTP inside your home directory (I think it's called setup file sharing)
6. Set your network in Puppy to a static IP and set Virtualbox to use a bridged adapter for the puppy install.
7. Use Notepad++, Filezilla in windows to FTP into your virtual box to update files.

That's close to a LAMP server. I don't think technically using Puppy/Hiawatha would be LAMP. But I believe Hiawatha serves the same function as Apache and I think would suit your purpose. if you're just interested in the PHP part you can also just install XAMPP.

The thing I like about the Virtualbox (or any VM) is you can wipe it out easily. You can move it to different computers. It's easy to play around with FTP and SSH settings.
There are tons of ways to do this without getting a host if you're just looking to learn. If you really want a host most have LAMP options. For many it is even the default. For tutorials I think W3 Schools is good starting point and has examples.

*All suggestions are debatable. When making these suggestions I considered using low resources and ease of use. Given more resources to give to the Virtual box you have tons and tons of choices.

Puppy Linux .

Easy to use, tiny footprint, works right first time.

And if you have an old Eee PC laying around, Puppy Linux for the Eee PC is the way to go.

...is maybe easier to setup onto an USB stick than installing Ubuntu on Windows partition or disk (the gparted part being probably the hardest), but it will be handy afterwards too. The GUI isn't as fancy as Ubuntu Unity, but it is fast and usable even on older hardware. http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview%20and%20Getting%20Started.htm

I've heard that Puppy Linux is a good choice these days for older PCs...

Here you go: Download in 5 minutes and you'll never have problem with viruses again. Also runs in RAM (i.e. FASTmem now slowmem)

http://puppylinux.org/main/Download%20Latest%20Release.htm
(Puppy Lucid 10.0)
(runs on 1/10 gig)

I like Puppy Linux for a very small portable Linux.

http://puppylinux.org/

I've used it several times as a recovery disc and booted from USB as well. Should work well in any virtual environment too.

DSL works well. It's 50 MB, can boot off a USB flash stick, and comes with its own virtual environment for running within MS Windows. It's probably missing a few features you will want for teaching a course in Linux, though.

I also like Puppy Linux. I was able to make an MP3 player out of a small thin client computer and this OS. I just had to modify a few shell scripts, and plug the TC into my home stereo.

Exactly what I was thinking. This too http://tinycorelinux.com/ I run it on my PII.

DSL works well. It's 50 MB, can boot off a USB flash stick, and comes with its own virtual environment for running within MS Windows. It's probably missing a few features you will want for teaching a course in Linux, though.

I also like Puppy Linux. I was able to make an MP3 player out of a small thin client computer and this OS. I just had to modify a few shell scripts, and plug the TC into my home stereo.

Ahem!

Puppy Linux has a minimum Pentium 166 CPU spec and will run in 64MB up to release 1.0.2.

You could try puppy linux.

My Compaq laptop with XP only has 112 MB of memory.

Aim for that. ;-)

Okay man. Here you go:

http://www.puppylinux.org/

If you are running something that low of RAM you would probably be better served by one of the distros that specialize in older machines, like DSL or Puppy. Of the two DSL is probably the most RAM frugal, but I prefer Puppy thanks to "puplets" which are pre-built Puppy derivatives, everything from super light DEs to even a mini LAMP/XAMP server.

I may be a Windows guy, but I also believe in using the right tool for the job, and below 256Mb DSL or Puppy would serve you better than XP or a mainstream Linux like Ubuntu. If you've never tried either one I would go for Puppy, as the puplets make for a smoother experience with less of a learning curve. They even make a few with an XP or Vista skin, if you prefer to keep the Windows "look and feel".

We have the source, it is possible to make a Linux distribution that lets a normal user defend themselves.

The first look would probably be something like Puppy Linux. This boots off of secure storage (a CDR) to which it adds another session just before you power off. This very simple technique gives the user the ability to throw away a session by just turning off the machine. Puppy also keeps the sessions independent on the disk so you can go back to a known good session but still collect user data from later sessions.

Think carefully, the problem isn't that the administrator is "unqualified" the only qualification they need is the ability to notice that something is wrong. A that point Puppy linux would allow them to go back or start with a clean CDR. It's still a bit of a pain to recover later changes from the old setup though.

That's the key. It's called the factory reset button, it puts the machine back to the state it was when you bought it. Complete with all the extras you bought for it. It leaves the machine ready to continue working with your stuff. Don't miss that bit; it must only delete code that's made itself part of the OS not your passive documents.

That's actually it; the core is that simple, you need to have a trusted boot and protect that boot from any 'untrusted' code that runs later and give the user the ability to stop that untrusted code from running. This trusted 'zone' also has one other job; protect the user data, make sure it cannot be damaged by anything once saved. That bit's called a versioning filesystem.

Microsoft are trying to do this, but they are severely hampered by years of crap code, bad installation management tools and horrible APIs. Linux OTOH has the Unix history of solid multiuser protection, it's got a lot less further to go.

Ho-ho-hold on, hold on one second.

Oh a gamer after my own heart. I have to have my DOOM and Quake and SOF. BTW, if you like DOOM you will LOVE Hurt Me Plenty which is a Puppy stripped down for gaming With DOOMsday and Quake already loaded with a ton of extras and WADs loaded up. Just drop your full DOOM and Quake WADs and you are good to game! Has all the non gaming BS stripped out so it runs really well on older hardware too. Nice thing about it is they have done all the work and tweaked the gaming engine for maximum FPS under Puppy. Pretty much just boot and frag.

Did not know about the Goodwill. I guess I'll have to go scavenge around my local GW to see if they got some good gear I can snatch. I know last time I went there I managed to get a killer F15 fighterstick for $0.50 because it was serial. Picked up a cheapo adapter for $2 and got a year out of it before giving it away. Never thought to look there for boxes though. Thanks for the heads up.

I try to avoid Win95, it was just too buggy as far as USB goes. I still have my copy of 98lite I picked up back in the day, and with the universal Win98 USB driver installed I found that a stripped down Win98 can give me the speed of Win95(especially if I switch out the Win95 explorer for Win98s) but with the better USB support. I still have plenty of the old USB 1.1 cards lying around from salvages so adding USB to those that don't have it is trivial.

I have to agree with the AMD chipsets. The worst was the Via ones. Good luck trying to get any stability at all out of those POS chips. That is the only reason why I am trying to save the Athlon mobo, as it has the Nvidia Geforce 2 chipset. The only chipsets for AMD that I have found to have stability is Nvidia ones. But at Doug's shop we would keep a "bad bucket" for fried CPUs and there had to be over 100 AMD chips in there. There was a grand total of TWO Intel chips in the bucket: one got hit by lightning, and the other was a damned OEM with the el crappo PSU that took out the board and CPU when it blew. While I have known gamers that have sworn by AMD, I have also noticed that they ended up with more crashes and problems than I ever did. So I've always looked at AMD about like having a Cyrix(remember those?) in that it is the poor mans Intel. That is why I have never had a problem getting rid of anything Intel over 233MHz. My heat&air guy says he has no problems unloaded my dual boots and actually makes a little scratch selling them. As long as they don't end up in the dump I say good for him.

And I can see why you have some difficulty being so close to LA. I'm out a little town in AR that looks like something out of "Gone with the Wind"(in fact my apartment building is from 1925 and used to have Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis stay in it during the chitlin circuit days) so there aren't as many newer cast off boxes. Now that I know about Goodwill I may have to hit the one in LR to see if it is a score.

While I would agree to the grapefruit rule, I have found an exception to that rule: the Optiplex series workstation from Dell. The funky Grey Optiplex towers from 300-750MHz had pretty lightweight PSUs but actually put out pretty clean power. I am lucky that one of my neighbors is an engineer so I can bring gear over and test power output on his equipment. The Optiplex series PSUs actually put out pretty clean power to the rails. You just have to follow the 15w rule as Dell is notorious for going under weight on the PSU. And don't forget with that P4 to go overboard on the fans. A P4 will run like a scalded dog as long as she don't get too hot. For a P4 I like a 80 or 120mm in the front and a slower 80mm or 120mm in the back, to keep the pressur up, same as you.

I actually know a guy that does the 2 PSU trick too. Of course he puts cards in his rig that suck more cash that mo

Well with Puppy the trick is to pick the right one for the size of the PC. Ecopup runs best on at least a 300MHz with 128MB of RAM. The article here gives a good general overview and if you want to run it on the REALLY old, I'm talking the ones that have 100MHz CPUs(or less) and 64MB or less on the RAM front I would get either Puppy Linux 3.01, which is made to boot and run decent in as little as 48MB of RAM and still give you a full desktop experience, or pupflux which uses fluxbox for the shell(real easy to use, as there are no buttons or icons. Simply right click and the programs files list shows up) and the great thing about pup is you don't NEED disc space! I've run puppy 3 on machines without a HDD at all and it runs fast! It loads its essential programs straight off the CD into a RAMdrive and since the ones I linked to are both less than 100MB if you have 48MB or better it will load nearly the whole OS into RAM and run from there. Very cool.

I don't care for Ubuntu. That'll probably get me flamed here, but to me Ubuntu is the WORSE choice for trying Linux. It seems to embrace all the bloat of Windows Vista and OSX and has way too much "bling bling" like 3d flipping desktops. When I am using a PC I want it to work, not try to baffle me with bullshit. And for older machines it is a slug, just way too bloated! While I still love to tweak Windows sometimes you want to have a "set it and forget it" PC, and with really old hardware an AV or antispy will drag it down to a crawl. With DSL or Puppy the PC doesn't need any malware protection and as long as the hardware doesn't fail neither will the PC. Great for grannys or for a guest PC where you don't want to risk your Windows setup. And with their pre packaged program puplets installing a program is even easier than Windows. Simply download and drop it in the programs folder. That way you can start out with a "barebone" style puppy and just drag and drop the programs you are going to want to use. Cuts out all the bloat.And it is a great way to play with Linux, as there isn't any need for tons of Unix CLI junk. If your hardware is supported, you're golden. Just boot from CD, make sure everything works, and there you go. And you can install Puppy on a 400MB HDD easy. I bet you have a ton of pre GB HDDs lying around, don't you?

I have no problem using the cheapo PSU as long as I follow the 150w rule. You break the 150w rule at your own peril. But that PSU calc I've found is not only good for designing a system, but also for "what if?" scenarios where you might be adding some extra HDD, GPU, etc to the box later. For example I have a Geforce 5200 and a 6200 sitting here in a drawer. On this next build(which I'm hoping will either be the 2.8GHz Celeron or the 1.5GHz Athlon if my buddy can get the cap changed out) I will figure in the power cost of the 6200 so that even if I don't use it I will have enough headroom that I could. But for basic builds (under 2.2GHz with integrated video) I've found those OEM PSUs work fine for those. The key with a PSU is to know what it can handle and what it can't. With a cheapo it is better to give it a minimum of 150w of overhead to keep from pulling too hard on the 12v. But that way I don't have to throw away working PSUs even if they are OEM. Just follow the rule and you are good! But I have found they are quite reliable if you follow the rule. they have a bad rep because those damned OEMs will put a 250w PSU in a machine that spikes at 300w. Talk about a sure death.

And finally I avoid public service orgs like the clap. As you said they have to blow every dime. Reminds me of how my buds in the USAF would bring home killer gear out of the dumpster because the base "had" to upgrade even when they didn't need it to keep their budget from being slashed next year. Your tax dollars at work, huh? When I say places like ch

Well with Puppy the trick is to pick the right one for the size of the PC. Ecopup runs best on at least a 300MHz with 128MB of RAM. The article here gives a good general overview and if you want to run it on the REALLY old, I'm talking the ones that have 100MHz CPUs(or less) and 64MB or less on the RAM front I would get either Puppy Linux 3.01, which is made to boot and run decent in as little as 48MB of RAM and still give you a full desktop experience, or pupflux which uses fluxbox for the shell(real easy to use, as there are no buttons or icons. Simply right click and the programs files list shows up) and the great thing about pup is you don't NEED disc space! I've run puppy 3 on machines without a HDD at all and it runs fast! It loads its essential programs straight off the CD into a RAMdrive and since the ones I linked to are both less than 100MB if you have 48MB or better it will load nearly the whole OS into RAM and run from there. Very cool.

I don't care for Ubuntu. That'll probably get me flamed here, but to me Ubuntu is the WORSE choice for trying Linux. It seems to embrace all the bloat of Windows Vista and OSX and has way too much "bling bling" like 3d flipping desktops. When I am using a PC I want it to work, not try to baffle me with bullshit. And for older machines it is a slug, just way too bloated! While I still love to tweak Windows sometimes you want to have a "set it and forget it" PC, and with really old hardware an AV or antispy will drag it down to a crawl. With DSL or Puppy the PC doesn't need any malware protection and as long as the hardware doesn't fail neither will the PC. Great for grannys or for a guest PC where you don't want to risk your Windows setup. And with their pre packaged program puplets installing a program is even easier than Windows. Simply download and drop it in the programs folder. That way you can start out with a "barebone" style puppy and just drag and drop the programs you are going to want to use. Cuts out all the bloat.And it is a great way to play with Linux, as there isn't any need for tons of Unix CLI junk. If your hardware is supported, you're golden. Just boot from CD, make sure everything works, and there you go. And you can install Puppy on a 400MB HDD easy. I bet you have a ton of pre GB HDDs lying around, don't you?

I have no problem using the cheapo PSU as long as I follow the 150w rule. You break the 150w rule at your own peril. But that PSU calc I've found is not only good for designing a system, but also for "what if?" scenarios where you might be adding some extra HDD, GPU, etc to the box later. For example I have a Geforce 5200 and a 6200 sitting here in a drawer. On this next build(which I'm hoping will either be the 2.8GHz Celeron or the 1.5GHz Athlon if my buddy can get the cap changed out) I will figure in the power cost of the 6200 so that even if I don't use it I will have enough headroom that I could. But for basic builds (under 2.2GHz with integrated video) I've found those OEM PSUs work fine for those. The key with a PSU is to know what it can handle and what it can't. With a cheapo it is better to give it a minimum of 150w of overhead to keep from pulling too hard on the 12v. But that way I don't have to throw away working PSUs even if they are OEM. Just follow the rule and you are good! But I have found they are quite reliable if you follow the rule. they have a bad rep because those damned OEMs will put a 250w PSU in a machine that spikes at 300w. Talk about a sure death.

And finally I avoid public service orgs like the clap. As you said they have to blow every dime. Reminds me of how my buds in the USAF would bring home killer gear out of the dumpster because the base "had" to upgrade even when they didn't need it to keep their budget from being slashed next year. Your tax dollars at work, huh? When I say places like ch

I don't blame you about the CRTs-they can have mine when they can get past my M.O.M(mean old mutt) for 'em. Just can't beat the color quality. I have YET to see an LCD under 3k that had a picture worth a damn. Those TFT displays just look like ass. Now as for the whole "Linux is not mature and you can't service it" deal?

For the most part I would agree. But Puppy Linux, and to a lesser extent DSL Linux you don't really NEED to support it-if your hardware works you are golden and it is damned near impossible to kill it. Also they have their programs already rolled into "puplets" that let you just choose the version you need for the job and everything is installed and ready to go. They have one designed for audio/video creation, one designed for multimedia, etc. They also have ones designed to look and behave like anything from Win95 to Vista and OSX. I just figured an old Win9x guy would appreciate the way they have Puppy set up. Reminds me of the old days when everyone would pass around "pre-rolled" Win98 discs on P2P. And the great thing is they are all live cds, so giving one a spin is a snap. And it frankly flies on old hardware. If you want to give one a spin they are here and I would recommend ecopup, which is laid out just like WinXP. It is laid out so much like XP I've had folks not know they were not on XP!

And you got to deal with the "smokers box" huh? LOL! I can top that one! I was working in this little shop and got called out to a trucking company with my boss. We go to put the PC on the desk to take a look....and the thing won't move! With me and Doug BOTH pulling we couldn't move the damned thing! It had set so long in one place that the wax from the cleaners had built up so hard around it that it was superglued to the floor. So they got me one of those dollies that you slide under a truck with, and I slide under there beside the hot secretaries pretty legs. Well, I pop the side off...and you can't actually SEE any PC parts, because a block of smoke residue and funk had completely filled the case! took me about 3 hours with a shop vac to dig all the grunge out, and damned if the thing wasn't still good. You are right, you just can't kill a P3. I get flamed here for it, but I won't buy AMD. We used to have a "dead CPU" bin and it was filled with AMD chips. The fan died on an AMD and the chip would go with it. The Intel chips would slow down to a crawl, but they just wouldn't burn.

And the problem with OEM boxes, especially Dell, is those damned PSUs. The HDDs are actually good IF, and here is the big if, you get it early enough and chunk the PSU. Because the PSU is so damned cheapo that the crappy power it puts out will strain and kill every other part on the box. That is why I always go with the "150w" rule. What I do when I am building a new one or Frankensteining one together is go here and put in the parts list and then go 150 watts higher than it says. That way the box has breathing room and can have an upgrade or two before needing a new PSU. But the only thing those low powered OEM PSUs are good for is building low power Netboxes. I'll use them on the 1-1.8GHz boxes that need a PSU, but they just can't take the boxes they are 'supposedly" good for. I have found 250w PSUs in 3.4GHz Intel PCs! They just undercut the power too damned much.

Well it was nice to talk to another old gearhead. Too many of the home users think they need these multicore multiGHz monsters when all they do is surf the web and check email. I'm typing this on a 9 year old 1.1GHz Celeron that is whisper quiet, doesn't heat the house up, and makes for a perfect Netbox. That is why a lot of the older machines I give away end up with single moms, churches, and shelters for battered women. They are really happy to get good running machines and I have found setting up a Linux server is pretty simple. The software that most of the churches and shelters use runs great on Win98 an

The decision of a Linux distro for old hardware is somewhat dependent on the age of the old hardware. I've been pretty successful at using PuppyLinux (and MacPup isn't too bad) on a very old Toshiba laptop with 192mb RAM. However, I have found that the "random incompetence" factor is an issue with it, as well as some laptop quirks (X refuses to come back if you close the laptop lid, and you then have to power it off, X doesn't start up on boot, and you have to type "startx" at the command line and chose xmesa or xorg...).

Xubuntu is actually not too bad from the resources side... I tried it on an old 256mb ram/celeron computer. It was pretty slow, though.

gOS also isn't too bad. It's geared towards getting online and using Google stuff... gmail, google docs, etc. It booted faster and the liveCD was faster than Xubuntu, for me.

Another one that I haven't used a whole lot but looked pretty good was TinyME (based on PCLinuxOS I think).

Seamonkey kicks ass, even just as a browser. It is blindingly fast compared to the others. It makes me happy.

If you've got a low-spec PC, try installing Puppy Linux on it (Seamonkey is the default browser) to give it a new lease of life.

And if you have a really crap spec machine, give Dillo a spin. You'll be amazed.

Apparently, there is a version of Puppy for the Eee, naturally called Pupeee!

Have you checked Puppy Linux? You can have it create a special boot floppy that will find Puppy on the CD and start it. Don't know, though, if it can run on a 486, but it's worth a try...

I know a little bit about this because I am one of the developers for TurnKey Linux, a new opensource project which builds small installable live CDs (we're up to 9) optimized for various mostly server-related tasks. I've been investigating supporting live USB mode.

Your generic run-of-the-mill USB drive has about fourth-half the read/write performance of your hard drive nowadays (10-15MB/s). Since there are no moving parts (spinning platters), usually the seek times are very good.

There are several things you can do to optimize the performance of an operating system running live from a USB drive:

1) buy a faster USB drive: a good USB drive (e.g., Lexar JumpDrive) can have 2-3 times the performance of a generic.

2) Use a Linux distribution with a smaller footprint such as DSL (50MB) or Puppy Linux (standard edition is 68MB): the smaller the footprint, the less your drive has to read, the faster your system will load.

3) Try loading the operating system system into a ramdisk: many live USB distributions have the ability to load themselves into RAM. With some you have to add a cheatcode in the bootloader. Others do it by default if there is enough memory (usually not a problem with small distributions and modern computers).

4) Try turning on readahead: many distributions which are designed to run from a live CD or live USB have a feature that reads ahead various files important to the boot sequence sequentially. Whether or not this helps depends on the characteristics of the storage medium you are using, but you should investigate it.

You'd think they would, but so many different things can interact at that level that there are no guarantees That they will play the same. I would suggest you download and burn MacPup or one of the others on the above page which are small enough to run completely in RAM to use as a test. Remember that we are not trying to pick you a new distro here, but rather trying to test out your particular hardware setup.

By having the distro entirely loaded into RAM you are removing the HDD installation as a possible bottleneck. This will allow you test the chipset performance by transferring files to and from without having the HDD accessed by the OS for other uses at the same time. If it is still slow after that then I would look into a good hardware RAID SATA card. And if it isn't then you might want to look at another distro or getting the hardware RAID to bypass the chipset since yours doesn't seem to be playing nice with it. Good luck!

You have to recompile(which really isn't hard and there are plenty of tutorials for) if you want warp speed. Simply take out support for hardware you don't have(SCSI,SATA,etc) in the particular machine and you can cut down on that time by a lot. Since he is also simply using it as a note taker he could cut out wireless and sound and gain even more speed.

The point of using Puppy or DSL is that you have a wide range of hardware support and it is already lean. By thinning it down even more and customizing it for your hardware you CAN get it closer to an "instant on" appliance,it just takes a little work. Believe me,I know,as I did the same trick with some 233MHz that I was donating to a church. With a little tweaking it made an almost "instant on" database appliance which they use to keep track of donations,names and addresses for their mailing,etc. Like I said,it'll just take him a little time and a little forum cruising.

Sorry I didn't save my notes so I could post them somewhere for him,but it was a real "one off" kind of job and I didn't really see the point of saving my notes. I figured if I learned how to do it once,I could learn how again and the tech will have changed so I'd probably need to learn new tricks anyway. They also have SkinnyPup which I haven't really played with because for me it is TOO thin,but for what he is wanting to do he might want to give it a try. Also you get a nice speed boost from installing Puppy to the HDD instead of going LiveCD.

So if he were my customer and came in with that request,I would first try MacPuppy or DSL and see if that suited his needs. If not,I would use SkinnyPup as a base and recompile with only the barest support for the hardware he needs,which should easily fit it into his requirements. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

He might have a problem getting it to work,driver wise. He also said he wanted USB support,which is a royal PITA. Might I suggest you look into either Puppy Linux,DSL Linux or Feather Linux. I have put all three on many different kinds of hardware and they are all quite fast. You did not give the specs of your hardware so I will just give you my general observations. For older hardware Feather will give you the most speed,followed by DSL and Puppy,but there is only a few seconds difference.

That said I much prefer Puppy,as there are several builds and you can simply choose which version suits you. On a laptop MacPuppy is quite nice,and I have my most used programs at my fingertips thanks to the dock. But any one of these will give you the requirements you specified in your FA: Quick boot,USB support,and easy text editing. If you have USB 2.0 and a fast flash stick you might even prefer to leave the OS on the stick,which will allow you to carry your Operating System envirnment with you in your pocket. I hope this helps,and have a good weekend!

"What is the fastest booting operating system out there that is still sufficient for editing text?"

certainly: Puppy Linux.

7 seconds and you are ready

This is the kind of laptop that would run Puppy Linux perfectly. This distro is specifically designed to run on older/slower hardware, so should be nice here.

You do know you can have Flash 9 with Puppy,right? All you need is The Community Edition which with the web expansion listed here will give you Flash 9,Java,FF,TB,etc. I really like how the community edition has gone to expansion packs,as it makes it really easy to have a fully loaded puppy or to customize it for the user. If you are running older hardware give it a try,you'll be glad you did.

You do know you can have Flash 9 with Puppy,right? All you need is The Community Edition which with the web expansion listed here will give you Flash 9,Java,FF,TB,etc. I really like how the community edition has gone to expansion packs,as it makes it really easy to have a fully loaded puppy or to customize it for the user. If you are running older hardware give it a try,you'll be glad you did.

One of the fastest and smallest linux distroes around that also include every thing you want. Recently the main developer have focused a lot on boot time, releasing a special build for those that want fast boot (UniPup).

Read more about it in his blog(linkin to google cache since I don't think his blog can take a slashdot): http://google.com/search?q=cache:3oVbzBTFnpIJ:www.puppylinux.com/blog/+puppy+linux+blog&hl=no&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=no&client=firefox-a

The blog post on UniPup: http://google.com/search?q=cache:cC9Ah83omzkJ:www.puppylinux.com/blog/%3FviewDetailed%3D00194+puppy+linux+UniPup+blog&hl=no&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=no&client=firefox-a

Puppy home page: http://www.puppylinux.org/

Take a look at DSL and Puppy Linux. Both are tiny and would boot quickly from a CompactFlash. DSL is probably better for all-around appliance use; Puppy is intended for use as a desktop OS.

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

http://www.puppylinux.org/

steveha

This: "who would want to run a Linux distro from 2001? (That's how old XP is). Answer is nobody, unless your hardware is so old that you can't run anything newer."

I think I know what you're trying to say here, but dude, you should know the newest Linux kernel will run on the oldest 386. So there's no need to use old distros on ancient hardware, none at all. You can use latest software on an old box, just so long as that old box is physically capable.

This year's Puppy (for example) will run just fine on that old Win95 box.

http://www.puppylinux.org/

Runs great on older systems. Just the thing to breathe new life into those old lappies.

I haven't tried this distro, but will give it a shot. Talking new distros, especially live ones, I've been playing with FaunOS, a Linux-based live system for USBs. It's based on Arch, and its pretty damn fast. The other USB based distro that I've tried Puppy Linux is better if you want to run old hardware, or don't have enough RAM; but I find FaunOS just more complete. Anyone else out there booting from USB?

Reduce-reuse-recycle, in that order: upgrade your old machine with more efficient software like Puppy Linux. You'll still get that temporary pseudo-boost of a getting-new-stuff feeling (hail mammon, the secret consumer $DEITY), or give it to a kid. As long as it boots from CD, has a fairly standard bios and motherboard, and 128MB of RAM, it will be easy to set up and feel as fast as a modern machine, with a typical set of productivity apps. Really quite amazing, how things can be repurposed, and reduce the need for new stuff, by 'changing the system'--this applies to lifestyle, as well as computer hardware.

it looks nothing like any other linux distro

Neither does IPodLinux or Puppy Linux, or OpenWRT, both of which are designed to run on machines with even worse specs than the XO-1. However, they have very active user communities and are able to run a lot of "mainstream" Linux software (not so much on the IPod, but you'd be surprised!).

I think the idea that if a project isn't using high-end hardware and running a "Top 5" linux distro then it's somehow alienated from the open source community is ignoring the long tradition of running Linux on unconventional platforms. The history of Linux and open source strongly suggests that it will be possible, if not trivial, to port all sorts of mainstream software to a totally new hardware platform.

I wonder why Vista sales remain flat, if not damn small, despite the gutsy efforts of Microsoft's marketing department. Surely a newly minted OS from the same folks that brought us notepad.exe would make consumers as excited as a new puppy.

The latest versions of Puppy Linux have an easy-as-pie way to encrypt everything. Just burn a CD, boot from it, then at shutdown you're prompted to save your session. You can save to the hard drive or any other storage device, and you have the option to encrypt the data.

Boot from the CD, and it'll find and load the data you stored. Enter your password (correctly, one would hope) and go. It doesn't get much simpler than that.

Of course, you can't use your insecure Windows "helpers". But if they were *really* concerned about data security... well, I won't go *there*.

Have you tried one of the many distros specifically for older, less capable hardward?

Exemplis gratis:
http://www.puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=1

It is time to put to bed the idea that Linux runs on shite hardware. There might be some truth in that (depending on degree of shite) if you're talking about the kernel, but if you're talking a recent major distro with either KDE or Gnome desktop, just forget running it on old hardware. The Puppy Linux distro the parent refers to doesn't use either.

Desktop computing, while not invented by MS, certainly was aided by their work and OS popularity. As much as i dislike MS, I will give them credit for making something that nobody else made before they did - a low cost computer operating system that runs on commodity hardware and people actually purchased.

IBM didn't. Though I did run PC-Dos, OS/2, AIX, and used MVS and Mainframe "DOS" for more than a few years.
Apple didn't. Though I did have a Mac SE/30 and used the original Macintosh and much later MacIIs.
Dec, Sun, HP, SGI, Novell didn't. Though I did run Ultrix, OSF/1, SunOS and Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, and Netware.
MS did. I did/do run Ms-DOS, Windows 3, 3.1, 3.11, WFW, Win95, Win98, WinNT, WinXP and Win2003 Srv.

BTW, I have a purchased copy of Netscape Navigator from 1996-97. Do you?

Had Linus and the 386 chip happened a few years earlier, the answer could be completely different.

Credit where credit is due, please.

Now go out and convert at least 1 computer from win32 into Linux, BSD or Solaris x86 today! Puppy Linux is perfect for this. http://www.puppylinux.org/

You can do this with unionfs. This is used for saving user data in puppylinux, and probably other bootable CD distributions.

You can run Linux with a lightweight software combo too (eg. http://www.puppylinux.org/).

Well, I would have to call into question the financial responsibility of any IT manager
buying boatloads of Apple equipment for any department other than research, marketing, or publication.

Most standard users not explicitly needing EXCEL or some other windows based software
could make due with a $200 PC running standard Puppy Linux with Open Office installed.

And any Widnows applications could be run from a Citrix Server.

Rolling out hundreds of Apple Pros to everyone would be a bit expensive,
once you add RAM, applications, etc. I priced this out as a joke for
my boss once, weighing in somewhere around $3.4 million, without software. Ouch.

Apple needs a new computer type: the Work Mac PC
- a step up from the iMac, but lower than the Mac Pro.
A budget desktop with slim microATX style case, 1GB RAM, and a decent CPU.
Make CD/DL DVD burner, keyboard, mouse, everything else, optional.
Provide various hard drive sizes, or no hard drive, just an internal 8GB flash drive for booting.

Typical corporate security features preloaded with everything needed so it is easy to manage, remotely control, and remotely update.

A step up from a thin client machine, easily upgradable for the 'power users', but the base configuration works for all the other worker drones in the corporation.

Mac Minis are too easy to 'vanish' in a corporation.

How long does it take to re-partition the drive, and load a Linux Live CD distro?

Puppy Linux installs in a couple of minutes, ready to go.

http://www.puppylinux.org/

Whole system in under 90 MB,
Runs in RAM from Hard Drive, Flash Drive, or Live CD.
Comes with all these standard Applications.
Download and install even more programs here.

Try the Live CD .iso.

You will be glad you did!

How long does it take to re-partition the drive, and load a Linux Live CD distro?

Puppy Linux installs in a couple of minutes, ready to go.

http://www.puppylinux.org/

Whole system in under 90 MB,
Runs in RAM from Hard Drive, Flash Drive, or Live CD.
Comes with all these standard Applications.
Download and install even more programs here.

Try the Live CD .iso.

You will be glad you did!