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Low Resource Distro and Window Manager for Kids?
Philljd asks: "Computers 4 Kids is an organization run by the IT & ;CS department of Wollongong University in Australia that picks up computers from the local area, installs Linux on them and gives them to needy kids. We want to know what Slashdot readers think would be the best choice of distribution and window manager for an average system spec of a Pentium 100, given that the kids are around 10-13."
This question seems to come up all the time. Windowmaker is a good choice because it's relatively easy to lock down, and it's easy to use. And, it takes few resources. There are others, but this will do the job.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Icewm is pretty good, fast, easy, kind of looks like windows.
I've found slackware tends to be nice to slower hardware. Slack 3.0, for example, is running quite briskly on my 386 now that I upgraded from 3 to 7 Megs of RAM. Plus, I could fit lots of development tools and a minimalist X in 80 megs of HD and 17 megs of swap.
Of course, thanks to glibc, such things are now very tough. But, don't forget, slack used to use BSD libc (which is small and fast!), and guess what still uses it? that's right, *BSD. So if you'll consider more than just linux, don't be afraid to look at NetBSD (which is a little smaller and lighter than FreeBSD.... not sure how OpenBSD compares).
You might also want to test-run Knoppix, since it doesn't even need to be installed (so it can't hurt!).
For window managers, OpenLook VWM, FVWM, Blackbox (probably the best), or mwm. Please don't force them to use twm... they'll never want to look at a computer again!
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
Try XFCE (www.xfce.org) It's a great light weight WM but is still easy on the eyes, very easy to customize, stable and fast. It's only a 4MB download as well.
Snoozer.
Easy to install, and runs great on these older machines. As well, maybe Abiword and Gnumeric. Kids might like to write, and do math homework and such.
:)
If the box will be shipped with a pinter don't forget to portinstall APSFilter or magicfilter.
Web browsing will be quite bad on a box that small, but if it has enough memory (96-128m), Moz *will* work, and it provides email to boot.
Any games you can find that work on machines that small will be a big plus also. If the machine is a pure homework station, it won't be used as frequently
Success is as dangerous as failure, hope as hollow as fear.
Sounds like a cool project, nice one!
Debian's a good bet as it installs with a very small footprint and you can work on a good custom build with just what you want. Once perfected, it's easy to get the packages list file of one machine and install packages on another from it. It's excellent for network installs and security updates, nice and stable, not cutting edge (which is good in this case), albeit a little more tricky to learn - but once you have, it, even dselect, is very easy to maintain.
Working in a community wireless project, I've installed builds of it on old recycled Pentiums on I find that either Blackbox, or even the old FVWM or OpenLook (still very good window managers) are the ones to go for, stay away from KDE and GNOME, they're monstrously big in both disc space and RAM terms.
I spend a fair amount of time working on a ThinkPad 560 (Pentium-120, 40MB RAM, 800 MB HD, 800x600x16bit LCD), and I have to say that most of the "standard" desktop environments (GNOME, KDE) choke a system like that.
Windowmaker is indeed a good choice for a basic window manager and launcher/task manager, but it doesn't provide a lot of the file management and drag-and-drop support that even kids expect from their computers these days.
I'd recommend ROX Filer (rox.sf.net), which does a good job of basic file management, image preview, etc.; XFCE might be an option, as well, esp. once they release their current development version.
Seriously.
The OS should be simple and replacable. Knoppix is perfect for that.
twm is simplistic, minimalist, and doesn't require much in the way of learning.
Don't teach kids how to use a window manager, teach them whatever you want to teach them.
When they get annoyed with twm, they can move on to something else, and hopefully know enough to choose for themselves. (I know a few OS developers who swear by windows98 as a window manager, and that's cool. Myself, I like wmaker. Being able to choose is the point.)
I forget what 8 was for.
qvwm is a not-so-famous, lightweight, customizable window manager that is designed to emulate the look and feel on Microsoft Windows9x. Yes, many have problems like that, but I think it suits many situations, like:
- getting new computer users comfortable with a GUI similar to the one they're most likely to encounter in the real world
- maintaining a consistent desktop in a heterogeneous computing environment
I've been using qvwm for a couple of years now with no problems. Oh, and it's internationalized, too. Check it out at www.qvwm.org
Then again, kids really love the Game iso. Show them Pingus 0.6 and you'll have a few hours extra on your hands (only problem is that they might commandeer your PC to play it on...)
Another option would be to grab a new shiny Xbroadcast minimodule, giving you the option of one XDMCP server and a network of Xclients. Easy administrating once the server has been set up, centralised logging in, and a X client can work on a Pentium 100 without breaking a sweat. Throw in Knoppix hardware detection and no need to install anything on the clients (livecd's people, pay attention) and you have a sure winner.
Yeah, i really need a life, but honestly, making your own liveCD's is nearly as addicting as nethack. Oooo, off for another iso...
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