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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."
I'd give XFCE and Blackbox/Openbox a try. They both run fine on a p200 here. I'm running debian/testing and it fits nicely on a 1-2gigs HD.
XFCE is probably better for kids as it uses icons, kids react better to nice looking icons than to text menus (*box). It's also possible to remove the configuration options from the XFCE panel so the kids can't tweak it by accident (or intentionnaly?). XFCE also minimizes applications to icons, which would be easier to use for kids (no taskbar here..).
Debian is an excellent system for these circumstances. It is probably not as streamlined as Slackware, but what feels like a 5-10% decrease in speed is well worth trading for the ease of software installation and, more importantly, the massive amounts of compatibility work put into the apt system.
For a window manager, I would use WindowMaker. It is responsive and configurable. Up until 1999 I used it on my primary system, which was a 486 66mhz.
If the people recieving the computers already have a considerable amount of exposure to Windows, then fvwm2 might be a good choice.
The computer is fast becoming the replacement of the TV. There's no shame in having a small monitor since the computer can do things where as the TV just sort of sits there.
Suggestion:
Create a KidsComp spec and software to build to it. Just giving a kid a computer is just as bad as sitting them in from of Looney Tunes.
Create a KidsTools spec so that kids can learn about computer technology not just play games. For Gaming, board games, consoles, and outdoor sports outshine the computer market, especially when we're talking about old machines.
Create a ParentsTech magazine so that parents don't start screaming when the kid opens up a web page at localhost, when they told Computers 4 Kids that under no circumstances would they get the machine if it had Internet access. And then of course the parents go out into the world trying to sue Localhost.com whom they believe is a division of Apache Inc. I can see it now, Dad: "Get them Indians off that computer now, missy."
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
- It is impossible for a user to ever have the window decorations off screen - thus the user will always be able to close, minimize, and resize the window.
- It is absolutely, incredibly, in-yer-face clear which winndow has the key focus.
- A "Log out" button that's obvious.
- Solid as a rock.
Magnet-move, fancy animations, blah blah blah, are all worthless for a n00b-WM. I am looking for such a WM to use on computers for seniors. So far I've been using window maker, but it fails badly on counts 1, 2, and 3.Replacement installers that put the latest Red Hat distributions on older systems (~Pentium w/ 32MB RAM). It installs light-weight X-Server, called TinyX (formerly kdrive) and desktop.
See their software database for some applications with low resource requirements.
I've used XFce on everything from a 486 to a P-4. It'll be snappy no mattery where you run it. It's not too hard to get used to, and almost never crashes.
If you want even less resource consumption, go for VTWM. I've also used it on everything from a 486 to a P-4, and it's even faster than XFce, and not too much more difficult to figure out. We use it at the Earlham College CS department on our Red Hat Linux P-4 clients, and it really flies.
On one hand, there are several distros that aim towards users new to Linux, but they generally use KDE or Gnome, requiring a relatively new computer with lots of hard-drive space and RAM. On the other hand, there are also several mini-distros for use on rescue floppies, older computers, or embedded systems. Unfortunately, many of them have the same problem as Slackware--they're for experts--or they have no GUI at all.
The ideal solution would be to build a distro customized for the program in question. Since it's being run by a university CS department, I assume they're more than capable of this. They could use one of the mini-distros as a starting point, then set-up a window manager and software kids would be likely to use. There's a good list of educational software at SchoolForge.
Fortunately there's an easy solution to libc bloat. Clibc is a glibc replacement, implementing most of the features. According to the website they haven't found anything yet that won't compile against it.
There are suitable replacements for most other system software too (except for the kernel). BusyBox replaces most essential utilities. Ash is a Bourne compatible shell at a fraction of the size of Bash.
Running Knoppix with less than 128 MB of RAM is painful enough. It would be even slower on a P100.
There's definitely no shortage of window managers, even ones that are easy on resources. Personally, I like IceWM.