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Low Resource Distro and Window Manager for Kids?

Posted by Cliff on from the finding-a-better-place-for-your-low-end-machine dept.

Philljd asks: "Computers 4 Kids is an organization run by the IT &amp ;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."

3 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. How about Windows 95? by BoomerSooner · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Seriously, I have some old Win95 (version a) disks that I installed on a old Pentium 60MHz for a needy kid I knew going to college. It ran reasonably well and I installed Office 97 as well (word and excel only).

    Win 95 a came on 13 floppies but needed a decent amount of upgrading online.

    Win 98 would install fine too on a P-100 as well as NT.

    If you want to go really small and just use 2 disks you could always run 2-Disk Xwindow Linux and hard code /dev/hda1 to swap and /dev/hda2 to /home

    If the floppies die just give'em some more. No install whatsoever.

    1. Re:How about Windows 95? by rekrutacja · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      I must agree. Skilled linux profesional after several hours of work installed debian with vm on my old pentium 100, with 1gb disc space avalaible. That was horrible in use (comparing to my mandrake/kde desktop) and slow.
      Wind 95 was definitly better. Lot of programs (check your old magazines with free cd), games etc.
      In this case one thing is particularly important - we got much more educational software for win95.

      --
      This Is Not a Sig
    2. Re:How about Windows 95? by Drakker · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      There's only one slight problem. Windows is not free, the versions you mentioned are out of print and are by no way secure. They are doing charity here, they can't buy a license for every computer they give away. Beside, what would the kids do if their win95/98/nt install breaks after 6 months? What about virus? They need a solid and reliable system.