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Microsoft Authorized Refurbishers
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has announced a program to 'establish a vibrant community of computer refurbishers across 133 countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa who will be authorized to re-install its Windows operating system in donated pre-used PCs destined for schools, charities, non-profit organizations and under-served communities...Microsoft will provide re-installation of Windows 98 Second Edition and Windows 2000 Professional in over 18 languages. The refurbished PCs will be accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity (COA) and a special End User Licence as evidence of a legally installed operating system.' XBruticusX submits a story on news.com about the program.
Slackware and Debian announced free operating systems for these refurbished computers...
...10 years ago.
A way to fight back as all the recycled machined getting Linux/*BSD installed on them. That's why they're "giving" Win98 for the lower end machines.
How odd that they would officially support the installation of an OS that's been EOLed (WinME is the oldest 16 bit still supported, yes?)
Bad management trumps ideology - Show the world you want better leadership. http://www.timefornewmanagement.com
Boy I can't wait to see how everybody takes this as a creative writing exercise to tell us about how this is proof Microsoft is evil.
"Derp de derp."
so you'll essentially pay for the license for a computer that already most probably had a license!
So I guess this makes sense for them(microsoft).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
establish a vibrant community of computer refurbishers across 133 countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa who will be authorized to re-install its Windows operating system
I didn't know that the BSA had offices in Karachi and Djibouti. Who the fuck cares about Microsoft certification in the third world?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I think it is great there will be a legal way to bring these machines online: having worked with charities, often the limiting factor was the difficulty of getting Microsoft to relicense the software. Obviously, part of the motivation is to stem the use of free software, which was previously the only surefire way to remain legal. The implementation question that remains is how expensive the refurbishing services will be... too expensive and the practice of simply using an unlicensed copy of Windows or punting and using free products will continue.
Sig under construction since 1998.
isnt there already a vibrant community of people who will install linux for free on old pc's?:P
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
If the laptop/PC was bought with a install of Windows on it is it not legal to reinstall it?
As I recall the License says it is the install that is on that PC, it should transfer to the new owner shouldn't it?
MCOSR: Microsoft Certified Operating System Refurbishers?
So Microsoft can get refurbishers to pay again for an operating system that was licensed and installed on the system in the first place, since 99+% of PC's ship with windows when originally sold? Nice deal.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Hasn't Linux had a similar program in place for a while now?
The Dalai Llama
...nevermind...
My sig could be your sig!
While it is nice that people will be getting functioning (well, to Windows standards at least) computers, it nauseates me to realize that when the people using the computers enter the global economic system they will be 'hooked' on Micro$oft. Ugh. This is just like M$ 'donating' software to schools. It is not altruistic in the least, they just want to develop future customers.
...this seems to be a way for Microsoft to ensure that if the old operating systems need to be installed (on older hardware), someone will be "certified" to support them. Also, it's to ensure that the installation is legal.
It's basically second-party support.
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
and of course they take the full retail version fees on their taxes as a charity contribution. They won't support Win98, or probably the 2k because of some stipulation in the "special eula", but uncle sam will get charged the full brunt for a full OS purchase with support.
Just three more hours seapeople and you can finally take me away from this crappy God Damned planet full of hippies
And this is modded "insightful" ? Well, I don't know what's worse, to claim everything Microsoft does is evil, or to judge people before they even say anything
---
(I will bow to any proof that MS gives away licenses to American Non-Profit Orgs.)
I can see excluding Asia, Because much of that part of the world doesn't respect Copyrights, but still.
Is it just because MS is unable to establish the MS tax in the EU or something?--computers ship with OEM licenses that must be transferred along with ownership of the computer...
Considering that in several countries you can vist a shop to purchase a cd with windows longhorn even for less than $5. How many of these countries will actually care that you get a legal copy of windows with the referbished computer?
I guess its Microsoft's futile attempt to stop linux from taking over the world.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
So another way to look at it is that Microsoft is giving out free software to the "third world", and someone is going to pay for it. Which explains why Microsoft software in the U.S keeps getting more and more expensive
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I know they've extended it, but isn't Win98 about to be EOL'ed? Is that to say MS is sanctioning the installation of an unsupported (support, patches, etc) OS?
The revolution will not be televised. It won't be on a friggin blog either
As the saying goes "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts". (From The Iliad for those thinking it is racist.) This act is a trojan horse for Microsoft. They donate their wonderful products to those poor, pitiful people in the Third World so we they get them hooked on their technological crack. Once they get them hooked, they can peddle the more expensive crack because now everbody is hooked and has to have it.
Fight it people. Linux is free now and in the future. Can't say the same thing about MS Windows
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
I seem to remember a story on slashdot a while ago about open source programs (particualrly word processing programs) getting support for obscure third world languages because people who knew them could just add support for new languages themsleves. They were doing it more to help others in the region they came from so they didn't worry if there was a nice market or not. Microsoft may have caught on that the third world is going to develop into a bigger market and wanted to make sure that it wasn't already dominated by Linux.
_____
Thank you.
1) build a mailing list using good intentions.
2) Send list to BSA's foreign equivalents
3) Profit!!!
Remember, Microsoft is a for-profit corporation. They do NOTHING without a profit-derived motive. If they do, the Board is not doing its job.
"Piter, too, is dead."
"And this is modded "insightful" ? Well, I don't know what's worse, to claim everything Microsoft does is evil, or to judge people before they even say anything ;-)"
Heh, don't blame me, I was aiming for 'funny'.
"Derp de derp."
ItShare SA, Computer Angels, and Computerbank Australia, are related groups in Australia doing this already - but with Linux. We provide safer systems accordingly, without the need for third party software to be paid for - such as Open Office etc. Having a donated Windows box is all well and good (Now, I don't actually think its that good..;) ), but what about the unsupported nature of Win98, the virus and other security issues, and the need to pay for third party software (unless someone points them towards OO, and other FOSS for Windows...).
Nothing - well thats something.
Microsoft already allows schools to "re-install" Win 98 and 2000 (sp3) on donated, older computers in the US. One registers, gets install media from Microsoft, tracks use, etc.
What does this do to the possible use of Linux in making older PCs useful in a school setting?
Give away software save on you taxes. The key is to ensure that the software you give away doesn't impact your top line with the products you sell.... Hmm... windows 98 & 2K on refurbished systems, no danger there.
here's where reality kicks in
Have you ever *SEEN* most "donated" PCs? You'll be lucky if they're even functioning, let alone coming with things like the Windows license, documentation, peripherals, etc. Take what you can get, if MS wants to make it easy for people to put legit versions of Windows on their computers... more power to them. It certainly isn't my favorite OS, but if people are going to install it (illegally) anyway, at least now they'll be able to do it legally.
Some people are going to talk about how Free Software has been doing this for years; and they're right, it has. However if you're in a situation where you're fortunate to even have donated low-end computers, you're going to go with what your users know. And before you start in with the "thriving community of *nix users" etc...how many of those in the thriving community are willing to travel to some third world country to teach people how to use linux? I don't see the volunteers...
This is mean. I'd imagine microsofts intention is to install windows 98 for free/cheap, then flood the client with adverts and reasons why they need to pay $100 to upgrade to Windows XP.
Everything sucks except musicandstuff
The Microsoft Authorised Refurbishers (MAR) Programme FAQ addresses this issue:
As for the "adminstrative fee," the FAQ explains:
To answer other questions, people may want to check out:
Microsoft Authorised Refurbishers Programme.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Just what we need, the entire third world running unsupported Microsoft OS'es. I thought Microsoft wanted to stop spam, not encourage it...
Anyone going online using one of these computers in a year or so will find out the hard way what the term "HaX0red" means.
Who's going to do windows update on these? These PC's will be one big DDOS launcher and spam host for all the spammers and kiddies out there. There are three upcoming remote vulnerabilites in windows 2000 according to Eeye's upcoming vuln. page.
x .h tml
http://www.eeye.com/html/Research/Upcoming/inde
I dont think these will be patched any time soon.
From the article:
"Computers donated by large companies are typically three years old and the MAR program upgrades the software to newer versions of Windows that donated PCs can support, for a nominal charge that covers materials and program operations.
Through the EMEA MAR program, Microsoft will provide re-installation of Windows 98 Second Edition and Windows 2000 Professional in over 18 languages."
Since when would installing 98SE onto a 3 year old machine be a newer OS?
Sadly, my first thoughts on this weren't "Oh that's a good thing...", it was "What's the catch?"
not easily anyway, not any modern distro with a windowing desktop that a non guru can install and operate. Not on them old 16 meg ram machines they won't. 95 will though, and will work perfectly fine, it will surf, email whatever, type a report,etc. I have this problem all the time the olden antiques I refurb and give away, I haven't found a linux equivalent that will do all this with a GUI on these pent 1s.
I still have my old mac 512k. This has a nice GUI that ran off a dang undersized floppy, and I think if I recall it has one meg of RAM, something small like that anyway. Maybe it even has only half a meg, hence the name, I disremember now, but it ain't much, but IT WORKED.
What is it, why can't we (I mean linux) have something that will even come close now without requiring at least 128 megs? Is it just technically impossible because of the way a unix like system is designed? I find even 64megs RAM to be the bare-ly minimum for anything at all practically speaking, and even then it's a kludgy buggy slow exasperating experience. And no, I don't mean installing a CLI only thing, or having to hand carve your desktop windowing gui-like thing out of rocks and old sticks and spending half your spare time keeping it running muttering incantantions and entering runeish commands from a terminal, I mean a slide in a CD and install it and it works thing. Nothing fancy,it don't got to be real fast, just a GUI and a few normal apps.
MS is smart in this case, even with piracy over there as a norm, it costs them almost nothing, and we're talking about a still mostly untapped market of hundreds of millions of people, over a billion easy really. Hearts and minds.....
"Hmm, we have all this 'product' that costs practially nothing to reproduce once it has already been developed. And we also have a bunch of poor people threatening to move to Linux.... hmmm. I know! Lets give away old versions of our software to indoctrinate these poor people and make them dependant on us! Yay!"
Wake me up when Ford starts giving away F150's to African farmers.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Chief: what the fonoono?
2 weeks later on cnn: Bill gates dead! Parts of him were found around a bunch of lions, weeks after he went on a mission to africa to sell refurbished licenses for software installed on african computers.
seriously tho, how the fuck does microsoft think they are going to sell windows in african countries when ever bigger oil/mining companies shit themselves to have bases there because of the locals being treated like crap and uprising once in a while!
We played dungeons and dragons for 3 hours.....then i was slain by an elf
Microsoft can try to hedge every single bet from here on, and still I think it's only a matter of time before Linux beats them in every market.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
They're not giving away a damned thing. Due to their monopoly, the vast majority of machines already came with a license that was paid for once.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
that's just great! Not only does MS find a way to make more money, but they also find a way to make hackers and virus writers even more happy by putting ultra vulnerable systems back on the web... I mean, sorry, but this just doesn't sound like a good idea to use win 2000 now that the source code has leaked! Not to mention the ever-growing number of viruses that will infect these machines and create a non-protectable because obsolete "virus pit" of the internet... It's like keeping someone with chicken pox in a public place: most people are vaccinated, but the few that aren't risk death if they get the disease. Oh, and of course it's an attempt to keep the youth prefering windows.... Everytime I read slashdot I get more unneverd by MS's outrageous actions! This is against common sense!!! When will law start following common sense???? probably not until the next Wallstreet crash because of the stupidest lawsuit ever... (which I thought was going to be SCO/IBM but it's not going to be bad enough to make a change in the legal system necessary...)
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
Computers donated by large companies are typically three years old and the MAR program upgrades the software to newer versions of Windows that donated PCs can support, for a nominal charge that covers materials and program operations.
Giving away? Doesnt look like it from here.
emt 377 emt 4
They're doing this just to combat the use of Linux and *BSD etc, because they know that up until now they've never provided any of older copies of their OS free of charge for use in older machines because they are in CAHOOTS WITH INTEL AND OTHERS in the great and evil CULT OF THE UPGRADE.
The ONLY reason they're doing this is to try to undermine what has become one of the key uses of Linux and *BSD, installing legally in refurbished, recycled machines. It's even more dispicable than that because it's no even the an action taken in the free market, it's normally for charitable reasons that machines are refurbished, so they are doing this just to flex their corporate muscles NOT for any alturistic reason.
REMEBER. MICROSOFT IS NOT NICE, IT IS EVIL, THEY ARE GREEDY, SELFISH BASTARDS AND THAT IS ALL THERE IS TO IT. They run MSNBC, they give money to the Republicans. Don't trust them, wipe your hard drive of that horrible, despicable, evil virus that is their joke of an OS. FREE YOURSELF. Go on you know you can!
Upgrade your life.
And every computer running their product is one less for the competition...
A Eula restricting transfer of the use of the product is rather worthless in most (European) countries I know, in Africa and Asia most people and governements couldnt care less anyway.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
and I authorize myself to install Linux on them and erase windows as fast as humanly possible..
http://www.systemrecycler.com
50+ billion in the bank and they still can't modify a license to accomodate donating to charity. Sad really.
Man haven't you got it yet? We bash Micro$oft because THEY ARE EVIL INCARNATE. They are Beelzebub my friend and they couldn't give a shit about you, me or anyone else in this world. More money for the man is all they're interested in.
.....
This is NOT charity it's MANIPULATION. They are using their position to close up a little hole in the market called "using Open Source alternatives becuase you can't get legitimate Window$ licences", that is all. They could have done this years ago, but they didn't and they never would if it wasn't for the threat of Linux and *BSD.
Think about it. As an example, I've been involved in a community project to give low-income people computers so they can learn a bit about the Internet and IT and perhaps gain some higher-paid skills or just use their minds a bit more than having them jellified by that other great evil the television. Anyway, we get donations given to us by universities, companies and other organisations, with their discs wiped (or to be wiped) to comply with data protection laws. The Window$ licences aren't transferrable and therefore we use Debian on them all. Some of them need to write in Hindu, some in Arabic and a plethora of other languages. All this is achievable BECUASE we use Linux and it doesn't cost us a penny, except our time, which we are willing to give up.
Now the problem for Micro$oft is that these people then get to learn about computing by using Linux - imagine that eh? leaning about computing using an OS that isn't Micro$haft's - hasn't happened for years that. This is dangerous for them and it's all about potential or future markets and consumers, just the same as giving cheap software to schools is - hook them young, get them drinking Coke, wearing Levis, eating Big Mac$ using M$, they'll never know any different and they'll never leave you.
On your point about languages, it's got absolutely nothing to do with being NICE enough to give versions in different languages, it's because Linux is available in around 60 and non-English speakers will NOT ACCEPT anything else - it pisses me off enough if I don't have a spell-checker that understands British English.
Stop bashing Micro$haft you say?? I won't, I've been bashing them for 15 years now and I'll continue to do so until they are relegated to the history books as one of those bad periods in our history, like the Third Reich, the Crusades, the Bubonic Plague
Upgrade Your Life at www.computertorture.com
Hello, I hate everything in the world. However, I bequeath my deepest hate towards Microsoft for their charitable deeds, because as with all entities that spawned from Satan's uterus (bet you didn't know Satan was a woman), every good deed comes with vile ulterior motive. I won't be surprised if most of the users declare Jihad on the world, after having exhausted their capacity to restart the computers on an absurdly frequent basis.
So cheers to Microsoft for its relentless, evil ambitions. And remember, when the world is inevitably taken over by robots, the robots commiting the hate crimes will without a doubt be powered by the Longhorn OS.
what am I talking about? What are YOU reading, and why is this difficult to understand? 48 megs of RAM, you are OVER the top by a factor of 3x as much RAM by my criteria. I have a lot of old pent 1s at 90 or 100 mghz with 16 megs of ram, and hunting down and getting after market RAM sticks is extremely cost prohibitive, and a lot of these older machines take very precise sticks. Extremely, even if you can find the crap. The best I have done is on a 166 mghz machine that had a single stick of 64 megs in it, I got both redhat and knoppix to (barely) run on it. I'm on a 200PP right now, and it works OK,I like it actually, *after* I bought another 64stick, and then another stick of 128 megs ram,now it works swell, before it had come with 32 and wouldn't run (or install) RH7.1, the first distro I owned and tried. I've got 7.1, 7.2, mandrake 8.0, RH 8.0, various knoppix and a morphix, and FC1 here, and around 128 seems to be the magic number in non-guru land, for me anyway.
.......
See the problem really is the ram, not the cpu speed, near as I can see, and a free or 5$ machine is not worth spending literally 60-70 dollars on just to try and track down some oddball RAM. I'd add another stick of 128 to my own machine, but they want 90$ for it!!!! Not happening. I've borked a few machines now using RAM that alleged gurus told me "would work in your machine".
Now imagine you are joe third world, how hard it is going to be to get more RAM of the exact correct kind, or even maybe another hard drive that is large wenough to both install the system and have enough swap space. A lot of these machines only have like 600 meg hard drives. It's a pain in the tush to make anything but windows work on them. I don't even try, I mean after you've tried a dozen times, it gets old, and I'm not command line tweaking installing compiling all kinza crap for a freebie give away machine, I got other things to do.
I'm not trying to say it can't be done, but I am merely asking for a pointer to a distro with any example where someone has a normal system running a full fledged easy to install and config GUI on 16 megs on a low end pent 1, and I ain't seen it yet. Every example I have seen requires a lot of command line, and when you get done you still have to comamand line some window like thing, then do this that and the otherand it's still not much of a GUI. No thanks. I'm not a guru, just someone who gives away old boxes to kids who's families are so poor they don't even own telephones (yes, this is USA I am talking about), and until I can find a linux equivalent, these boxes go out the door with 95 or 98 on them, because at least those will boot and run and install easy on 16 megs, you get a window system, etc, and I *wish* it weren't so, because I'd love to turn these kids onto linux.
I repeat, it needs to run on 16 megs RAM, 32 at the most, be able to easily install from a cd without using a geek dictionary for acronyms and vague man commands that make little sense, and to be run almost 100% GUI after installation.
And no matter WHAT I type, someone leeter than me who can't read is gonna retort they got foodows window like-experience desktopping manager running after tweaking the config sys/etc/stab yo momma file blather yada yada, etc, well, except for the video and audio and the drives don't seem to work and
Nope
I don't care about that, these are going to end users even lamer than I am. I am between aunt tillie and.. whatever, and if I can't install and run it, sure as heck the end users are gonna be frustrated within 5 minutes and borrow their cuzzin leroys copy of windows and install it anyway.
I think it's better to just admit that X is a full bore no doubt about it gross resource hog, and not pretend it ain't. I'm not a coder and I don't know why, but it sure is or seems to be. I am not complaining, I appreciate all the work that has gone into it and the price is right, but I think my observations are *true facts*. If someone can point me to a Distro th
As the parent poster pointed out, many if not most people have made up their minds unconditionally that they want windows.
And in a sense, you can't blame them. You walk into any department store and you see a wall of windows applications.
Not linux apps.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Here's a little something for the conspiracy theory majors: what if what they're doing provides them with handsome tax advantages.
I'm lovin' it.
One of the more important points that has been raised here, which I find relevant is the problems of viruses and worms. A worm has a payload of a few KB at most, while the patches that are required are a few MB( if ever M$ puts them out).
In Africa and poorer parts of Asia, phone lines still charge by the minute. Dial-up is still slower than 56 Kbps (I've worked on connections of 7-8 Kbps too, due to less bndwidth/more customers at the ISP, who is milking everyone for all his worth). Connections break and have to be re-established. What is the chance of a non-profit taking the effort to actually download and install the patches? Conversely, there is a high chance of it being infected. (I speak from experience in a small town in India, where I've sat up half the night to get my Windows 98 box upto speed on all patches). Of course, it would be too much to expect M$ to give away CDs of patches as well.
Wow, I wish I had their skills.
Problem: People are using old computers to experiment with Linux, and aren't paying us enough money.
Solution: Provide a seemingly philanthropic way for these people to donate their computers, and make them feel bad for selfishly hoarding computers that could otherwise be used for kids. Then, when this plan works, sell more addon licenses for products such as Office. When these refurbished Win98 and Win2000 machines propagate, scare the schools into buying new computers with WinXP by inundating them with stories of hackers and crackers.
I for one, tried to submit a similar story...the details are exactly the same, except it was for k-12 schools, not other countries...but I'm sure its the same program. Check it out:
Microsoft giving free licenses to K12 schools Monday February 23, @12:35PM Rejected
WTF? Over?
isn't what I am asking, but getting closer. Look back at it again. You said "linux 2.2, 2.4", but that doesn't tell me what distro it is. Linux is a kernel, there isn't a distro called "linux". Well, there is but it's a RH clone. Anyway, did you compile it,install from a command line in a terminal, have to tweak drivers and whatnot, or dids it install from a CD pretty easily? answer a few questions, click here, clcik there? See, I have to think about the end users/kids I give this to, if it gets screwed up, THEY got to be able to fix it if it's bad by re installing from a disk.
See? I get responses, I appreciate it,but they haven't answered my questions. This winow manager is lightweight, this other one might work, etc, and such and such from the olden days, but yet no single answer, because I know why, it ain't been done, can't be done. And linux gurus wonder why man pages are hard for people to understand, regular old english can be hard to understand too.
I ain't mad, I'm just giving up on this project, I will finish out giving away the boxes I have, with windows on them, and someone else can be the linux evangelist, I won't be doing it anymore, too frustrating. I'll use it personally, but I can't recommend it yet to other people with older machines, and if they buy new machines some OS or another will be on them. It was just something I thought I could do to help some poor kids from poor families. Screw it, thanks anyway for replying though, you and the other guys. Not answering anymore on this thread, I'm getting too frustrated. That less than half a dozen spec points are too hard to understand it seems. Sheesh.
Which means that in the third world,which has the fastest growing population and is starved for computers, and is gonna get them,old and used first, but the ones that make the impression on them, that MS is gonna arrive on those machines and stay on 99% of those machines, too.
I got no dog in this fight, but some ya'all who DO got a financial dog in the OS fight might want to think on that some... that's a lotta eyeballs and people out there who could use some help, roughly along the same lines I was outlining. I'll let *someone else* tell muhammed magooba josse whatever to CLI install the 2.xxx kernel, and to be sure to roll in the fluxbox then adjust the video raster on his monitor and freq and re compile the horiontal audio module, etc, cuz I sure as heck can't tell anyone over there that.
MS is gonna slap a cd in their hands that they can click thru on ancient boxes and it will more or less work.
Over one billion people, new markets, where most of the oil comes from,.and a lot of our food in the near future, and raw materials, etc, and most will be running on MS unless this is addressed, soon. I don't code, can't help there. Since I've first used it, it's got ridiculous, I am thinking about a personal "distro freeze" and stopping upgrading, because I can't afford a new machine right now, and last install I barely squeaked through with lots more ram than 16.
Old PB still works though. for now. Jobs priced me right out of apple, no way could I get anything today from them. sigh. I feel third worlded in my own country, I'm being priced or bloat coded right out of computing, I can smell it coming.
Sorry, I am just sad, that's all, this is like pulling teeth to get what I am asking and pointing out understood, it ain't worth it. "close enough" but still 2 or 3 times off in specs and size and speed and complexity of install and use combined with vagueness is only good for warfare with hand grenades in close situations, it isn't what I have been asking for or pointing out observationally.
I do appreciate the reply though, thanks. I give up.
thanks, you 100% got what I was saying and asking. There exists a TERMENDOUS international niche market that would go with all these millions of used machines out there, that instead of going to the landfill, could be used, with a free open source OS, would get all these third world folks juiced on computing, and using open source, but are gonna be using win 95 or 98 or close to that, because... I don't know why not. I've been looking for over a year now for a solution, haven't found it yet. Leave out one of the criteria, it's a non starter. If and when someone comes out with such a distro, it will be quite well received. I tried morphix lately it's a decent start, but still not quite there, it wouldn't run at all on most of the antiuqe boxes I have, let alone the older monitors, most of those won't use linux at all, I have to purchase 14 inch svgas and still hand tweak them to display, which ups my cost(real low semi retired fixed income, this gets pricey for me) on the give-aways. I got a shelf full of color monitors that are useless now, but they WILL run windows easily, every one of them. Not an engineer, I don't know why,(don't care, I accept it) but that's my reality. Windows goes on the boxes, much as I don't wanna.
Huge giant growing and expanding international market almost completely untapped, just opening up going *begging*,gonna be handed to microsoft on a silver platter, seems like such a waste.. oh well
Don't give up completely yet!
There are people who agree with you, and are working on something similar to what you are asking for. Note that I am not an expert on this, but I thought it was an interesting and valid question, as I have a penchant for running Linux on old/retired (mostly non-x86 though) hardware. I am a professional sysadmin, so I don't think too much about getting something up and running on a weird machine, as that is what interests me. But I am also aware of the ease of use/installation issue, because I have supported Macs and Windows machines for years, and used Macs at home for years as well. You can't beat the "stick a CD in the drive, click a button, walk away, and when you come back there is a working system" model of installation.
Anyway, for a project that seems to be aligned to what you are asking for, you might want to check out the RULE project. I just found out about them recently, and I don't know how up to date they are, but they seem to have similar goals to what you have described. They claim that one of their installers can run in 12Mb of RAM, and the other in 6Mb. They install mainly a stock copy of Redhat, but with the package list stripped down to make a smaller profile. In addition, it appears that they are doing some work on the Kdrive X server, which is a very small XFree86 replacement.
Unfortunately, my lowest spec Intel machine (a p133 laptop), that I used to test and run things to make sure it worked on slower machines, was stolen when somebody broke into my house, so I have no way at the moment to test the RULE project out. Most of my other machines are SPARCs or Powerpcs, so they don't work with this project. You might want to check out your local Linux user group, as in my experience they are usually packrats, and have lots of old machines, and a willingness to help.
These refurb'ed computers compete with new and refurbished Dells, Gateways, and every other new x86 PC, and their sales are largely at the expense of that market share. That of course ripples up the supply chain to Intel and AMD. Microsoft is flexing its muscle as these HW vendors continue to grow their Linux support and marketing. By Longhorn/2006, we'll be seeing new M$ brand computers competing directly.
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make install -not war
In reading the M$ FAQ on this, I see that it is Windoze98 SPECIAL EDITION and not SECOND EDITION, whatever the difference is. Plus I did not see in the FAQ that all of the virus patches (current and future) are to be applied. It just looks like the base system and no install CD's are to be provided. Just think...MAR systems being used in 419 scams and virus hacked to spam to boot...woo hoo!!!
Microsoft dumps unneeded Win98se licences on third world countries after the product is EOLed . . .
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
Ignorance is poverty. Everything on the wall costs money, might not work with a particular version of winblows, and is available without cost in free software. Show them kpackage, deselect or aptitude. People who have used music sharing programs shrug and ask, "so what". Then you tell them that all that software is free and intended to be so by the authors. Boom, the ignorance is over. You then tell your client that you can make anything on the list work for them for a small fee anytime they have a problem doing it themselves and you have business.
It works for you and it can work for them and make you money too. Free software is like that. Offshore that jog, Balmer baby!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
that MS is using 98SE for the program instead of Millennium Edition? Even THEY believes ME is a pile of crap!
Meanwhile, MS gets its tax rebates based on the full retail price of 98SE, a product they no longer sell to anyone.
Tech Public Policy stuff