[hblug] recycling older PCs

[Brett Wilkins]

XFCE as a possible GUI?

chris morris wrote:
> Rose McGillicuddy wrote:
>> Just a thought about which distro might be used.  While I haven't 
>> used it for some time vectorlinux runs fantastically on older 
>> hardware.  It is a bit more difficult to install, but is stable and 
>> fast.  There is a new version out, which I haven't yet tried. One of 
>> the reasons I went away from it was difficulty configuring dial-up, 
>> but I'm sure that could be overcome.
>> Rosemary
> Agreed. What we need is a skinny distro that still has all the basic 
> stuff ( internet / email / instant msg / digital camera software / 
> office / cd burning / audio-video player ( +mp3 codec   ) etc as most 
> of the hardware will be old and slow.
> KDE 3.4xx has all the bells & whistles but is a tad hungry on system 
> resources.
> We also needs to have a GUI software installer such as Adept or Synaptic.
>    ( Noobies wont want to muck about with apt-get via konsole )
> Modems are going to be big issue as most will probably be winmodems of 
> dubious linux compatibility.
> Lan cards will be fine as long as they are PCI - configuring ISA lan 
> cards on linux is a job for experts, so that counts me out :)
> Older ISA sound cards can be very troublesome too.
>
> I would suggest we need to salvage PCI modems / vid cards / sound 
> cards / Lan cards from anything that is otherwise junk before it gets 
> turfed out.
> This will allow us to mix-n-match with systems that have Linux 
> unfriendly hardware.
> The same goes with Hard Drives - any that are thrown out need to be 
> physically destroyed first ( big hammer ) so that data is not 
> retrievable.
>
> We would need a system something like this:
>
> 1, Old PC get dumped on us.
> 2, We firstly plug it all in and see if it runs.
> 3, If it does. We check specs and hardware for compatibility, then go 
> ahead with the refresh.
> 4, If it doesnt. We put it aside for cannibalization or more discovery 
> as to why it doesnt go.
> 5, Refreshed PC gets tested ( internet / plays music - video / burns 
> cd whatever ) then a quick physical external clean.
> 6, Refreshed PC is made available for sale, with any compatible 
> peripherals that we may aquire (scanners / printers etc)
>
> Prospective customer needs to be taught about the use / misuse  of 
> root passwords etc, Also he/she needs to be told that they cant 
> install windows software either via CDROM or downloaded from the net.
> Perhaps a printed README should be supplied with each PC..
>
> ok thats enough from me..
>
> chris
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