Internet for my dad
Mark Carter
My dad's been looking for a way to connect to the internet cheaply.
After much casting about, I found a work colleague who wanted rid of a
Pentium 400 28Mb system running Win 98. I got it home and discovered, to
nobody's suprise, that it was slow, and festooned with all manner of
viruses and toolbars. I had a "spare" Win 98 CD floating about, but I
decided to install Linux instead. I experimented with various flavours
of Linux: Deli Linux, Peanut Linux, Damn Small Linux, Feather Linux, and
Slackware. The first 4 are aimed at old systems.
Deli and Peanut didn't survive my impatience. Feather Linux is derived
from Debian, and appears to be aimed as an out-of-the-box single-user
desktop system. My dad seemed to like it. It's got icons for the Firefox
and Dillo web browsers, so you just double-click them and you're away. I
couldn't resist trying out Slackware 10.0, though; which is the system
currently residing on the box. I've written instructions on how to boot
and power down the system, which my dad seems singularly unimpressed
with. His comment was "no doubt you'll fix it so that it works". I'm
tempted to keep with Slackware for now, though, which gives me an
opportunity to see if I can build a kiosk-type system. It also allows me
to play with my own server, which I can access from my bedroom computer
to his box in the living room.
Of Slackware and Feather, Slackware can be configured to be much more of
what you want it to be; although I probably didn't need to tell you guys
that. From my dad's point of view, though, Feather seems to fulfill his
needs admirably.
I found Slackware pretty much a breeze to install, although the
hard-drive copy did take longer than Feather. My opinion on slackware
was that it appeared to be at least as fast as Feather; and remember,
Feather was designed for slow old computers. Both seemed fairly sluggish
when you get X Windows going, though. I wouldn't be suprised if a fresh
install of Win 98 would work faster. Still, the opportunity to run Linux
was too good to pass up.
Joost Kremers
> Deli and Peanut didn't survive my impatience. Feather Linux is derived
> from Debian, and appears to be aimed as an out-of-the-box single-user
> desktop system. My dad seemed to like it. It's got icons for the Firefox
> and Dillo web browsers, so you just double-click them and you're away. I
> couldn't resist trying out Slackware 10.0, though; which is the system
> currently residing on the box. I've written instructions on how to boot
> and power down the system, which my dad seems singularly unimpressed
> with. His comment was "no doubt you'll fix it so that it works".
it shouldn't be too difficult to do that. change the default runlevel to 4
and set up kdm or gdm would be one way. (not sure if xdm has a shutdown
option.)
i notice that XFce 4.2 also has the options "shut down" and "reboot" in its
quit dialog. not sure how to configure that properly, coz it asks me for a
password and then complains about not having the right permissions. but
there should be an option somewhere.
> I found Slackware pretty much a breeze to install, although the
> hard-drive copy did take longer than Feather. My opinion on slackware
> was that it appeared to be at least as fast as Feather; and remember,
> Feather was designed for slow old computers. Both seemed fairly sluggish
> when you get X Windows going, though.
you're not running kde or gnome on it, are you? try XFce.
> I wouldn't be suprised if a fresh
> install of Win 98 would work faster.
probably, because it was designed with such hardware in mind. but of course
a win system doesn't stay fresh very long... ;-)
--
Joost Kremers joostk...@yahoo.com
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)
ray
It would make a world of difference if you upgrade the memory to about
192mb.
+Alan Hicks+
Hash: SHA1
In alt.os.linux.slackware, Mark Carter dared to utter,
> My dad's been looking for a way to connect to the internet cheaply.
> After much casting about, I found a work colleague who wanted rid of a
> Pentium 400 28Mb system running Win 98. I got it home and discovered, to
> nobody's suprise, that it was slow, and festooned with all manner of
> viruses and toolbars.
Word of advice. If he doesn't need sound, use your other machine as an
X server (assuming this is practical). All the work will be done on the
real hoss, and all that old Pentium has to do is run like a dumby
terminal. Case closed.
There's also other things like the linux terminal server project for
making nice machines out of those crumby old POSs. I refer people to
them a lot. You may wish to give that a shot. The initial learning
curve is high, but IMO it's worth it.
- --
It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise,
Than for a man to hear the song of fools.
Ecclesiastes 7:5
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Mark Carter
> Mark Carter wrote:
>
>>with. His comment was "no doubt you'll fix it so that it works".
>
>
> it shouldn't be too difficult to do that. change the default runlevel
to 4
> and set up kdm or gdm would be one way. (not sure if xdm has a shutdown
> option.)
>
> i notice that XFce 4.2 also has the options "shut down" and "reboot"
in its
> quit dialog. not sure how to configure that properly, coz it asks me
for a
> password and then complains about not having the right permissions. but
> there should be an option somewhere.
>
>
>> Both seemed fairly sluggish
>>when you get X Windows going, though.
>
>
> you're not running kde or gnome on it, are you? try XFce.
I was using blackbox. 800x600, 16 depth. It's slow, even using that.
Actually, the real disk grinder is Firefox. Dillo seems a tad faster,
but it's hardly lightning-fast.
I've set the LILO timeout to 0, so that's one less thing that is bought
to his attention.
One thing I noticed: links has a gui mode. I gave it a quick try, and it
works blisteringly fast from the console. Maybe its rendering isn't
perfect, but it's fast. Since a web browser is basically the only thing
my dad will need, I'm thinking I could forego X Windows entirely, and
start links automatically. When he quits links, the computer could be
shut down in some-yet-to-be-determined way (maybe something along the
lines of a script that polls for links, and if it doesn't exist, then
issue a shutdown command).
Mark Carter
> Word of advice. If he doesn't need sound, use your other machine as an
> X server (assuming this is practical). All the work will be done on the
> real hoss, and all that old Pentium has to do is run like a dumby
> terminal. Case closed.
>
> There's also other things like the linux terminal server project for
> making nice machines out of those crumby old POSs. I refer people to
> them a lot. You may wish to give that a shot. The initial learning
> curve is high, but IMO it's worth it.
Creditworthy advice. Alas, my main machine is in my bedroom, which makes
a fair bit of noise. I need to turn it off when I go to bed. My dad
likes to surf at Godforsaken times at night, when I'm asleep. So
unfortunately, the solutions you proposed wouldn't work for my
particular setup.
I considered a whole range of alternatives, such as mini-itx's,
second-hand laptops, and real cheapo new machines with no monitor, which
uses the telly instead. I must admit I am a numpty when it comes to
hardware, so I was reluctant to try anything unorthodox unless I was
absolutely sure it would work. In the end, finding a workmate that
wanted to get rid of a sare machine was just what I wanted.
And talking of mini-itx's, I saw on
http://www.mini-itx.com/
a thing called an AMD Personal Internet Communicator. Sigh. If only all
computers were that size.
Joost Kremers
> One thing I noticed: links has a gui mode. I gave it a quick try, and it
> works blisteringly fast from the console. Maybe its rendering isn't
> perfect, but it's fast. Since a web browser is basically the only thing
> my dad will need, I'm thinking I could forego X Windows entirely, and
> start links automatically.
that really depends on what sort of pages he wants to visit. the last time
i tried links's graphical mode, its javascript support was flakey at
best. it doesn't do CSS either. so that may not be the ideal solution
either...
Simon
> i notice that XFce 4.2 also has the options "shut down" and "reboot" in its
> quit dialog. not sure how to configure that properly, coz it asks me for a
> password and then complains about not having the right permissions. but
> there should be an option somewhere.
Could it be using sudo? It would probably give an error similar to
"Sorry, user joost is not allowed to execute '/sbin/shutdown' as root
on teuctli", if that were the case.
--
Simon <si...@no-dns-yet.org.uk> **** GPG: F4A23C69
"We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty."
- Douglas Adams
Joost Kremers
[XFce shutdown options]
> Could it be using sudo?
that's what i expected, too. and a quick search on xfce.org indicates that
it does:
<http://www.loculus.nl/xfce/documentation/docs-4.2/xfce4-session.html#xfsm-shutdown>
(sometimes it helps to look through the docs. ;-)
Simon
> that's what i expected, too. and a quick search on xfce.org indicates that
> it does:
> (sometimes it helps to look through the docs. ;-)
I does, but then there are a few things that don't bother me enough to
look them up too. :)
Joost Kremers
> On 22 Jan 2005 00:10:58 GMT, Joost Kremers <joostk...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> that's what i expected, too. and a quick search on xfce.org indicates that
>> it does:
> [...]
>> (sometimes it helps to look through the docs. ;-)
>
> I does, but then there are a few things that don't bother me enough to
> look them up too. :)
i meant me, of course. ;-) i just tried it, and it works beautifully. XFce
doesn't even ask me for a password if i specify NOPASSWD in /etc/sudoers.
Mark Carter
> His comment was "no doubt you'll fix it so that it works".
I found an old Red Hat 6.1 distribution from 1999, so I decided to
install it to the system to see what would happen. It didn't have
Firefox on it, so it was a bit of a non-start. But anyhoo, I got X
Windows going, running KDE. Actually, the system ran quite fast. Faster
than Feather Linux, in fact.
Sigh. It seems that even Linux isn't immune to bloat.