[vox-tech] Linux on a low end hardware question

[Bill Kendrick]

On Thu, Jul 17, 2003 at 09:26:20PM +0530, karthikeyan.balasubramanian wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>   We are planning to put linux on our old systems where 
> our marketting people work extensively on 
> 
> * browsers
> * $M Word
> * $M Excel
> * $M PowerPoint
> * $M Outlook Express
> 
> System conf
> -----------------
> old cyrex guess its should be in the 
> range of 200 to 400 Mhz
> with 32 to 64 MB RAM.
> running on WinNT
> 
> Now they challenged me that Linux 
> OpenOffice, Browsers cant run faster then their Windoze speed.
> I would like to take this as a challenge and want to install
> a flavour of linux which works bit faster then Windoze with
> that configuration.

What version of Windows are they using now?  I'm sure that the latest KDE or GNOME with Mozilla and
OpenOffice.org would be MUCH slower than a Windows 3.1 box running Mosaic on the same hardware. ;^)

(Sorry if I'm being fesicious ;^) )


> Any suggestion hints would be very helpful to get me
> equiped beforehand.  
> 
> Should i try 6.2 version of linux(Redhat).

Always one to recommend Debian, I'd like to recommend Debian! ;^)

I'm using a couple of apt sources for OpenOffice.org and Mozilla for my wife's and my system
(personally, I run Konqueror; if I need Moz, I run Galeon ;^) )


To keep things like, actually, you might also want to consider Galeon or another Mozilla 'Gecko' engine
based browser (Phoenix? Or, wait? What did it end up getting named?)

If they suit the _technical_ and _compatibility_ needs, I'd suggest Abiword and Gnumeric, or
maybe even the KOffice suite, over OpenOffice.org.  OOo is great, but it is a large, slow-loading
program. :^/


Other than OOo's "Impress," I can't think of any GUI-based PowerPoint-style applicaiton, off the
top of my head.


As for Outlook, there's Evolution (never used it), Balsa (probably not featureful enough?), and of
course web-mail based solutions, like Squirrel mail.



Another idea is to use these low-end desktops as thin clients, then run all of the large applications
on a BIG server in a back room.  See LTSP.  There's even an OpenMosix-based Knoppix distro out there,
for running all the thin clients as a cluster.  Bwahahahaha.  (No, I've never done it myself :) )


Good luck!

-bill!

-- 
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