[plug] ComputerBank meeting Tues 24th 7:45pm

[John Summerfield]

> 
> I'll help - but I'll not be party to installing slackware or redhat.
> 
> I believe it would be far easier to install debian on the systems.  The
> biggest complaint aboiut debian is that it is hard to INSTALL - if I'm
> going to do the installation then theres nothing hard left!!
> 
> and the apt package manager makes life so easy for people that dont really
> know what they are doing.

The latest RH installs also have the ability to clone system.

fwiw I have a floppy that can be put in an anonymous box (with an NE2000 
clone), configure the NIC with BOOTP and run linux. Adapting it to copy a 
preinstalled image should be pretty trivial; possibly it could be adapted 
to to work (slowly, perhaps) with PPP and a serial cable, or PLIP and a 
laplink-compatible cable.


For that matter, a box with a couple of IDE connectors and loose power 
connectors could quickly copy preinstalled images to spare drives before 
they're installed in the target box. And if the target's a 386 with a CD 
drive, running (mostly) from CD is an option; while it can't be updated, 
it will save lots of disk space, typically scarce on 386s, and probably 
without much of a speed penalty.



> 
> Also, there are a LOT more packages available for debian than any other
> distribution.

Few 386s and 486s have the capacity to install all that much, so that's a 
moot point. I do know a few other vendors than Red Hat (and its clones) 
ship RPMS; is that true of Debian's format?


Having run Linux on an 8 Mb 486, I'd be reluctant to give anyone Linux on 
a machine with less than 16 Mbytes, maybe 12. Certainly not one that boots 
to XFree.

Indeed, I'd not recommend anything less than a machine able to run KDE 
and/or GNOME for a novice.
-- 
Cheers
John Summerfield
http://os2.ami.com.au/os2/ for OS/2 support.
Configuration, networking, combined IBM ftpsites index.