New Internet Computer (NIC) Thin Client: Distro?
 

Well I was given a New Internet Computer (NIC) thin client from work. It was a cyrix mII 266mhz cpu cdrom based system with 64 megs of ram.

It does not have any type of hard drive other than a flash card.

I changed out the chip, i put a AMD k6 450 and it is now recognized as a AMD K6-2 366mhz system (I guess it doesn't have 100mhz bus speed, no jumpers or bios settings to change that.) I then went ahead installed a 256 meg dimm in place of the 64 meg dimm (only one slot available).

The hardware is fine (recognized the full memroy amount).

It boots off the cdrom.

I used Knoppix 3.2 and it boots to it, and i get the gui but its not very good. I have no window borders and no way of resizing the windows and i can't drag the window around. I have no way of closing/maximizing/minimizing/restoring windows unless i go to the file menu (no icons at the top since there are no window borders and no window icons in the border.) The mouse pointer also acts kinda wierd too. it acts like it has a little square box that floats around the mouse pointer.

Anyway, basically, I'm wondering what other distro might be good for this little box. Bascially its a amd k6-2 366mhz system with 256 megs of ram, no hard drive (but apprently it does have a 4 megabyte flash drive that is considerd the "C:" drive, the flash device is on the ide daisy chain with the cdrom, there is only one ide port).

Any advice/tips to make something useful out of this little box? Heck, mated up with a cheap 14 inch lcd monitor, it might make a nice bathroom computer if I could get it working well enough.

Hi bobo_snyder,

the recommendation of a distro depends a little bit on what you're going to do with it :-)
If you want to use it as a "noob-standard" Computer (eMail/surfing/office purposes), I'd recommend beatrix. Beatrix is a Live-CD based on Knoppix, Ubuntu and something else (I can't remember) and is designed just to work. It's as simple as it sounds. You can also install Beatrix on your harddisk. For more information, see http://www.watsky.net/.

Hopefully I could help :-)

Greetings,

Seppel

I would recommend Damn Small Linux. I just finished using DSL on 2 Old computers with various hardware problems and DSL worked with only some minor adjustment.

Does the thin client have a USB port? Maybe you could broaden your storage horizons with a USB flash drive.

Or if you want more space from removable media you can buy an external Zip drive on e-bay real cheap.

Well good luck,

Thorn