Distro for moderately old public computers - suggestions wanted
 

I'm after suggestions for a distro. It is to run on a dozen or more moderately old computers that will be made available to the general public, primarily for using Learndirect online courses.

The hardware is (IIRC) Pentium 4 2.6 GHz with 512 MB RAM.

Essential:

• Looks and feels like Windows.
• Performs well on the hardware.
• Flash and Java support.
• Reliable sound.
• Going to keep receiving updates without a major version upgrade for at least 18 months.
• Install from CD, USB stick, or network.
• Reasonably easy to create a fully automated installation. (Network performance is presently unknown so I don't want to be reliant on disk imaging).
• A means to manage the computers, install software automatically, configure them for new printers, without having to run around all the computers or even be in the same building. (I'm thinking a cron job that downloads and runs a bash script?).
• Caching proxy software for the repos to avoid having to download everything 12 times, without having to mirror the entire repo.
• Free as in beer.

Desirable:

• Shockwave and Authorware support. (Official plugins only exist for Windows, so we'd likely have to Wine or a similar technology.) Learndirect use these on some courses, so it would be highly advantageous.
• Fully-automatic updates.
• Commercial support available.
• /home as a network share.
• Use some sort of centralised database for username and password authentication. (Symlinking the relevant files in /etc to a network share might be a workable if hackish solution).
• Able to lock down settings (especially if we don't give individual user accounts and just use one shared one).

Currently I'm thinking about Vector Linux Light and Lubuntu, but am wondering if anyone has any other ideas. Desktop environment wise, Gnome's default is out due to the two panel setup, though it could still be used with a Windows-like single panel. KDE is probably out on performance grounds.

I have a Debian Lenny box at home that is of similar specs and runs KDE just fine. I did a bare install though and stripped out the crap. A full desktop only uses ~60MB of RAM (from free -lm) before starting applications. The piggy apps are Iceweasel (~85MB) and Openoffice (~110MB)...

I would suggest starting with a base of debian netboot and build from there. It's very minimal and will leave you without additional stuff you don't need. The other alternative would be CentOS stripped down or alternately ubuntu stripped down... You might be better off with say CentOS and spacewalk. You might want to look at a slightly customized version of gnome or a light version of kde as window manager or perhaps go back to something like fvwm or blackbox. There are a lot of good distribution choices really, but much of what you are asking for is less distribution specific and more general setup specific.

You might get some good ideas from the Fedora Kiosk Spin: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Kiosk

I have a P4/Xeon 2.8 GHz that I am currently using and another.
I use Debian and two BSDs on it. Free and Open.
LXDE has a low footprint and is easy to get around. Try that for the desktop environment.
Support? I don't know maybe ubuntu since redhat and suse are memory monsters.
Flash and java and sound? Yep works with what I have.
Shockwave plugins? I don't know. I keep flash related off of here. That- flash and java- is only for necessary whatnots.
Yes, you will need to download and burn the images to cd or dvd.
Management? Don't know. I'm not good at remote management.
Cache? Keep the downloaded disks around for that or maybe make your own mirror locally. ???

It's free, beer is not. I have to pay for my beer. I don't have to pay for my OS.

S&A support? Don't know
FAU? it can be configured, some work.
NS /home? Haven't tried. Should be possible.
CentralDB? Haven't tried. Should be possible.
Limit user perms? Takes a few but yeah.


This is only from my limited experience with Debian. Hope this helps a little.

As far as performance goes, I've got machines that will run KDE tolerably well that have far lower spec. IMHO for what you want in terms of usability you do want a full blown environment rather than a lite one.

Hi :D

Old public is not very acquainted with 933k distros, like Slackware or Arch...

I'd probably go for a Fedora or a Buntu... ROFL

Although some old ppl actually use LFS, Crux, Arch... :)

BRGDS

Alex

It's not only performance that's putting me off KDE for this, it's the general complexity. If people have their own logins and can configure them, I will get people complaining when they've done something weird. Remember these are probably the kind of people who would make the Windows XP taskbar take up a third of the right-hand side of the screen and have no idea how they did it.

I use KDE on my own computer and it's very nice, amazing appearance and some great features. But I'm not sure I'd advise it for Joe User. (For example, drag a window to the left/right edge and it takes half the screen for an easy tiled view - nice feature if you know it, but unexpected by most people).

Fedora Kiosk is interesting but likely to be too restrictive. Though the main usage will be internet people may want to do other stuff. And given IIRC the computers don't have front USB ports some persistent storage on a network share would be a boon I reckon.

My reservation with Debian is the long and irregular release cycle. Stable is a bit too conservative, and I'm not gonna use Testing or Unstable for this!

CentOS I've used on servers, and I think I'll certainly take a look at it. CentOS with LXDE is something I can see working well.

I'm thinking I'll look at VL Light, Lubuntu, Ubuntu with windowslike Gnome, CentOS with LXDE, and CentOS with windowslike Gnome. (From a user's POV Ubuntu and CentOS are likely to end up feeling identical, so there it's the administration aspects that would decide which wins out).

OK.
Is this a social/volunteer project?

Take a look at the Mandriva Community edition that comes with LXDE.

http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Syste...on-52689.shtml

It's for a not-for-profit focused on providing training and advice for people to get employment. One of our sites has been very successful in getting customers, but is now struggling to cope with demand, having only eight or so Windows 7 workstations available. We're looking to make use of the existing old hardware we have if possible, to avoid spending thousands on new PCs.

I realize I am adding just one more opinion to the mix, but I would recommend Xubuntu. http://www.xubuntu.org/ It has all of the packages of Ubuntu, but with a lighter (simpler and faster) XFCE interface, which in my experience is also very easy to configure to look very Windows-like. As far as I know, it meets all the requirements you stated above, and making some of the "desired" things happen should not be too difficult either. :)

I've never been very impressed by XFCE. "Light" is of course relative, but in my experience there's not a lot of difference in resource usage between it and Gnome. There tends to be a very narrow "window" of hardware that won't run Gnome well enough but will do fine on XFCE.
Of course, the hardware in this case is probably quite capable of handling Gnome and even (as another mentioned) KDE.

But I may include it for consideration. I'll probably be going to the site tomorrow and can do a bit of informal usability testing with the installs on my laptop, see how my colleagues (and maybe customers) respond to the different options. (Of course, most distros make it easy to change the desktop environment if my first decision does end up being a poor one).

You might consider adding another 512 meg of memory, that would open a lot of the restriction.

Based on additional information you may want to consider themeing it like windows to prevent any user confusion or perhaps installing the interface from eeebuntu or something similar.