I work for a school district with no money and old hardware. Part of my job is refurbing PCs to put back in the classroom and SOP has been to load them with Windows 98 (these PCs are PII/IIIs and would take Windows 2000 but the district is picky about licensing issues) so I'm looking for a Linux distro that looks like Windows and that comes loaded with at least Firefox and OpenOffice.

I've tried Linux PC and it looks okay and comes with Firefox (I had to install OpenOffice) but, so far, it seems slower than the same computer on Win98. Plus I'm unclear how to attach it to the Windows 2003 network (mapped shares, network printers, etc.) but that's a separate issue.

Any suggestions?

please don't try to compare a version of windows released 8 years ago with a versino of linux released today... that's a totally unfair comparison... you can easily strip a desktop back to something functionally equivalent to Win98's GUI, but that's taking a step backwards compared to current functionalites often already out performing Vista in some places.

there are distro's like LinuxXP which try to be VERY similar if that's what you honestly want. in terms of good all-round distros for non technical people, somethign like ubuntu or MEPIS are the current trend.

not free - but Ive heard Linspire is good

Sorry, I said Linux PC when I meant to say Linux XP.

BOF, thanks, I'll give Linspire a try.

Chris, the reality is that while Win98 is 8 years old and retarded compared to modern-day Linux, it's still an interface that all of my user-base is familiar with and I can "legally" install it wherever I need to.

If I had my way, I would install something like Ubuntu but I don't have that kind of muscle in my job. I was hoping for something with basic functionality (internet, word processing) that I could tie into the network (note my newbie tag) and that looked like what my people are used to.

Maybe a streamlined linux distro would work for me too. I would need a gui (probably Gnome), internet (Firefox?), word processing (OpenOffice?) and as little extra as possible. And I would prefer to be able to just install the system without having to install the extras (Linux XP included Firefox and made it very easy to install OO). Do you have any recommendations?

For ease of use I liked the SUSE Distro it setup easy was rather easy to negotiate and was easy to install things in. The Linux XP was a great Windows XP look alike and act alike but when it came to running Linux applications it couldnt stand up.

On the Linux XP box I found that it couldnt install alot of applications easily and that it wouldnt run a lot of applications right away.

Suse is a good Distro to get for your machines and will allow you to customize it to your needs.

I personally run Slackware on my machines because I have found that I can use anything with it and it is a very stable distro.

You might want to check out FVWM95. It is lightweight and looks exactly like the Win95/98 interface - well, exactly like it, except for the lack of the Microsoft Windows logo. It even has the desktop/folder metaphor like newer *nix desktop environments.

of course, but you wouldn't try to run XP on those boxes would you? so the most common desktops, i.e. gnome and kde are roughly equivalent to XP in terms of resource requirements etc, so if you admit it's a dumb idea running XP on them, it's just as dumb running Gnome 2.14 or Kde 3.4. hence KimVette's suggestions of FVWM95 etc...

*nods*

forgot about the hardware - yes FVWM95 would be a good choice for resembling windows.

Suse with 5 cds is probably more than I want but I'll download it anyway.

I'll look into FVWM but I've always been fuzzy on how Window Managers work with Linux itself and it looks like it's not maintained anymore (last version is dated 2003). Do I need to find a distrobution that supports it or how does that work?

Thanks for the info.

Well, fvwm95 you may have to build yourself. SuSE comes with qvwm, so you can try that. Check out http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_links.asp for more info. At a glance it looks like it is based on the old FVWM-based FVWM95 project.

AMIGO Linux
http://amigolinux.org/

DragonLinux
http://dragonlinux.sourceforge.net/

Klinux Linux
http://70.84.79.46/ar/announce-en.htm

monkey Linux
http://ftp.spsselib.hiedu.cz/pub/linux/monkey/

Phat Linux
http://phatlinux.com/

• Topologi Linux
http://topologi-linux.sourceforge.net/

ReactOS
http://www.reactos.org/xhtml/en/index.html

You might also want to try some of these distros:

Kubuntu
http://www.kubuntu.org/

PCLinuxOS .92
http://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/metalab/dist...glish/preview/
ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/metalab/distr...glish/preview/

This is the distro I use and recommend, Why because it works right out of the box. No need to configure Everything, everything just works. It also comes as a 1 CD install that is a live CD that you can install later if you wish.

BeatrIX
http://www.watsky.net/download.html

This Distro is small fast and effective, the ultimite Workers CD

Blag
http://www.blagblagblag.org/download/

is A one CD install of Fedora Core

OPENSUSE
http://www.opensuse.org/Download

Mephis
http://www.mepis.org/

Linux Distros for older Hardware, Though with PII & PIII machines you should be fine to run many of the above distros

Vector Linux 4.3
http://www.vectorlinux.com/

DSL
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Puppy Linux
http://www.puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=3

Slackware
http://www.slackware.com/

I'd check out puppy and BeatrIX if you are looking to go minamilistic

Hope this Helps,

Jake

http://distrowatch.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari..._distributions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._distributions

I would never recommend ReactOS. Have you ever tried to install a video driver on it, especially something like an ATI AiW card? It's a beastly process and far too time consuming to be worthwhile.

Agreed. I never liked it because... come to think of it, because of everything about it...

I'm a Suse lover so... And yes it comes on 5 cds but thats because it comes with a ton of programmes. just take the standard install and go through the options and get rid of what you don't need. Also Suse has a programme that will take that install and you can duplicate it for all the other computers your installing on. Make your life easy. A one click install.

Heres a story in your direction http://www.varbusiness.com/sections/...leId=192201615
Note how the kid says 'who cares'

also look at Koffice over OpenOffice. See if it will do the trick for you. Open is just so..a 15 pound laptop, just like M$ office.

The real choice would be to make the file/printer server a linux box.

oh, and i have suse10 on an old IBM PIII laptop. Runs fine, not a gazzel but..

How much ram is on these machines btw?