Hi,

I am a teacher. There's a storeroom with a whole bunch of 486's waiting to be re-cycled. Some of my students want to try linux, and so . . .
Will RH WS 2.2, or any modern distro run on a 486 with GUI?
What is meant by "free" linux? Only the kernel and command line w/out KDE or GNOME??

I don't think that a 486 will be able to handle the load of KDE or GNOME. But it will be able to work well in shell mode, or you can even load a WM like fluxbox that do not require much sustem resources.

Free linux means that the entire OS with all its tools and utilities are free, which means that you get the source code for the OS, and can redistribute it freely. Go to www.gnu.org to learn more.

running kde or gnome on 486 isnt smart and if it goes at, it will be slooooow. but, vector linux can run on older pc's, and has icewm, xfce to use as wm that r easier on sys resources.

i have a custom built system running on a 486(100MHz) laptop but all it does is run bash/vi/vnc client, you'll be able to get away with command line but i doubt you'll get X running, if you do you wont be able to run gnome or kde(i dont even run them on my 1.4GHz Athlon)

for teaching programming/typesetting/basic unix you could put an old version of slack or some of these new tiny linuxes on the machines and they should run fine. you could consider building a beowulf cluster or using them as vnc viewers to a powerful server. both would be great learning experiences for the kids.

as for the definition of free check out the gnu project as UltimaGuy suggested.

Your biggest problem will be RAM. If you have 16MB of RAM, you can run modern linux.


Get Slackware, its the best for older PCs like that.


And no, you wont be able to run X. But if you want to teach UNIX, the command line is the best way.

RedHat 7 should work fine. About the GUI... well you won't REALLY learn Linux if you use a GUI...

However... perhaps an older version of gnome, or another WM (iceWM is the one that jumps to my head).

Hope I helped.

kajensen, your situation looks like a perfect opportunity to try out the Linux Terminal Server Project. A 486 is plenty capable of working as a dumb X terminal; as long as you have one well-powered machine (say, a Pentium 300 or so with lots of RAM), you can run all the actual software on the newer machine, and all your 486's connect to it. Take a storeroom full of junk computers, add one decent new computer and Linux, and you have an instant computer lab!

I even recently got a 486DX/66 laptop with only 4MB RAM to wotk as an X terminal! If your machines have 8MB or more, you are all set. They don't even need hard drives or CD-ROM drives - just a floppy will do.

If they have halfway decent video cards (say, with 2MB of video RAM), then you'll have no problem running KDE or Gnome on them either.

Best of all, all of your students can login to one machine, where all their accounts and files are kept; they don't need to transfer stuff from one computer to another. That also means you only have to worry about maintaining one server, rather than trying to troubleshoot a whole room full of old hardware.

I worked on a network as you describe. But it would require many hours of setup, and experienced people to set it up correctly. You can't get the students to do it...hell, I don't think I am capable of doing it... not without my laptop with internet access, of course.

Although... it would teach them A LOT if you just plug the computers and make them all install and set up... with the apropriate guiding, of course. And you could even try to set an NFS server and a NIS server and have an account for each student with his/her files on the NFS server... that way you won't even need hdd space for students' files. And with Quotas you make sure the server will never be full.

It will be a little slow... but with new network cards, and a good switch (10/100 full duplex) it could be a very VERY interesting project. Try the GNU website, there is a 'Free software in education' project... perhaps something you'd like to read.

Grey Cat Linux

I use it in a 386 with 8 mega of Ram memory and graphical interface (IceWM). It's actually runs faster then I could expect. You can also download some pre-compiled Slackware packages to use with it :

http://home.wanadoo.nl/peterdekoning/main.htm

It install into DOS partition, so you don't have to create any partition for it either. It's I really like that distro . But there's not much you can do with it. Nor can you with older computers .

Good luck!

Why don't you ask to your boss to donate those computers and then buy newer ones for the students?

I found the whole process relatively painless. The LTSP site has excellent documentation; once you get it set up on the server, all you need to do is get boot disks from Rom-O-Matic which are appropriate to your clients' network cards (which, if they are all the same, or if you can buy a batch of identical ones, should be easy) and you're done. I am almost a complete novice when it comes to networking, especially in Linux, but I figured out how to set this thing up inside of 2 days.

If I can do it, anyone can :-)

I'm not saying it is not doable by a newbie, but as I said I need access to intenret, al least, to do it. The other thing is... students are usually lazy, and don't like to do research. My friends, they have the exact same possibilities I do, but they don't like to read and research.... so I know mucho more than them... and I'm a huge noob also.

I'm just saying... you've got to get your people interested before even starting... if not, it would be a waste of time, and resources.

Well, kajensen already said that some of his students are interested in Linux. And the students wouldn't necessarily have to be involved with setting up LTSP; it only takes one person to do that (and perhaps a friend to help, if there's lots of hardware to plug in). And obviously, he has access to the internet if he's posting here.

You guys gave great advice and many leads which I'm following up. I already e-mailed one of my students your responses as an attachment

Kurt

Well, I have access to intenret in my house... but at school it's crappy. Anyway... kajensen... are you spanish-speaker??? because if you pronounce kajensen, it would sound like a deformation of Callénse... (shut up in spanish).

Try it... If I go to LA this year I'll contact you... I'd like to see that lab... :-)... although I doubt I'll travel to the US this year... perhaps next. Anyway... Try it... it shouldn't be so hard... and asking a few interested student (specially if they are experienced)... IP'd love to help... but I'm a few miles away (note: by few I mean lot)