[wellylug] A little project....

[Tom Peck]

Glen Ogilvie wrote:
> For new users, I think that Mandrake is an easy distrobution to use, however, 
> by the spec of these computers, it would be too resource hungry without using 
> a more powerful server I think.
> 
> Lets look at exactly what they might be doing, and what software that's linux 
> bases is available to do this.  
> 
> Word processing with clip art, spell checker, and ability to read MS word 
> documents.    -- Star Office?  Open Office?, hancom office?, koffice?, 
> abiword?.
> 
> Excel / powerpoint / publications.    Apps?


OpenOffice has all of the above (the ablility to read MS Word / Excel / 
Powerpoint documents).  But, written in Java it is pretty large and slow 
(~200 MB installed). Still the best bet probably.

> Suring the internet / email.   -- 	Netscape?, Mozilla, Opera, konquer, galeon, 
> pine, kmail, evolution.

Mozilla isn't at all lightweight - but probably the best option.  Either 
that or an older version of netscape.  Opera is fast and lightweight, 
but costs money.  Konqueror depends on KDE libraries - KDE is not 
lightweight even at the lowest setting and takes up a large amount of 
diskspace.

> Printing -- will need good printer support.

Most distro's have good printer support - it's just a matter of 
initially setting it up - some distros make this easier than others. 
Also they will need a linux compatible printer or share the printer on a 
Windows machine.

> Any other concepts of the things they will be doing?
> 
> I see that for finding a solution, we are going to need consider first off, is 
> this possible?   I personally, have not found any of the office type 
> applications to run well on low powered machines.  My personal consideration 
> would put Star Office, koffice, mozilla, out of the picture from the start, 
> because they all have huge memory footprints.

I guess it would just need some testing before anything goes ahead..

> Second, what versions of linux have good support for printers, and other 
> hardware restraints.  Followed by how they can run the applications.
> 
> Maybe we should consider looking at QNX as well, because of it's fairly good 
> performance for lower spec computers.

Is this from http://www.qnx.com/ ?  I couldn't find much information on 
  exactly what it is?

> Anyway..  I support trying, but can't offer to do much, as time is limited for 
> me

I have spare time evenings and weekends - but my experience is limited 
to seting up home networks and the odd development webserver.  I also 
have a few friends in a similar position who would be keen to help out.

Tom

<snip>


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