On Thursday 11 October 2001 3:44 am, you wrote:
> Neil Errington writes:
> > [...] I have one set up that I am having trouble with on some very
> > old hardware so I'd come along anyway just to pick brains (system is
> > Pentium II 233MHz on dual boot with Win95 (only for the case of operating
> > an instrument that has Win95 only software requirements)).
>
> Less of the "very old" if you don't mind!
>
> I'm happily using a Pentium 133MHz with 64MB ram and 12GB scsi
> as a desktop workstation at home, running linux-2.2.19 and X11.
> Originally I set it up as a look-a-like for my desktop machine
> at work (sun), with similar text/www/mail/graphics/programming
> facilities. That was 6 years ago, but I'm not expecting to scrap
> it for a year or two yet.
>
> This must be another of linux's big advantages - longer life for
> desktop machines. There's no need to run humungous applications
> such as all the K stuff, Netscrape, StarOrifice, VMWare, when
> simpler tools are available for unix.
>
> I use twm as window-manager, with ~40 applications in its menus,
> although I presume I could add lots more if I wanted more things
> to click on. (Anyone know how well this scales?)
Have you tried XFCE? It's a really good lightweight WM. I use it on the
couple of 200/233MHz machines I have around the house as smart terminals
(usually to run KDE apps on my Athalon 800 across the network). It's a lot
prettier than twm without being much more resource hungry.
>
> The main thing I lack is fast 3D rendering with the current setup.
>
> I boggle at how single-users keep 2GHz machines occupied.
As a KDE application server!
>
> Isn't this relevant for desktop machines in the workplace too?
> What is their average lifetime?
>
> Ted.
I also use an old 200MHz machine as my internet server. A mail/news/web
proxy/masquerade-firewall machine doesn't require much power, so an old
Pentinum is fine for the task.
There's life in the old machines yet!
Jim
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