[H-GEN] HEADS UP: Debian for Kids

[Frank Brand]

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>Yes I know it will be slow, but that is the requirement. Remember it's
gotta
>run on donated machine, although these are the minimum requirements.
>


Yes but it will be compared to the speed of Win 3.1 or Win 95. If it is
perceived as being too slow it will then be judged as a technically possible
but practically implausible solution. I just have lots of doubts about
trying to run X Windows on a 486 with either 8 or 16 Mb RAM (that is even
aside from trying to run whatever might be needed inside 300 Mb). The SX
part should not be a major problem as the only difference between an SX and
a DX was the co-processor...which probably isn't needed anyway but (aside
from the odd IBM/Cyrix chip running at 50 or 66 MHz) the fastest SX was a 33
MHz CPU.

Whilst it might not be terribly palatable ( I need a spell checker) I think
for the 486 SX with 8 MB that Win 3.1 might be a lot easier to accommodate.
There is a pretty fair chance that they could easily get sufficient Win 3.1
disks donated anyway. Hewlett Packard used to have a system called GEOS that
worked on top of DOS that seemed quite usable.

I really thought that the final outcome of the Microsoft legal case would be
that MS would, sometime down the track might make Win 95 A freely available
(when it was so far out of date to be of minimal value to MS anyway).
However, contrary to some Humbugian views at the time, that case does seem
to be dragging on now...18 months down the track and still a long way short
of resolution.


Frank Brand


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