[H-GEN] HEADS UP: Debian for Kids

[Anthony Towns]

On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 09:28:10AM +1000, Frank Brand wrote:
> 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).

I'm pretty sure I used to run X on a 486 SX 33 w/ 8MB RAM. The only reason
I stopped was that that mobo had only one serial port, and it was more
useful connected to a modem than a mouse. You might want to use an old
X server (if the new one's become bloa^H^H^H^Hoptimised for different
setups), and you'll definitely want to use a minimal window manager,
and none of this Gnome or KDE stuff.

Personally, I'd suspect you're more likely to be compared to a 800MHz
P3s running W2k or W98 ("What my friends have"), in which case you'll
severely lose out on interesting games and email vi^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsuch
like, and you probably won't have many desktopy programs (Gnome and KDE
will probably be unusable on a 486). Depending on what you're trying to
achieve, that might be okay. The only thing you'll win on is price.

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj at humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.

``_Any_ increase in interface difficulty, in exchange for a benefit you
  do not understand, cannot perceive, or don't care about, is too much.''
                      -- John S. Novak, III (The Humblest Man on the Net)
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