[LBo] Problem with finding the right distro (Re: QnA Digest, Vol 11, Issue 1)

[Allen]

Thanks for the tips.

Alas, I was not clear enough in one point. I was checking out 
Live distros only to see if they would run at all in the first place.

Then the idea is that I do HD installs from the Live CD. Which I 
did. It is on reboot from the HD install that I get the error 
message.

Then going forward, I give Al (the guy who does the study group 
for the kids) the Live CD to do re-installs to the HD when one of 
the kids (or entropy) messes up the computer. Since they only 
have a dial-up where the group meets, a net install won't work. 
Also this level of complexity would mean the machine would be 
done until I could get the time to bring it home and do it myself 
then bring it back. I try to maintain some Windoze boxen for the 
local Neighborhood House and they almost never last more than a 
week before crashing. So that option is out as it would be too 
much of a burden on Al and myself.

My hope is that this way he can do the rebuilds himself most of 
the time. It is not my intention to run from the Live CD, only 
when a system needs to be rebuilt.

In addition to rock solid and simple installs I have one other 
requirement which is that Open Office be in the distro because 
this way the kids can cross over to Windoze when needed as the OO 
docs saved as .doc open fine on Office 2K and up.

(My daughter did this for almost two years on a cheap Linspire 
box from Frys because I wouldn't let her IM on a Windoze box and 
it worked well. Now her school has Macs laptops so to calm the 
teenage hormones and jealousy we got her the low end Mac laptop 
for her birthday. What can I say, she's 14.)

I have now tried Slax 6.5 - no go, can't get on the net from the 
Live CD, PuppyLinux also no go. Been doing a lot of downloading 
and burning. Will try the other suggestions.

Meanwhile I posted the error message on the Simply Mephis forum 
and haven't heard anything yet.


> Hi,
> 
> I'm trying to install any distro that is complete enough for an 
> after school program run for the housing project kids at the gym 
> nearby. I got 8 old PCs donated which were running W2K but the 
> guy who runs the program doesn't have the skill to keep them up.
> 
> My idea is that with the right distro he can just pop a live CD 
> in and do a fresh install when they bomb, which they will given 
> that the kids have no exposure to computers and range in age from 
> 5 up to about 13.
> 
> I've tried a bunch of distros and had miserable results so far. 
> The boxes are AMD K6 - 2+/270MHz with 256 Megs of ram.
> 
> Knoppix 3.81 runs fine as a live distro, but is old and cranky 
> for an install. I don't know enough to update the newer apps and 
> make a new distro package at this point.
> 
> Knoppix 5.1 just hangs and won't boot as a live CD.
> 
> PCLinuxOS 2007 just black boxes.
> 
> Xubuntu 7.04, which I'm running on an old P3 just fine, hangs in 
> the boot process and never sees the mouse.
> 
> Simply Mephis runs fine as a live CD, it installed and ran fine, 
> but when I attempt to login on a reboot I get an error message:
> ------------
> "There was an error setting up inter process communications for KDE.
> 
> Could not read network connection list.
> 
> /root/.DCOPserver_Potrero Hill Study 1_0
> 
> Please check that the "dcopserver" program is running."
> -------------
> When I click on the "OK" button it goes back to a cold start, 
> checks the memory, etc. I don't know the install command to 
> override the "silent" option so I can't see the boot process.
> 
> The machines are old, 2001, and slow, but they do run W2K just 
> fine on 128 megs of ram, so I'm puzzled why I can't get a Linux 
> distro to work.
> 
> Does anyone have a clue for me, or can you suggest a distro that 
> will work as a live CD and then do a clean install?

--------------------------

> From: Micheal Bauerle <mbauerle at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: [LBo] Problem with finding the right distro
[snip]
> I use Fedora core on some older machines and have just started using the 
> fedora core 7 live cd and the only problem I found with that is trying 
> it with machines with an Nvidia video card. Other then that it works 
> fine on 2 old machines of mine.

I'll give it a try.



> From: Sam Morgan <s.morgan at linuxbasics.org>
> Subject: Re: [LBo] Problem with finding the right distro
[snip]
> 
> you might keep an eye on Mint, it's Beta has just been released and they say:
> "the Xfce Community edition runs faster and takes fewer resources. This is ideal 
> for older computers."
> http://www.linuxmint.com/cassandra-xfce-beta003.html
> 
> another one that might be of interest is Edubuntu
> http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=04179
> http://www.edubuntu.org/
> 
> perhaps Slax would work
> http://www.slax.org/
> 
> perhaps something like K12LTSP would work for you:
> http://k12ltsp.org/contents.html
> 
> just throwing out some ideas, hope you find one that works for your situation.

Will try those as well.

Thanks,

Allen