Re: linux boxes at Salvation Army


Subject: Re: linux boxes at Salvation Army
From: James Zuelow (e5z8652@zuelow.net)
Date: Mon Apr 28 2003 - 07:33:12 AKDT


On Sun, 27 Apr 2003 23:36:14 +0000 (UTC)
"Jacob Gemmell" <evilbob@sdf.lonestar.org> wrote:

>
> On Sun, 27 Apr 2003, Damien Hull wrote:
> > I just started working for the Salvation Army. Part of my job is to fix
> > computers that have been donated. Because these are low end systems we
> > are the only group in town that can find a use for them. My plan was to
> > turn them into Linux boxes of some kind.
> >
> > Here are some of the criteria I'm looking at
> >
> > 1. Minimum speed - I'm thinking P200
> > 2. Distribution of Linux - maybe Debian but I'm also looking at mulinux
> > 3. What will they be - Workstation, Firewall, etc...
> > 4. Price
(snip...)
>
> Don't discount those other unix tupe OSe, like any of the BSDs. For low
> end workstations you may even want to ditch X and use a menu based shell
> like flash or pshell.
>
> http://psydev.sourceforge.net/
> http://www.netsoc.ucd.ie/flash/
>

Yup. For a transparent bridging firewall you could use OpenBSD on a 133 with a 540MB hard drive, with a couple hundred megs left over for logs. That box could easily keep up with a cable modem or DSL. Of course if you're not familiar with BSD, then Debian has a similar footprint.

Keep an open mind with your minimum equipment specs. My firewall at home (Debian) has a 345MB hard drive and is currently running an 83MHz Pentium Overdrive. I haven't noticed any improvement from the 486/33 it replaced. Given I'm on the basic cable modem package so it only has to keep up with a 384kb/s load, but when I download .iso files or do an apt-get update I regularly max the connection. Older machines also make good "jet direct" cards for older printers that don't do networking, remote X terminals (we demoed some P90s down here), etc. Now that doesn't mean you need to accept *junk*, but a clean, well working and unstripped P120 or P133 still has a lot of life in it.

Cheers,

James

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