A "green" distro of Ubuntu?

[Liam Proven]

On 2 July 2011 21:59, Richard Owlett <rowlett at pcnetinc.com> wrote:
> Avi wrote:
>>
>> Richard Owlett wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Have you tried DSL (DamnSmallLinux)?
>>>> See http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/download.html
>>>> and scroll down for download sites.
>>>
>>> Yes, not to its benefit
>>>   1. 2nd link yields 404 error without "contact us" link to
>>>      report problem
>>>   2. searching out correct link yields .iso of ~50MB
>>
>> This is partly why I do wish people wouldn't just link directly to the
>> download page.
>>
>> The point of DSL is to be a 50MB linux distro. If your definition of
>> 'small' is smaller than that, it wont suffice.
>>
>> What size are you looking for?
>
> IIRC Win 3.1 was < 15 MB and I consider it "bloated"

Linux is not for you, then.

A small distro these days is one that does not fill a CD - of the
Ubuntu family, the smallest is Lubuntu. It is still a 680MB download.

Really tiny Linus distros are:
Puppy Linux (150MB)
Damn Small Linux (50MB, now unmaintained)

TinyCore is indeed 10M but it is not a full desktop. It's a sort of
highly-compressed graphical console you can load other simple
applications onto. It's no use to you, by the sound.

Your expectations are a full 15 to 20 years out of date. A throw-away
PC today is roughly a 2.5GHz Pentium 4 or Celeron with 256-512MB of
RAM and 200GB of disk. I have given several such boxes to charity. I
had to look for such a charity for a few 1.2 - 1.3GHz Athlon machines;
the main UK one, Computer Aid, will not accept boxes as low spec as
this. It is literally not worth freighting slower PCs to the
developing world.

http://www.computeraid.org/

Look at their min spec:
[[
At Computer Aid International we are currently able to make use of any
Pentium 4 Processor 1.4 GHz or equivalent or above base units and
laptops, 15" or 17" monitors manufactured after 2002 and any size of
TFT monitors. We also need mice, keyboards, modems, cables, power
leads, memory and other peripheral parts.
]]
Source: http://www.computeraid.org/donation-form.asp

The ordinary full-desktop Ubuntu runs very well on this level spec.
There is literally no need for anything lighter weight. So, the
lighter-weight distros are dying from neglect. E.g. DSL, which has not
been updated since end 2008.

Also note, if you buy media of Ubuntu or something, you will have to
download hundreds of meg of updates to get it current and a few dozen
meg a week to keep it there. More if you start with the minimal CD &
build your own - Debian installs software off the internet by default
and is borderline unusable without broadband, IMHO.

You could try FreeDOS with FreeGEM, and possibly OSs like Haiku, AROS
or Syllable. There are almost no apps and drivers and so on, though.
They will still mean downloading many hundreds of meg each, though.

The world has moved on.


-- 
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