Usability - vrs- hardware requirements

[Greg Richardson]

Hi all.

I've been lurking around on the list for quite some time, through the 
Gutsy cycle, and doing so has taught me a lot about how a distribution 
is developed and maintained. Up until now I've kept quiet for fear of 
making a fool of myself, but that fear has diminished of late, so here 
goes...

When it comes to hardware I am a thrifty (cheap) consumer. When Yellow 
Dog Linux abandoned the SCSI-based Macs a few years ago I finally had to 
bite the bullet and buy a PC. I must have put on twenty different 
flavors of Linux before I settled on Xubuntu. Here was finally something 
stable and usable and fast that didn't demand I buy a new PC any time soon.

But , realistically, what is the life-span of a PC? Ten years? Five 
years? You can buy  the computer I bought three years ago for 
seventy-five dollars on e-bay, re-furbished, shipping included.  It  
seems to me  that as Xubuntu  evolves  the  hardware required to run it 
must evolve as well, and striking the balance between function and 
system resources is difficult. But I believe if Xubuntu runs perfectly 
on a computer that costs less than a hundred dollars (and probably will 
for another five years, assuming the distribution survives) why worry 
about it?

Xubuntu is a fine distribution and I'd like to contribute it's 
development if I can figure out how.

Greg Richardson