[CVALE] Old laptop

[Anthony Martin]

jon <jon_will at pacbell.net> once said:
> My niece has handed me an old laptop (486 Dx4 75) laptop.  She would
> like to have a linux system on it. 

What a smart girl.

> So I would like to bring it to the installfest and have brighter brains
> than mine look at it to see if it is possible to install some flavor of
> the OS on it.  Currently it is Windows 3.11 and she would like something
> more robust.

Do you run sshd and possibly nfs? Well, I'll just get to the point
instead of bombarding you with questions. I suggest setting up a really
minimalistic linux installation ala mulinux[1] and giving your niece a
shell account on one of your machines. You could even export a few
directories on your end using nfs so she could have all the tools of a
"modern" distribution. This has the added benefit of being able to help
her with any problems in a more timely and convenient manner.

Mulinux is probably what you should use even if you don't plan to give
her access to your machine. It's packaged as a base image and several
other modules, all of which fit on one floppy each. There's modules for
ssh, development, X, and many others. And I believe it comes with a
script in the base image to install on to a hard disk.

I'd also be willing to give her (or anyone, for that matter) an account
at pbrane.org. Just send me an email at this address if you're
interested.

> When is the next installfest?  Sat the 22nd? or have I missed it for the
> month?

That's a good question. Someone will answer it :)

regards,
  ality

1. "MuLinux" - http://mulinux.dotsrc.org/

-- 
"The right to be left alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom."