I am the maintainer of a few public computers in a school library. I didn’t really check, but if I remember correctly, the computers are pretty old 900 MHz Pentiums with 90-128 mb RAM.
Now these computers had XP on them before, but I removed this horrible operating system in order to install Linux. Of course, there is a huge number of distros to choose from, even in the low-end computer niche.
All I needed was a word processor like Abiword, multiple user support with login manager, a basic file manager like PCman, Flash support, a home directory for the user ’student’, a WM, a desktop with a background, and a panel with FOUR icons - Abiword, Net browser, Home and shutdown. Also, I wanted to restrict the user ’student’ not to change the system’s theme, background and configuration files.
The KDE Kiosk Tool is great, though I think you know how fast KDE on 92 mb of RAM runs (if it runs, that is).
The default install of TinyME, a PCFLuxboxOS- based mini distribution using Openbox
You cannot imagine how difficult it was for me to find something even close to this.
Sadly, some of these mini distros have huge flaws which need to be fixed. Others, on the other hand, aren’t really mini distributions.
So, if you have an old computer and you’re looking for a low-requirement Linux distro, don’t choose:
- Xubuntu - too damn slow, changing the desktop environment or the WM actually won’t make Opera or Abiword load much faster. I think it’s the lower levels that cause the lag.
- Fluxbuntu - see Xubuntu
- Vector Linux - not easy to configure, slow installation
If you have an old computer in a public place, don’t choose
- Puppy Linux (no multiuser, isn’t too pretty)
- DSL (constant X server problems)
In reality, the only distro from the aforementioned that I dislike is Fluxbuntu. Puppy and DSL are doing a great job for users with old computers, the only problem is they lack key features for public computers. And they don’t look nice, which I can understand isn’t a priority, but it would certainly be nice.
I’m checking out TinyMe at the moment, a small PCLinuxOS derivative , and it looks promising… by changing the Openbox configuration and a few other things, I think I’ll be able to generate a stripped-down LiveCD for those school computers. It looks alright, too.
SOem of you would probably suggest Debian. Non-base Debian is slow. I love Debian, but it’s way too slow and I’m too lazy to install it from scratch. If I’ll be forced to do this, I’ll rather play with Arch.
What do you think? Do you have any recommendations for a web kiosk computer with low specs? What do you think of TinyME? What is your favourite low-end window manager? I NEED INFORMATION GUYS!
April 19th, 2008 at 15:23
Either I am not reading too properly or you did not specify why you removed Windows XP in the first place.
April 19th, 2008 at 15:25
Oh yeah what I forgot to say…
“I am the maintainer of a few public computers in a school library”
Hope you do it for free, because it sounds you stink at it and are only pushing your own preference onto other people.
These things were most likely running fine before you…
April 19th, 2008 at 16:00
Nils, tisk tisk, prejudices… of course I do it for free
Why I removed Windows XP? 4 things:
1. Safe mode, Admin access
2. command line formatting
3. Bloat and slowness
4. Malware and spyware
April 28th, 2008 at 11:33
Fluxbuntu worked really well for us (similar public environment, older computers with low memory) though I’ve not experimented yet with a passwordless ‘guest’ login. Did you actually try it out?
May 8th, 2008 at 01:06
I definitely know why you got rid of XP. Running that on those machines must have been completely ridiculous. I used to work on this ancient P3 home station with 128MB RAM and it took forever just to do something simple like web browsing; trying to multitask was insane.
Linux is an excellent choice for a basic kiosk since it can get carved down to exactly what you want. We’re trying to find a good kiosk distro right now too, but like you we found out it’s actually way harder than it sounds. I’m looking into Debiosk (http://www.debiosk.org/) right now. It looks like it might not be sufficient, but I figure it’s worth a shot. I’ll let you know what we find out.
May 9th, 2008 at 01:44
Have you heard of Edubuntu? It seemed to run well on some crusty computers at my school. It comes with a lock-down editor for the toolbars, and the backgrounds and themes would just be a matter of restricting access of gnome-appearance-properties. You can restrict even more stuff by using the menu editor to look through programs that you do and don’t want people to mess with. Though, they can still change the background of folders… What I really want to see is some kind of system with the ability to log students in with their own username and password anywhere in the school, so they can change their settings and save their work without messing with anything.
I’ve always hated Windows. The paranoia of the whole OS(s) along with useless pop-up messages and lack of useful programs are just a few reasons I switched to Ubuntu. I can remember installing XP Pro SP 1 and being met with an ASCII art version of a naked female advertising a porn video site from the Windows Messenger service a few days later. Pathetic. Anyway, my point is that there are just too many reasons for switching from XP to a good Linux distro.
May 9th, 2008 at 15:10
Good Point, Cobalt - but the computers we have are simply to slow even to think about Ubuntu - even Xubuntu is sluggish… btu I’m preparing something new, so watch out for an article coming soon
May 10th, 2008 at 00:26
The machines must be extremely slow. The computers at my school are refuse and they have no trouble with Ubuntu. Are you sure they have the right video drivers initialized? Also, I think the desktop effects are enabled by default, so you might want to check that. Could you just get some new computers, or have someone donate some?
I’m trying to get my school switched to Ubuntu to cut licensing costs and get rid of virus problems. As far as a storage system goes, I’m going to use a SSH2 server with a file system back end that students can connect to via client. Well, I wish you luck in your endeavors and I’ll be looking for your new article.
May 10th, 2008 at 14:28
Well, the specs are;
~ 800 MHz
~ 90-128 mb RAM
~ 20 gigs disk
~ Integrated 4 mb WTF videocards
The school library desperately needs some internet access, but this is all we got and all we’re gonna get… XP is too easy to break, DSL is to hard to handle. I’m working on a minimal Debian-Fluxbox solution at the moment.
May 12th, 2008 at 06:08
Have you checked out Debian? I believe it’s possible to get that running with very low system specs. In addition, couldn’t you install, say, DSL but reinstall the X server and a WM like OpenBox?
May 12th, 2008 at 14:51
I’m doing just that at the moment. Will update the blog when there’s more
May 15th, 2008 at 02:24
Have you heard of LTSP? It uses a server and thin-clients to process for a client and sends it back to the client. I read somewhere that it’s possible for a very low end (they gave the example of a 200 MHz box) to run programs at decent speeds. The One Laptop Per Child program uses LTSP. It runs like cable internet, though: if someone had, for example, a game like Quake 4 running, it would slow down the other clients. Ubuntu and Edubuntu have most of the stuff already set up for LTSP. You set up the server edition with the LTSP junk, and use the regular distro to connect through XDMCP. I think Edubuntu has better support for it, though.
Hope that helps.
May 15th, 2008 at 02:28
Made some grammatical errors up there… sorry.
Oh, and here’s the Linux Terminal Service Project homepage:
http://ltsp.org
May 15th, 2008 at 15:52
Thanks it’s a very interesting project… I’ll think about featuring it in a post