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!

If you view this image by Dave Boyle with FireFox 3, Internet Explorer or Opera 9.26, you will se a static PNG file. But if you use the Opera beta, or a beta of the new FireFox 3, you will be able to see an actual PNG animation.

The animated APNG format is supported in many mainstream browsers (except IE of course), though it seems that it will not see wider usage, because of the MNG format, which is supposed to be more popular (based on PNG). The Mozilla Foundation decided to support APNG because of its simple structure.

MNG is also supported in the mainstream browsers, like Konqueror and Netscape. It has been removed from FireFox some time ago, but according to Wikipedia, developers will slowly start to replace GIFs with this format.

The PNG Group decided in April last year not to use APNG generally. They also talk about other alternatives, like ANG, aNIM/mPNG, PNG in GIF and RGBA in GIF.

Format war? Hope not. That would mean more work for the developers. As a hobbyist programmer, I don’t like that idea. But just like PNGs are slowly replacing other still image formats, we could use an alternative to the 256-color bucket of fail which is GIF.

It’s been said that FireFox Mobile is due in late 2008. A great surprise, because the Minimo browser really got whooped by Opera Mini and its innovations, even on smaller mobile devices, such as older mobile phones. Besides, I hate Minimo.

The UI design mock-up already exists, for touch-screens. Now this looks like old news, but you have probably noticed that since October 2007 not much has happened: there is a chance for FireFox to win Opera Mini users over to its side. The community will enable you to customize the browser, and we’ll be seeing some speed tweaks, hopefully.

I’m just saying: if Deepfish goes cellular, we’re in for a war. Did you know that Nokia’s S60 browser, which is described by users as whoop-ass, is also open source?

Last but not least, I would like to thank God for not having a war between a crappy browser with 90% percent of market share, but rather between very good browsers, all with their own pros and cons.

Let me introduce you to the greatest clone ever. The Everex Cloudbook, while totally ripping off Asus’ idea, is on the other side cursed by the Hackintosh curse. Even the bloody Everex site seems to have an Apple font on the front which doesn’t work on my Debian box. Come on!

Back to basics: The Cloud(hm…Mac)Book is supposed to have more power than the poor old Asus Eee. I don’t know why it runs so slow. Is it the operating system? Because according to this review and another one at Youtube, it needs at least two minutes to boot! The Eee team has done a far better job at tweaking their laptop. I never saw Ubuntu (gOS is a modified Ubuntu Linux OS) run so slow. Maybe because of all the Apple tweaks (you can see an Awn-like Dock in the video, not sure if it’s the default desktop, but looks like it is.). I still don’t know why they used Ubuntu. And where’s the purpose in putting a Meebo or Wikipedia icon on the desktop and NOT running it in FireFox, but a retarded browser(according to teh Linux Action Show)? It’s as if I stored my favorites on my Desktop. No wait, that’s better.

Any thoughts on this, guys?

Most of my readers probably know I’m not very fond of Microsoft. Although, sometimes, an extremely rare thing happens: it’s when the talented people working at Microsoft actually get a chance to create something cool. In this small patch of cool between all the other Microsoft un-coolness is also the idea of making Microsoft Office more Web-capable.

Office 14, the next Desktop Office Suite (coming first half of ‘09), will feature more online power than the previous versions, which had the online capabilities of a dead frog with a 28.8k modem duct-taped to it.

Of course, Office Live Workspace already provided basic collaboration and synchronization for Word, Excel and PowerPoint (I wonder why people still use this piece of fecal matter for presentations), and there’s always Groove, but we still don’t have that for Access and other additional programs. So Gates said that this is about to change in Office 14.

Hooray for those still struggling with Windows, I guess.

InfoPath Services and Groove Services are fine, sure, but who has time to setup a server?

What I’m trying to say here is not that Microsoft should become Google Docs, but that there are easier ways to do it, for people who do not have the money and/or time for investing into servers. That’s what Google does right.