[conspire] Distros available for installation at CABAL

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Christian Einfeldt (einfeldt at earthlink.net):

> Yes, I have never seen Ubuntu, and maybe it would be good for some 
> of the older boxes that I am hoping to give away.  

As chance would happen, Canonical, Ltd. (sponsor of Ubuntu Linux)
recently sent me about fifty CD sets of Ubuntu Linux 5.04 "Hoary
Hedgehog" for i386, and they'll be available tomorrow.  "Set" means you
get an installable CD and a liveCD one, in a cardboard folding case.

The default install of Ubuntu involves GNOME 2.10, which is nice but a
bit RAM-intensive for really old machines.  OTOH, you might be able to
install it but then immediately switch to some more RAM-thrifty X11 setup,
such as Xfce, Icewm, etc.

Depending on the amount of RAM in the machine, I might be pleasantly
surprised in that department.  But don't expect a 486 laptop with 16 MB
of RAM to do GNOME 2.10 -- or much with X11 beyond the smallest possible
Web browser (e.g., dillo or light or BrowseX) and other tiny
applications (and xterms).  In other words, be reasonable in your
expectations of what can be done with laughably small amounts of RAM.
(The old CPUs are a lesser problem.)