[sf-lug] SF-LUG meeting notes for Monday 18 February 2019

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Bobbie Sellers (bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com):

>     I remember those well.  I have a copy(somewhere) but I am
> not sure it is functional.

Well, I have a collection of Linuxcare BBC and LNX-BBC burned media, and
would be glad to give you ISO copies of all of them you'd like.  ;->
They're at least of historical interest.

[business-card-sized CDs:]
 
> I can haul them along in a handbag or in a tote-able computer case.
> These are fragile and a case to protect them would be nice but
> otherwise they are wrapped in paper secured with a rubber band.

Sure, but practically any running computer in 2019 will also boot from a
USB flash drive.  Also, your handbag tote-able computer case probably
has room for one or two adequately protected full-sized CD or DVD discs
with real Linux distributions.

But still, thank you for offering Plop Boot Manager and SliTaz.

> But rescatux-0.51b3.iso works on 32 and 64 bit machines and Joseph needed
> a copy to a flash drive as that is the inputs he has on his machine which is
> small and Intel Atom powered.

Cool!

> And Slitaz 5 works on i5/i7 machines if you really want to cut down on
> the size of your distribution.  I did not manage to get it online on WiFi
> though.  Maybe it needed an update but that will take a wired connecton
> I believe.

SliTaz is a very limited distro.  It can boast ability to run in as
little as 16MB of RAM on a 486, and can be installed on as little as
80MB of disk space.  However, on any computer manufactured within the
last 20 years, you can run much, much more capble distros.

Debian 9 'stretch' i386 can install with 64MB of RAM, and
(realistically, but not bare minimum) 500 MB of disk.  You of course
must be attentive to what you install and run.  There is no need to wear
the hair shirt and limit one's self to SliTaz, though.

> There will be quite a few 386 machines out there being used by poorer
> people than we are in places where a hardware update has never been
> written into budgets.

I sympathise.  OTOH, $150 will get you a nice ThinkPad T440S with 4GB of
RAM and an SSD.  That's a 2013 64-bit laptop, instead of (say) a
20-year-old Pentium II that's probably about to have parts failure.
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sys/d/san-francisco-lenovo-14-thinkpad-t440s/6823632219.html

$50 will get you a 11-year-old Apple MacBook pro (Intel Core 2 Duo,
64-bit, 4GB RAM, 200 GB hard disk) with a broken battery that works fine
on AC.  https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sfc/sya?

$100 gets you a Lenovo ThinkCentre M92p (i5 64-bit, 4GB RAM, 1 terabyte
hard drive).  You supply monitor, keyboard, and mouse.
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sys/d/lenovo-thinkcentre-m92p/6823484308.html

$95 gets you a Dell Optiplex 755 (Core 2 Quad 64-bit, 4GB RAM, 80 GB
hard drive, includes monitor but you supply mouse and keyboard).
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sys/d/desktop-pc-dell-optiplex-755-free/6815707029.html

$100 gets you a Lenovo IdeaPad Z575 laptop (4GB RAM AMD 64-bit CPU,
150GB hard drive, DVD drive).
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sys/d/san-francisco-excellent-lenovo-ideapad/6823338363.html

And, wow, $100 will get you this super-nice home theater PC (HTPC)
system box with modern AMD 64-bit CPU, 8 GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, and
DVD burner.  You supply monitor, keyboard and mouse.
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sys/d/san-francisco-budget-htpc-desktop-pc/6818420819.html

All of the above are in San Francisco, by the way.

So, basically, if you can scrap together $100, you can run a Linux
machine from this decade, instead of a 32-bit machine from a
quarter-century ago.  Not everyone can find $100 for non-essentials, 
of course, and will do as they must.  Most can.