[OS:N:] Corrections about the RULE project for old PCs

[Marco Fioretti <m fioretti inwind it>]

Evan,

first of all, I have to correct myself: I said that in schools, old
Free SW has much less value as an educational tool. I should have said
"didactic", I guess, because I was thinking to programming/software
theory studies, not to tools for teachers. My point was that while
being able to pull apart a real OS, change it and see what happens is
always a wonderful way to learn programming, doing it on a 6+ years
old version is much less useful.

You still use with profit a P1-100 with 48 MB RAM much like I use RH
7.3 on my P1-133 laptop/32 MB RAM, so I know what you mean.

In general, I agree with almost everything you said, but think that
you
left out a very important point (which I left out too, but only
because it is clearly explained in the web site).

You said:

> First of all, there's no relevant issue regarding "old free
> software".

and

> Modern free software DOES NOT require state of the art boxes

The truth is that, with the latest versions of RH and several other
distros both statements are true only AFTER an ever growing amount of
cleaning up and customization of the default install. The Red Hat
lists and several others are full of people complaining that right
after install they go slower doing the SAME things they did before.

This is the problem we aim to solve. We know the same things that you
pointed out, and we know that going to that level is above the skills
of the average Linux desktop newbie. We "just" want to add to the
stock RH stuff another "installation option" whose immediate result is
ALREADY optimized for older PCs with very few RAM.

Obviously, as far as desktop are concerned, we also points to real
functionality for school and small business use: we are not going to
waste one hour trying to run Quake 3 or DVD players on a 486.

Unfortunately, our server is down right now. Please wait a couple of
days, and then spend some minutes on www.rule-project.org/

      Thank you for your time,

		Marco Fioretti
		RULE project leader

-- 
People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of
the future.