Palm Router

[Brian Kelsay]

Rant partially deleted.  Relevent portions retained.
There are distros that can be made current, that will run on older hardware.  Some of the 
customized Knoppixes (Knoppixen) have removed KDE and Gnome in favor of a lighter WM or none at 
all.  The important thing about Linux is there are choices.   I wouldn't say build your own, ever, 
until you had looked around.  It is a waste of time to reinvent the wheel unless you just really 
want to and have the time.  Find a project that is really close to what you want then help out to 
add the missing pieces or help w/ documentation like I do in order to give the developers time to 
add the requested features.  Adding docs or fixing them draws new users too.

I think we talked before about DamnSmall, Flonix, Bonzai, Feather, Morphix LightGUI, tom's 
rootboot, MuLinux, trinux, small, et al Linux.  Most of these are based on Debian, in fact they 
emphasize the ability to install to disk easier than Debian proper.  With just a little tweaking 
you will have a full blown Debian.   Like Brian said, check Distrowatch for a distro that is close 
to what you want.  You could, if you want, get Red Hat.  Install Red Hat 7.3, as console only, 
install apt4rpm, hook up to one of the archives supporting older RedHat.  One of those is the 
Fedora Legacy site.   Don't just complain, look.  If I can find this stuff just by reading news 
articles on Slashdot and googling, you can to.   Post specifically what you want or expect from a 
Distro and I bet I can find you a solution.

Brian Kelsay

>>> Leo J Mauler <> 03/02/04 09:15PM >>>

On Tue, 2 Mar 2004 06:33:58 -0800 (PST) Brian D <>
writes:
> --- Leo J Mauler <> wrote:
> > 
> > Speaking as one of the few people who still 
> > bitches on comp.os.linux.advocacy that Linux 
> > has turned into an OS for higher-end computers 
> > (Debian may still work but I've never gotten it 
> > installed, and while I like Slackware no one 

Its down to Slackware, Debian, and Gentoo (though Gentoo with anything
other than a binary install is a recipe for boredom on older hardware). 
Mandrake now bitches about less than 64MB, and RedHat started the ball
rolling on "must have more than 64MB RAM" with 8.0.

Yes, we know how you have RedHat 7.x or lower running on older hardware. 
The point is that *current* *console* Linux shouldn't require 64MB just
to get it on the system!

> Just spend some time browsing distrowatch.  Plus 
> there is always LFS. Or you can always build your
> own customized from scratch Linux. You back in the
> Day, Linux enthusiasts would build their own systems,
> and there wasn't any of this lazy man's approach of
> downloading a "distro".

Frankly I'm sick of this "white coats" approach to computing.  Bill Gates
(back when he was the *young* Anakin Skywalker, as opposed to the
*teenage* version), and IBM, as well as Steve Jobs, managed to make
computing available to the masses through an approach which did not
require a soldering iron and/or punch cards.  Now you're sitting there
metaphorically saying "whats the fuss about?  Pick up that soldering iron
and your stack of punch cards and get back to using older hardware
pre-1984 style!"

I'd thought we'd gotten past all that, and that Linux was busily handing
computing back to the masses (now that Bill Gates as Darth Vader was
busily taking power back from the masses).  Computing shouldn't be
limited to people with money and people with technical expertise (not
necessarily the same people).