[PLUG] Appliance Computer Distro? Cheap computers?

Chris Penwell romanmir_ug at comcast.net
Mon Jan 23 19:51:36 UTC 2006


If that's all she needs you could go even lower and find a usb thumb drive
distro that has Firefox et al. and completely ditch the need for a HDD. 

It might save the risk of having the HDD crash.

Although, now that I think about it, thumb drives wear out over time.

Just a thought.

---Chris Penwell


-----Original Message-----
From: plug-bounces at lists.pdxlinux.org
[mailto:plug-bounces at lists.pdxlinux.org] On Behalf Of Keith Lofstrom
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 11:34 AM
To: PLUG
Subject: [PLUG] Appliance Computer Distro? Cheap computers?


A friend recently suffered a computer roasting, and needs another.
All she uses the computer for is web browsing and email from her
AOL account (which I assume can be accessed via a web browser).
No word processor, spreadsheet, anything.  All she would even need
a hard-drive for is to hold her web bookmarks and preferences,
and ISP connection information;  otherwise she could just boot
from a CD.

I could pungle up a Linux machine that boots into Firefox, but
that means I have another machine to maintain.  A distro that
does nothing but Firefox and the programs necessary to support it,
(automatically downloading Java and Flash and Acroread and all the
other proprietary nonsense during install) would be great for an
application like this, especially if the install was obsequeously
simplified.  Does anybody know of such a distro?

Also - a good place to buy $50 800MHz-ish machines is the Tektronix
surplus store, but they are open only a couple of days a month,
and it will be another month before I can get there.  Freegeek
doesn't sell whole systems from their retail store.  Wacky Willies
isn't doing retail any more.  Any other suggestions for places
that sell very inexpensive used PCs?

Keith

-- 

Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs
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