[PLUG] : Re: Free distros!

[John Jason Jordan]

On Thu, 1 Mar 2012 12:30:54 -0800
Mike Connors <mconnors1 at gmail.com> dijo:

>>
>> It does sound like fun. I've often thought about combining a short
>> educational session with each Clinic. This might be an opportunity to
>> try out the idea.
>>
>> I think we have at least one router and one switch in the PLUG box at
>> Free Geek. Plus we have cables in abundance and probably
>> miscellaneous other equipment. However, bear in mind that we will
>> need our own network, as we don't have permission to install things
>> on Free Geek's network. I'm sure everyone has already thought of
>> that; I just wanted to mention it to be sure that everyone knows.

>I'm fairly excited that you guys are jumping right into this. I've only
>setup PXE boot installs for single OS, but here's a recent article on
>how to do it for multiple OS'.
>https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PXEInstallMultiDistro. Do we have a
>Server box? If not, I have a Free Geek Dell box that we could use.

We have sufficient space in the PLUG cabinet to house a normal size
desktop box, and we can always borrow a keyboard, mouse and monitor for
those occasions when we need to use it. In other words, having a
dedicated server could become a standard Clinic feature.

I assume you want your Free Geek Dell box back. But if I understand
things correctly, a server need not have a lot of RAM, CPU horsepower,
or even disk space, as long as it has enough space to hold the distros.
I have a box of the Windows 98 era (HP D7316A) that I would be
delighted to donate. I obtained this box free as a discard found in
a rental house. It needs a network card, and it has only 96 MB RAM and a
9.6 GB hard drive, but that should be enough for DSL or Puppy, and I
wouldn't mind buying a second hard drive for it at Free Geek. I also
have some leftover network cards.

In fact, I think I am going to fire it up this afternoon and see if it
will run. There may be a serious reason it was discarded.