__/ [ Richard Rasker ] on Friday 01 September 2006 01:11 \__
> Another night, another Linux install - but somehow, this one was a bit
> special. Some context: I had a customer over for some simple repair work,
> and as I fixed her TV while she waited, she mentioned that the family
> computer had rather terminally (as in: won't boot) succumbed to malware
> once again, and asked if I could fix that too.
>
> Turns out she was talking about a seven year old Compaq with an AMD Athlon
> 650 MHz, only 128MB of RAM and equally ancient video and sound cards.
> They had already tried reinstalling Windows 98, but the Compaq "Quick
> Restore Disk" crapped out after the first two screens with the cryptic
> and totally useless message "Compaq Quick Restore Error 812:14 -
> Contact Your Dealer". Attempts to install from a full W98SE install CD
> all failed because half the hardware drivers were nowhere to be found.
> There were no CD's, naturally, because everything was supposed to be
> loaded from the restore disk; the Internet turned up more dead links than
> live ones, and after two days(!) of trying and endless rebooting, they
> gave up.
>
> Problem was, they're not the most wealthy people, to put it mildly, and
> didn't have three hundred euros to spare for a new machine, let alone
> double that amount for Windows, MS Office and all the other applications.
>
> I offered to install Linux, but when I heard about the system specs, I
> thought running KDE would be a *big* problem. Especially the mere 128MB of
> RAM was quite worrisome. I almost gave up in advance, but then decided to
> give it a try anyway - nothing ventured, nothing gained, and these people
> were really up a certain creek without a certain implement.
> As I started the install, I warned them that both the installation and
> the machine itself would very probably run very slow, because of lack of
> memory. Luckily, hard disk space was less of a problem.
>
> But then, to my surprise, the installation was all done in 45 minutes -
> and imagine my even bigger surprise when I found that KDE was working just
> fine - and that even OpenOffice took perhaps 15 seconds to start, and then
> worked just as snappy as ever. I called up the hardware list, and double
> checked that yes, indeed, there was only 128MB of RAM in this machine. But
> it works just fine! OK, things get quickly bogged down with e.g. OO.o,
> Mozilla, and Kaffeine running at the same time - but if you refrain from
> carelessly starting several concurrent applications, the machine was
> perhaps not the fastest horse in the race, but certainly workable. After
> the install, I spent another hour or two fine tuning the configuration,
> installing some handy bits, and doing a Quick Tour to get them up to speed.
>
> You should have seen the faces of these people: all big eyes and open
> mouths, for two hours solid ... "What, no driver disks needed?" "Huh, it
> found and configured the printer all by itself?" "AND the network card?"
> "Even the old scanner??? That thing has been dead for years, and now it
> works!" "OpenOffice can use Microsoft .doc by default? So I don't need MS
> Office?" "What, I can just plug in my MP3 player and drag the songs
> anywhere I want? Hey mom, look! Even the camera works in one go! We don't
> have to use that other stupid software any more!" "OK, but there's no MSN
> on this thing, or is there? There is??? Damn, this is cool!" "But where's
> the antivirus? Whaddyamean, we don't need it? You must be kidding ... no,
> you're not?"
> And so on and so on ... I patiently demonstrated everything and answered
> all their questions - all but te final one: "But why do people keep
> paying for Windows when you can get all this for free?" This turned out to
> be the only question I couldn't answer in a satisfactory manner ...
I run KDE (SUSE 9.3) with just 256 MB or RAM. Most of the time, only three
quarters of the RAM is being used. No disk space either (I always see the
meters at the bottom).
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