fedora customized for low-end systems?

[Les Mikesell]

P Jones wrote:

>> I have been trying to "sell" linux and fedora in my home country. What 
>> is a
>> good option for those with low-end systems? I know that one option is to
>> download Fedora and then add XFCE or Fluxbox, etc, but that brings in 
>> all this
>> junk with KDE and Gnome. Is there an easy way to get around this? 
>> Somehow,
>> minimall install seems far too clunky.
>>
>> Now, we all know that any bloated linux system is better than Windoze, 
>> but that
>> is not the issue. I am looking for an unbloated system for people who 
>> can't
>> upgrade every other month, or 5 years, really!
> 
> It isn't a Fedora derivative, but you could check out Zenwalk linux
> (www.zenwalk.org). I use it two of my machines, an old Toshiba 1555cds
> laptop (176 MB RAM, 10 GB HD, 350 MHz PII) and it works acceptably
> well as a one-application-at-a-time machine, and an HP something or
> other with 256 MB RAM, 12 GB HD, and a 1.3 GHz PIII. On that machine
> it works quite well, even running OpenOffice.org 2.2.0.
> 
> I would love to see a Fedora for older machines. I'd be happy to test
> and work on the English language files if anyone wants to start the
> ball rolling.
> 
> Further on in the thread someone mentions OLPC; I think it would be
> worth looking at, but there are two things that might disqualify OLPC
> for me if I understand it correctly; first, the desktop interface is
> very different from what I might call "typical", and secondly I'd like
> a distribution that was compatible with the latest Fedora so updates
> would be available.

Fedora has a long way to go to be a good fit on older machines.  I'd 
start with a 2.4 kernel based distro that still has some support life 
like Centos 3.x, then try to back in current versions of the apps that 
you use that are really out of date on it.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com