rhackenb
Group: Members
Posts: 17
Joined: Jan. 2004 |
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Posted: Jan. 24 2004,04:25 |
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I recently inherited a Compaq Presario 486 laptop with 24 meg of RAM and a 180 mhz processor. It's battery is shot and under Windows 98 it hangs if I try to descend into a folder.
I decided to see if I could use Damn Small Linux on it to replace a desktop RH Linux box to gather weather data from a One-Wire weather station and post the data to my webpage.
After doing an HD install, I needed apps that were not available from the DSL package or apps:
* gnuplot (I simply copied over the RH gnuplot executable and it worked immediately)
* ncftp (I copied all the client executables from www.ncftp.org and they worked out of the box)
* lynx (I had to compile lynx on my RH linux box and then copy the executable and lynx.cfg file over...worked as is after I put the cfg file in /usr/local/lib)
* sample_devices (a One-Wire weather station piece of code for collecting data from the station...worked as is)
* my Perl code for processing data, for building plots and web pages, and for pushing the pages to my external site (the code runs because I am not using any special Perl modules that probably do not exist on the DSL distribution).
The only piece that I am currently lacking is MySQL. I will try to port it over but I suspect that it will be a challenge. Has anyone done that yet? I thought I saw that Postgres was available for DSL but I can't find it. I would prefer MySQL.
In summary, I am totally blown away with DSL. It installs and works without much effort at all. I am also impressed that various RH Linux apps copy right over and work.
I now have a laptop that can run day and night posting web pages without the power consumption of the desktop that I had been using. It's not online yet but will be soon. If I can't get a MySQL running, I can work with text files.
What I can't get running is the XServer but I don't really need it because the machine isn't intended for use by a human.
Good work, Damn Small Linux crew.
-- bob
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