stoneguy
Group: Members
Posts: 38
Joined: Jan. 2004 |
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Posted: April 04 2007,00:32 |
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I'm not voting, because that's not how I would make a choice.
DSL is intended to run on "older" machines. But there are degrees of age.
Let's divide home PCs into eras. The most useful stratification is "What Microsoft O/S was it delivered with?" So we can talk about
pre-Win9x machines
Win9x machines
WinXP machines
Vista machines
What processor the PC has doesn't mean much, as long as it's some flavour of Pentium. If you're slower, you'll just have to be more patient. The critical factors in these machines is the RAM supplied. Win9x machines were usually sold with 64MB or better. XP machines had at least 256MB, and then salesperson tried to convince you to upgrade to 512. Cheap buggers like me didn't 
Another axis of differentiation is "newer-vs-older hardware" machines. Newer can have SATA, bootable USB2.0, maybe Bluetooth, Firewire, etc. Older will be IDE, maybe USB 1.1, DVD writer, etc.
If your system falls into the newer group, I'm not sure why you want to runDSL. You folks can run any Linux you want. Why not one with glitz and glamour?
Next, I'm going to define something called the Modern Internet. On it, participants expect to be able to access images and sound in eMail and at Web sites, view Flash animations, read documents in PDF format, and upload from their point-and-shoot digital cameras. (I'm not even sure they'd use Linux if it can't run the software that came with their cameras.) They expect the ease-of-use and universality of IE and Outlook Express, which pretty well means delivering Firefox and Thunderbird. And the participants I'm talking about are not geeks. I'm referring to Joe six-pack-of-Geritol® here, who isn't up to loading ucis or dsls or whatever dang fool thing to get to the point where Windows is out-of-the-box.
So what systems should DSL target, and what should it deliver?
My inclination would be to write off the pre-Win9x machines. Although there's always "because you can" bragging rights, those machines are too outdated for use on the Modern Internet. That leaves DSL's niche as the Win9x older hardware systems.That's where it'll really shine and serve a useful function.
And whatever it takes to deliver the Modern Internet, that's what DSL neds to deliver.
And one more thing. Lose the 50MB restriction. That's just those bragging rights again. I don't know what it's like elsewhere, but in Canada's largest city, I can't expect to walk into any computer store and walk out with credit-card CDs in my hand. I can't even buy the minidisk format, except for DVDs for cameras in places that cater to the photography crowd. And the final insult is that the small media has always been a lot more expensive than full size.
I've finally euthanized my Pentium 133MMX 64MB system, so I doubt if I'll be lurking around these parts much any more. My current low-end system is a 400MHz Pentium with 384MB RAM. That's sufficient to run the Ubuntu family.
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