Linux distros for older hardware (Linux.com)

Linux distros for older hardware (Linux.com)

Posted Feb 27, 2006 8:38 UTC (Mon) by primorec (guest, #2740)
In reply to: Linux distros for older hardware (Linux.com) by maney
Parent article: Linux distros for older hardware (Linux.com)

My company (+5000 employees) replaces every 3-4 years ALL MS WINDOWS based desktops with a new generation hardware. MS WINDOWS based desktops are mostly used by marketing, sales and management people. Why do they need 3.6GHz PC with 2GB RAM is beyond me. They run MS EXCEL + WORD + EMAIL + WEB browsing. The engineering part of the company uses RHEL 3.0 and a few SUN boxes.
So, what did I accomplish ?
I've equipped, in the last 2-3 years, our lab with approx. 50-55 RH8 based workstations, which are used to run GPIB based equipment. One lab workstation was made, in average, out of two or three old and obsoleted PCs. I took hard disk + RAM from two or three PCs and assembled a third one. My initial lab workstations were based on Cyrix 187MHz CPU + 128MB RAM. They still run and do the work. Today I am putting together 400-700MHz PCs with 256-384MB RAM. All PCs run RH8 + XFCE desktop. Typical uptime is around 250-300 days. ALL workstations are connected to a LAN with one application/file server, which in the same time does NIS/YP + SAMBA. Users does not complain about the speed or about performance in general. In the last 2 years we did NOT buy a single new PC with MS WINDOWS installed and it seems that we will stay the same for the foreseeable future

SUMMARY:
- old hardware is still in use and it performs well
- solution is environment friendly
- it is very cost effective (no MS licenses, no new hardware - read management is happy)
- users are happy (aka they do not complain)
- users can do lab measurements from their offices (or even from home) very easily (VPN, ssh, VNC)
- geeknes factor

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