Working with old computers

Trisquel NetInstall is a 30MB CD iso image: https://trisquel.info/download (click on "More" to display the link). During the installation, you can choose the regular (MATE) or the Mini (LXDE) desktop environment. Or you can stick with a minimal system and use the 'apt' command to install exactly what you want.

If you want super light defaults without having to select the packages by yourself, and still 100% free software (according to the project's leader), you can try ConnochaetOS: https://connochaetos.org

Disable JavaScript to browse the Web.

Even with ConnochaetOS and JavaScript disabled, you need more RAM. 512 MB on each machine may be enough.

Martinh, I actually did try PuppyLinux and was pretty impressed but I stumbled with the network card while using it live. I had to return the unit and was out of time so AntiX stayed. I thought Puppy was pretty fast. I may go with it on future efforts.
re: 'It's nice to know there are still good people on this planet :)' Thanks for that. But I am really glad to have found an opportunity to help out in the area that is my greatest passion (we named the classes for that passion, "Puttering with Puters"). It's good to get off my butt and actually do something and I owe that to the people that started this organization and let me volunteer.

MB, dang, I looked for that netinstall image and did not see the 'v more' link on that page and guessed maybe it wasn't yet available for Flidas. I think Trisquel with Mate will be easier on beginners than the antiX so I'll give that a try with the next one I do. Rox-IceWM that antiX comes with is kind of neat but Mate reaches a more general audience. Also, Trisquel's repository has been pretty solid, I would expect Gimp to work from there.

Thanks for the input guys!

Edit: I'll look into ConnochaetOS too.

Hello fellow Seattle person.

Hello jxself, I did not know you're a Seattle person. I assume that means the libre kernel is made in Seattle! Go Seattle, Pearl Jam and LinuxLibre!

jxself, thanks for what you do. It's cool how people from the world over can contribute to projects these days. Since Seattle is pretty diverse, I guess we can accept a Brazilian kernel.

I got my hands on that box with antiX and installed Trisquel via the netinstall iso. Though I selected to install desktop environment a reboot said it couldn't find Plymouth stuff. Ctrl + Alt + Impr pant PetSis (I don't know, it's a Spanish keyboard, I was looking for delete) did get me to a command line and I was able to login as the user and issue a sudo apt-get install mate. It's going with slow download speed. Fingers and Toes crossed.

CalmStorm, thanks for the clarification. Hyperbola it is. So do you like the basilisk browser. Also, consider that my project has end users that aren't very technical in mind: once installed, do you think it will be easy for non technical people to use? I guess if it had a Mate desktop with NetworkManager and maybe synaptic (oh, probably not synaptic, pacman), you wouldn't know the difference. I haven't installed it, I did install arch and remember it was a lot of work; have to print out the instructions before you get started or have another system on the net to read documentation.

I confess to some nervousness re webext but not sure with systemd all the passionate discussions I have read here not withstanding. I concluded that all the big daddies of GNUlinux development were going along with it so I have tried to make it work. My rough guess is that the big funders of open source software are really into clustering and cloud like computing and envision tools that make administrating data farms on a large scale easier. Though I'm a bit cloudy how systemd would fit into that.

CalmStorm - 'I don't see why we can't all choose what we want to use.'

I hear that. I think trying to get the dumb computer to do what I would choose for it to do and finding that so hard angered me into a passionate lifelong quest ('To dream the impossible dream...') If I could just write all the software myself I could carefully convolute it to perfectly suit me and I could retire from my windmill tilting! Heh, heh :)

In general the GNULinux world does offer the widest latitude of choices but the end user has to study and learn to tweak. Most people I know seem to want to do that as little as possible. They just expect everything to work out of the box.

What sometimes grates on me with the bigger distros, well take Fedora for example, the basic free download is called Workstation and loads up lots of services that run by default maybe for the corporate environment as well as for us enthusiasts but aren't needed by your basic home user behind a modem and probably a Wi-Fi router sitting next to a printer. Although systemd is a service it could be configured within a 'basic desktop' OS and I would be OK with it.

Trisquel seems to be pretty basic and a good choice for a desktop but we have to be aware of exactly what hardware and peripherals will work with it and that can be a challenge. My antiX box was hard to get Wi-Fi working so I have done a Trisquel net install twice (I got a desktop the second time) and had no better luck with the Wi-Fi. I tried a Fedora net install choosing Xfce and got at least one usb Wi-fi adapter working easily. I don't know if some freedom stealing blob in the kernel coming with Fedora made it work and maybe I don't want to know. I guess I need freedom to choose the solution that works.

After all, I hope to get the people I'm working with to fall in love with open source even if it isn't totally free. Once they join the big church they may become open to consider the issues addressed by free software.

And speaking of Seattle, today prevailing winds have surrounded my house with smoke from Canadian forest fires. It's bad, smells a bit like creosote. Oh for some of that famous Seattle rain!

Used ThinkPad X60 or X200 series are good. Both with coreboot/libreboot support. Both have usable Atheros WLAN adapters (authorized by Lenovo's BIOS).

Since you're in Seattle, why not lead the homeless people to siege Microsoft's headquarters? You can use 3D-printed firearms. Just like the Siege of Bastille.

Jxself, yeah that was quite a deal. I noticed though that the opposing parties made a lot of statements putting their willingness to help on the line but not by letting the city council appropriate a chunk of money that amounts to a penalty for hiring people.

I think we should use the tax on commercial real estate. As real estate values go up, so do city revenues (used to help the disadvantaged and displaced.) When the real estate market crashes as I have seen it do in Seattle several times, then business needs a shot in the arm and the tax would automatically lower as well. Maybe the tax rate can increase the more intense the boom and shrink as it cools as well.

But anyway, I thought they were clear in stating they wanted to work on the problem too but just not with a head tax. I’m hoping we hold them to their stated willingness. “What do you (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc) suggest. We’re all ears! We gave you what you wanted by overturning the head tax because you suggested you had other ways. We’re all ears!”

Re Italy and San Fran, I guess Seattle isn't alone with the tremendous increase in homelessness. I hear it it's affecting most of the the big urban centers across America. It's difficult to deal with.

Great work! I recently started volunteering with an organization that helps the homeless too. I'm hoping to become their "IT guy".

hartkemd, that's great. I wish you and your organization success. We are just getting started and I suppose most are focused on fund raising and such but I have definitely recieved a blessing for my efforts. I really like the people I am working with. As for being their IT guy, I am finding it a challenge, but hey, what's life without a challenge?

We got some new computers donated to us and I hope to get people moving off of really expensive and rudely assertive software into absolutely free and end user focused software.

"Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie Bezos, launched a $2 billion fund to help homeless families ..." (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-13/amazon-s-bezos-launches-2-billion-fund-to-help-the-homeless). Maybe our orgs can get our hands on some of that!

"The Bezos Day One Fund will focus on two initiatives, the billionaire announced in an online post Thursday. The first will fund existing nonprofits and issue annual awards to organizations doing “compassionate, needle-moving work” to shelter and support the immediate needs of young families. The second will operate a network of high-quality, full-scholarship Montessori-inspired preschools. The fund’s vision statement comes from nonprofit Mary’s Place in Seattle: no child sleeps outside."

philanthropy never excuses the wrong things people do. when a monopolistic corporation is an existential threat to all libraries (and even controls your books) and they also spend a little money on charity, i just think of it as clever accounting and cheap marketing.

numbers like 2bn impress us, but that 2bn will give to a good cause and ultimately take from another good cause. all in all theyre just moving world problems from one sector to another.

i dont mean to sound like a curmudgeon, but amazon got that money by adding to the problems the world has. then they gave part of it back, and the way psychology works most people think: "oh, well theyre good then." you cant turn warehouse workers into psychological cyborgs and destroy libraries and then buy "good" for 2bn. this is just a tax writeoff.

as for systemd, if theres an anti-systemd thread on this forum id loooooove to join it. even (well, particularly) if its constructive and is like "this is how you get rid of it on trisquel." i noticed puppy mentioned here (much to a surprise) and i started remixing puppy (librepup actually, but its debian-based kernel isnt quite fsf-able) after leaving debian behind. these days i remix void linux, but if they find anything non-free in the kernel id drop it for good.

i also setup/ran free software in a shelter. debian 7 and (a couple times) tinycore. note that when i was remixing puppy, one thing i wanted to introduce was a version of puppy with a more libre kernel. librepup beat me to it, but i never heard of it until i started remixing it.

librepup was a great idea-- i really liked lighter distros like dsl when it was relevant and xubuntu and trisquel got me further into debian. ive spent more time with debian than anything else. i did try a handful of fsf distros, including parabola and some that were trying like connochaet os and "rms" (i installed rms on the bootable fsf card.)

freenix i dont know but ill check it out, hyperbola i first heard of here, im interested in trying that.

"When I replied to Geshmy, I was merely saying its good he at least does something right with his money, I didn't say he was innocent... just so you know." no problem at all, i was just commenting. it really didnt sound like you were defending him. my feelings about amazon are stronger than they are about most companies. i was a happy customer until they got into e-books, and then i was done.

i like e-books. i used to say about drm: "sooner or later theyll put this on books, and then people will know how evil it is." hey, i was half-right. like a website about drm in books isnt enough-- we need to tell everyone we know about drm in ebooks.

i meet a lot of people with macs, and when im telling them about drm i look at their mac and say "itunes used to have drm on their music, and people hated it." i dont like apple either, but i want them to connect what amazon is doing with what itunes users hated when apple did the same thing. i seem to be aware of apple still using drm (certainly on books, im almost sure) though they stopped using it on mp3s. and people really did hate it before. hopefully they will learn to hate it when amazon does it too.

You know, whether you speak curmudgeonly or not most of what you both say, if not all (CalmStorm and freemedia) strikes a chord in me. But seeking solutions, I think it better to praise Jeff Bezos for his investment hoping that he and others will be moved to do more. Maybe he'll even fall in love with philanthropy. Also, better for our minds to be focused on the good that can come from the gift.

If loving your neighbor as we love ourselves is exemplified in the story of the Good Samaritan, think how many neighbors Jeff Bezos could have! He could become the most neighbored man in the history of the world!

By the way, I really like my knew 'rocksoul' keyboard. It comes rolled up in a tube and the soft squishy keys feel almost organic. Uuhm...

"he is at least fixing some of the problem even if he did create some of it..."

i wont try to change your mind, only offer you an interesting tidbit of information about this pattern.

narcissists (typically on a smaller scale-- like one persons life rather than an entire income bracket) will cycle between putting people in harms way and then "rescuing" them from the very problems they caused, as a way of ensnaring them.

this isnt just about amazon-- i think a lot of "charitable" behavior from corporations that prey on the public good (and treat their employees like human robots or even poison their customers) can be explained this way.

"""8 – Fear-then-Relief, or Hurt and Rescue
This final tactic likewise preys on the emotion of fear. Here, the manipulator causes their target a great deal of stress or anxiety and then steps in to relieve that stress, reinforcing the idea that he or she is the victim’s one true savior."""
https://kimsaeed.com/2017/01/23/8-ways-narcissists-like-cult-leaders/

war is a racket that works this way too, and monopoly is a war of attrition to eliminate competing business.