[Lust] reviving old machines with Linux

[Chris Allison]

Hi all

Recently I rebuilt an old Tosh Tecra laptop with DSL for an
acquaintances' teenager to use for school.  Apparently he is 'over the
moon with it' , I suppose it helps that he is 'tinkerer' and has the
intelligence to get himself out of trouble when he breaks it.

But it got me to thinking that there must be a ton of 10 year old
machines sitting around doing nothing that can have new life breathed
into them using Linux and some of the less heavy weight apps (icewm,
dillo etc).  If this was done with the participation of local
authorities, it could even save them quite a bit of money, and we
could get Linux more widely used.

This is an initial thought, but it seems that a community could spring
up if we started this correctly,  maybe even to the point of setting
up whole networks of machines for schools etc.

What are your thoughts on this, and are any of you able to give any
time to such a project?  I can at the moment as I am unemployed.

Things to consider:

Where do the 'old' machines come from?
is it necessay to define a standard build?
who will most likely benefit from having 'free' machines
do the support costs outweigh the advantages, and are we willing to
offer support?

What do people feel about this?

regards

Chris Allison


-- 
Calling the unnamed register the unnamed register really does nothing
but negate the name the unnamed register and render the unnamed
register useless as a name, thus the unnamed register is named the
unnamed register and is no longer the unnamed register as it is named
the unnamed register, so where is the unnamed register to be found and
what do we call it!
Steve Oualline, The book of vim.