[Sussex] Linux for simplicity

[Adam Smith]

> What sort of look and feel in the window manager would you be after for
> this? If you moved away from Gnome and KDE, you could make a more
> lightweight distribution for them.

I was looking at fluxbox but only because I haven't tried many of the
alternatives yet.  The simpler the better really, certainly no need for a
Windows feel to it.

> I think the biggest problem would be graphics cards and monitor sizes,
> you'd have to build a set of XF86Config's for each combination, and
> perhaps put together a simple menu driven setup program so that you choose
> the monitor size, graphics card, window manager, etc, and it gets the
> appropriate config files from a central server.

Sounds like a good idea.

> You could put the basic system files on a CD, boot the CD to configure the
> network, have it grab the necessary files from an FTP/NFS server on your
> network, install and configure them to what you need, and they are done.
> You may like to have a network card that you put in the box you are
> building, so you can remove it once the machine is built to spec.

I quite often use the PC Chips 810lmr (don't laugh!) which has a NIC onboard
and I presume there's a Linux driver available so it can obviously stay in
case I need to update the system at a later date.

> This could work really well, but you will need to sit down and plan out
> how you want it to work, implement it and see what the customer thinks of
> their new computer.

I've got a couple of people already willing to be guinea-pigs for this so
once I've gathered some more info I'll actually give it a try to see if it's
workable.

So people, ideas for a distro?  I'm not really experienced enough for LFS
yet so please don't suggest that.

Adam.