KDE, GNOME and older Power Macs

[R. McFarlane]

At 06:26 PM 10/18/2004, David Wadson, had this to say :

>After finally upgrading one of our departments to some modern Macs, I've 
>now got on my hands an assortment of...
>
>Power Mac 4400 (200mHz 603e, 64MB RAM, 2GB HD)
>Power Mac 7200 (120mHz 601, 48-64MB RAM, 500MB HD)
>Power Mac 8500 (120mHz 604e, 80-96MB RAM, 2GB HD)
>
>I'm hoping to deploy these in a department that currently has no 
>computers, but instead of running their current Mac OS 8.6, I'd prefer to 
>switch them over to YDL 3.0.1. Not just for the stability, but also to be 
>able to run OpenOffice. The machines as configured are lacking RAM, but 
>luckily a number of places have 128MB DIMMs available for quite cheap so 
>the memory can be bumped up to a more decent size.

         Yes! Upgrade the RAM. The more the better!

>The basic needs for the machines, in order of priority from most important 
>to least, are:
>
>IMAP-compatible email client
>Word and Excel compatibility for general wordprocessing and spreadsheet 
>tasks (nothing really complicated)
>PDF viewing
>basic web surfing (we can live without Shockwave, Quicktime, RealPlayer, etc.)

         Linux rocks for this use! It is all bundled in and easy to setup 
and use (the client software that is!)

>I've been using a variety of similar Macs, and some older ones, for 
>running DNS servers, PPP gateways, mail proxies, network monitors, etc. 
>but never with a GUI desktop environment installed. So, I'm looking for 
>some advice and experience any of you may have performing such tasks on 
>this kind of hardware. If it is possible to get a workable solution with 
>this hardware, what's recommended - GNOME or KDE? Does one provide any 
>significant performance gains over the other or is it mostly a matter of 
>personal preference? My sanity might be best served by just buying some 
>newer computers, but that won't happen until next year at the earliest. 
>With this hardware, I have the opportunity, limited as it may be, to get 
>some computers into people's hands now. Plus, even if we do get new 
>computers next year, I'd still be giving Linux serious consideration for 
>the operating system so my efforts deploying this hardware could be 
>worthwhile if just for the experience.

         The best solution is to setup the fastest Mac you can as the main 
server and then use the other Macs as clients that connect to that server 
for their GUI. You will want a 100bT connection to and from each machine 
for best performance. The advantage to this is that the fastest Mac does 
all the hard work and the slower Macs are merely thin clients. Look around 
the LEM Swap List, eBay, craigslist or even your local classifieds for an 
original iMac. These little guys are great for their performance/price 
ratio. You don't even need the original CRT to use them, any old Mac 
monitor will do or using an adapter a regular VGA monitor. I now have 2 
original iMacs, one running as a server and the new addition needs a few 
more parts to work (PS and down converter board).


Sincerely,

R. McFarlane

cross platform specialist
Mac - Linux - windows

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