total linux virgin

[chrbb]

Just a thought we have some w98 computers in school (celeron 400m hz) and some xp machines. No chance of any funds to upgrade or replace these w98 in the forseeable future so... I was wondering if installing linux or similar would make these computers perform marginally better than at present. Also would the software we have ms office, science explorer, encarta etc still work, we have a new server 2003 with a sophos network setup would this be a problem? Intend to try linux this halfterm at home on a spare pc but would appreicate some pointers. Cheers

[CyberNerd]

You can still get good performance from these machines. dependning upon what you install. IMO A full KDE desktop is going to be fairly slow on a celery400, but install DSL and it will be super fast. http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

you can run some windows apps on linux using WINE (office 2000 is fully supported on crossover office but 2k3 is not), but I'd seriously consider using terminal services to run the windows apps if you can - also consider some of the alternatives to windows only applications - do you *need* office2k3 or will openoffice cut it?

Samba will quite happily talk to your 2003 server, allowing file/print sharing and authentication.

First thing you will need to do is check that your not going to have hardware compatibility issues. My prefered method for this is do download a livecd such as knoppix of ubuntu live. Boot the cd and check if all the hardware is correctly detected. This will also give you a good feel for what the distro will do.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/
http://www.knoppix.org/

[SmartArt]

Using a !Live cd is a good way to test out the machines, as posted earlier BUT it all depends on how much RAM you have. If it's around 128MB-ish, then I would look around for SuSE 8.2, or another distro that uses the earlier 2.4 kernels. Novell gave away a complete set of SuSE versions, including SuSE 9.0 Server, with SuSE 8.2 for desktops on a set of DVDs last year. It might be worth your while dropping them an email to see if they have any left. Failing that, google for an ftp site, mirror.ac.uk (or summat like that) and then search through for the iso's for SuSE 8.2. SuSE 8.2 is a damn good release and it will run quite well on a celery 400 PC, I can't reccomend 8.2 enough, it was the bee's knees. However, it all depends on how much RAM you've got; that's the key, a reasonable amount of RAM.