[ale] Basic/playing-around distro

[Greg Clifton]

Picking up where SteveT left off, wouldn't a $40 RPi3 be adequate to the
task? With TDP in the range of an old school (pre LED) kid's night light at
something like what 8 watts power consumption, you could run it fanless,
reducing both noise and failure points. Just guessing, but a minimally
tasked older system, esp. if P4, would likely draw over 10x more power.

I'm not great with math, but if I did the numbers right 8Wx24x365/1000 =
70.08kWH/year at average of $0.10/kWH = $7.01/year for the Pi vs ~ $70/year
for the PC (even more if P4). So it wouldn't take too many months to
recover the cost of new RPi based system vs using an old decommissioned PC.

Greg C

On Sat, Jun 17, 2017 at 11:42 PM, Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com>
wrote:

> On Sat, 17 Jun 2017 17:53:01 -0400 (EDT)
> Ken Cochran <kwc at shell.theworld.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi again ALErs, nice thread on NAS recommendations, sounds
> > like it would be an awesome meeting topic too.
> >
> > Another looking-around question/need:
> >
> > Need some kind of distro appropriate for what I'll call a
> > "semi-kiosk" computer; best I can tell, all it needs to run
> > are the following:
> >
> > - Browser (probably Firefox unless someone can recommend
> >   better), especially for web-email a la gmail
> > - shell (duh)
> > - probably camera/photo ingest
> >
> > Current plan is to repurpose an old HP desktop machine that
> > currently runs WinXP.  It is a P4 (32-bit), with 1gb RAM & I'll
> > probably replace its hdd so as to not lose what's on it now.
> > (Right now it's pretty much a dedicated Quickbooks & word
> > processing box & NEVER connects to ANY network.)
> >
> > Looking for a distro that I don't have to mess-around with
> > much, e.g. some kind of analogue to Software Update on M$
> > & Apple products.  Ideas?  Naturally, FAQ/doc pointers are
> > welcome, as well as FMs to RT :)
>
> I'd use Void Linux, but I think most distros that still ship 32bit will
> do the trick: 1GB RAM is quite a bit.
>
> For window manager, use something like Openbox or JWM with Suckless
> Tools' dmenu hotkeyed in. IceWM will work too, but its menu has gotten
> so bad it's almost like not having one.
>
> For browser, use Midori or xxxterm or xombrero or surf.
>
> I'd stay away from distros built from the bottom up to give you that
> GUI experience. No composing, no "desktop environment", no magical
> network connectors, and I'd advise against systemd. Just something
> simple.
>
> By the way, a lot of the other responses mentioned that it's so cheap
> to get a lot better than this box that it's almost silly to spend time
> with it. A lot of distros are dropping 32 bit: That time is near; there
> will come a time when the electrical power costs of this computer
> outstrip its use to you.
>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
> June 2017 featured book: The Key to Everyday Excellence
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/key
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