[ale] building a Linux lowend web browsing station

[wmckeel at printpack.com (Watson F. McKeel)]

Hello all,


I do volunteer work for a local nonprofit, and we have a BIG task that has been set before us. We are going to build 500-700 computers that will serve as web browsing stations. We want to use Linux to do it because it is so configurable. 

The hardware involved:

?????????????? many different makes and models 

?????????????? Pentium 90 to 133MHz

?????????????? 32 MB RAM

?????????????? 500-800MB HD

?????????????? sometimes NICs, sometimes modems

?????????????? printer


We don't want these boxes to do anything other than surf the web and print. 

My questions:

What distributions should we look at to get started on this? Are there any out there that pride themselves on their ability to run on lowend systems? Also, I do not relish installing anything 500-700 times, even if it is Linux. Any tips on how to do mass installs (like a generic disk image of some kind, or maybe network installs)?


Any thoughts at all are greatly appreciated,


Watson McKeel?????? -volunteer at Free Bytes