"Alan Adams" <alan.adams@orchard-way.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in
message news:8568d7ed4e.Alan.Adams@orchard-way.freeserve.co.uk...
> In message <87lkezuaqu.fsf@toncho.dhh.gt.org>
> John Hasler <john@dhh.gt.org> wrote:
>
> > Bill Unruh writes:
> >> Note that Windows abandoned that level of harware ages ago, and in fact
> >> you are violating the law by running Windows on those machines as I am
> >> sure you do not have a license from MS to do so.
> >
> > He may (or may not) be in breech of his contract with Microsoft (if he
has
> > one) but it is a bit extreme to call that "violating the law".
>
> I don't see why he needs to be in breach of anything - that generation
> PC was shipped with 95, 98 or NT4, so could still be running the
> original, licensed copy.
>
> --
> Alan Adams, from Northamptonshire
> alan.adams@orchard-way.freeserve.co.uk
> http://www.nckc.org.uk/

I do in fact have legal copies of all the Windows/M$ software I use
from MSDOS 1.0 all the way through Vista on the client side and
a few versions of Server. That is not the thrust of this thread. So
far it is one for DSL and one for Slackware. I started with Slackware
way back in the early 90's and I thought that even that distro has
gotten a little blotted for "small" machines. I have also tried DSL
and I wasn't totally happy, don't remember why. I just installed
Xubuntu on a small machine and it turned out that the hard drive
was bad but it still completed the install. It took 8 hours however.
I will be throwing out the hd and replacing it with a newer one and
reinstalling. The two characteristics that the machine has to have
in my scenario are: must boot to a cdrom and must have a net
connection. It is tuff to get both of those on a real old laptop or
Pentium 1's so I stick to P2's and higher. Under these conditions
I may try Debian Net Install since it is rather minimal.

thanks for the feedback,
charles....