Creating a low-power machine

In Rob Perkins:

[Snip...]

Plus, y'know, I need an excuse to play with Linux...

Better clear this entire concept with the wife, first...

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Kids jumping ship? Looking to hire an old-school type? Email me.

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc Rob Perkins wrote:
Arno Wagner wrote:

I have something similar running for several years now. It is
a VIA mini-ITX board with a 800Mhz Via C3. Not fanless, you
have to go down to 600MHz for that. Still quite fast enough
for what you want.

Thanks, Arno, I think that's precisely what I'm going for.

Do you know of good firewall softwares which can sit on debian stable,
or the linux which comes with the VIA board, and one of those master
seed lists I've seen around, for white/blacklisting etc?

Sorry, no. I just use netfilter to block stuff, but nothing
content oriented or dynamic. BTW, no software comes with the
VIA board. You have to install it yourself.

Arno

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc General Schvantzkoph wrote:
On Tue, 16 May 2006 13:34:12 -0700, Rob Perkins wrote:

Arno Wagner wrote:

I have something similar running for several years now. It is a VIA
mini-ITX board with a 800Mhz Via C3. Not fanless, you have to go down
to 600MHz for that. Still quite fast enough for what you want.

Thanks, Arno, I think that's precisely what I'm going for.

Do you know of good firewall softwares which can sit on debian stable, or
the linux which comes with the VIA board, and one of those master seed
lists I've seen around, for white/blacklisting etc?

Rob

Don't know anything about Debian but Fedora Core 5 installs a firewall as
part of the standard install.

Actually, the standard packet filter is part of the kernel. Only the
admin tools need to be installed.

That's the norm for all of the complete
distros like FC, Mandriva, SUSE. If you want to use a Debian based distro
you might want to use Ubuntu. They do a better job of keeping Ubuntu up to
date and it's probably a little more user friendly then straight Debian.

Depending on what you want, I agree. However debian stable is a
good distro to use in a headless machine. Don't know how well
Ubuntu does headless.

As long as you are installing Linux on a server you should also consider
putting it on your daughters machine so you can have the piece of mind of
knowing that if a virus does slip though your filtering server it won't do
any harm. OpenOffice, Evolution, Firefox, Mplayer and GAIM should give her
everything she needs, with the exception of games, and you won't have to
waste your time cleaning viruses off of her machine.

I also agree to this.

Arno

johns wrote:

Why don't you just do an "allow list" to bypass a dummy
proxy in IE ? Just put it on your daughters login. That list

To start with, the first step to safety is to eliminate IE. That
is sometimes hard to do, so the next best thing is to have the
firewall reject any external communications with IE. Then install
a safer browser, such as Firefox from mozilla.org.

This assumes the children are using winblows machines in the first
place. If not, the festering IE sore is already healed.

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On Wed, 17 May 2006 00:35:42 +0000, John Doe wrote:
Rob Perkins wrote:
The purpose of the machine is to serve as a ad/porn/hate site
filter for my kids, aged 1 through 10. I want Open Source so that
I can modify the code if I want to, and so that I'm not beholden
to some subscription entity for thier interpretation of what I
ought to be blocking.

If OEMs were allowed to modify Windows, to weld whatever they wanted
into the operating system instead of having to accept whatever
Microsoft's wants welded into the operating system, personal
computers geared for children might be one of the best results. Good
luck.

If you aren't stuck to Windows, then there are dozens of operating systems
that you can modify to your heart's content.

Some well-known people are promoting the idea of building PCs specifically
for children. See:

http://www.laptop.org/

--
mark south; echo |tr a-z n-za-m
"I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic
globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable."
-- Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado

On Tue, 16 May 2006 14:17:25 -0700, Rob Perkins wrote:
Unruh wrote:
Ah, now you have trouble. The low power chips (Centrino, etc) are
expensive. The low power glue chips are also expensive. But then again old
laptops can probably be had for onle a couple of hundred bucks, and as I
say, remove the cover so they can convectively cook, and you should be
fine.

Yeah, I noticed that. I take your point about old laptops, but I kind of
also wanted this to be a building project. A couple of my kids like
watching me put PC's together.

Take a look at the parts listed at

http://damnsmalllinux.org/store/

Both Damn Small Linux (link above) and Puppy Linux
(http://www.puppyos.com) will run happily off a smallish flash memory, or
boot off a CD and run entirely in RAM. Only needs about 128 Mb or so,
depending on apps you want.

(Not an endorsement, not a customer, no connection, void where prohibited
by liquor licensing laws etc.)

--
mark south; echo |tr a-z n-za-m
"I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic
globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable."
-- Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado

johns wrote:
Take up gaming. Beats the crap out of trying to keep
Linux running :-)

I have a lev 60 rogue and a lev 59 priest on Detheroc, World of Warcraft.

Rob

I'm not stuck on Windows, I don't even promote Windows. However, as
an unusually active personal computer user, I benefit from all of
the applications Windows supports and all of the hardware which
comes with drivers written for Windows.


Mark South mark.south null.invalid wrote:


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From: Mark South mark.south null.invalid
Organization: Southern Enterprises
Subject: Creating a low-power machine
Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 13:57:51 +0200
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On Wed, 17 May 2006 00:35:42 +0000, John Doe wrote:
Rob Perkins finitedev community.nospam wrote:
The purpose of the machine is to serve as a ad/porn/hate site
filter for my kids, aged 1 through 10. I want Open Source so that
I can modify the code if I want to, and so that I'm not beholden
to some subscription entity for thier interpretation of what I
ought to be blocking.

If OEMs were allowed to modify Windows, to weld whatever they wanted
into the operating system instead of having to accept whatever
Microsoft's wants welded into the operating system, personal
computers geared for children might be one of the best results. Good
luck.

If you aren't stuck to Windows, then there are dozens of operating systems
that you can modify to your heart's content.

Some well-known people are promoting the idea of building PCs specifically
for children. See:

http://www.laptop.org/

--
mark south; echo znexfbhgu2000 lnubb.pb.hx|tr a-z n-za-m
"I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic
globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable."
-- Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado

Mark South wrote:
On Tue, 16 May 2006 14:17:25 -0700, Rob Perkins wrote:

Unruh wrote:

Ah, now you have trouble. The low power chips (Centrino, etc) are
expensive. The low power glue chips are also expensive. But then again old
laptops can probably be had for onle a couple of hundred bucks, and as I
say, remove the cover so they can convectively cook, and you should be
fine.

Yeah, I noticed that. I take your point about old laptops, but I kind of
also wanted this to be a building project. A couple of my kids like
watching me put PC's together.


Take a look at the parts listed at

http://damnsmalllinux.org/store/

Well, I bought an EPIA ML6000 board as a base for my device, so we'll go
from there. I was intrigued by the USB pen thing. Is there a download
for that, as a pen image (I already have several USB flash devices)

Rob

John Doe wrote:
I'm not stuck on Windows, I don't even promote Windows. However, as
an unusually active personal computer user, I benefit from all of
the applications Windows supports and all of the hardware which
comes with drivers written for Windows.

Let me offer, too, (with the hope that it doesn't alienate the Smart
People here) that I simply don't care about Windows enough to be swayed
by haughty opinions against it.

Rob