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Evan Leibovitch, ZDNet's Linux columnist, observes that:
"GIVEN THE HORSEPOWER needed to crank up current operating systems (let alone any applications), it's reasonable to wonder how anyone was actually able to get any work done on [older computers]. But I well recall that a good stenographer armed with WordPerfect 4.2 could crank out documents of equal quality to what today's bloated Microsoft Office can produce." I have often thought the same thing in the context of early versions of the Mac OS. For straight word processing, Microsoft Word 5.1, Word Perfect 3, or MacWrite Pro running under System 6 on an '030 Mac was faster and more stable than Word 2001 is running on a G4. Leibovitch decided to see if it was possible to make, using cast-off parts of almost no value to anyone, a computer capable of running the most current software. To do so, he ended up using an old Asus motherboard, a 166MHz Pentium CPU, 96MB of RAM on SIMMs, vintage CD-ROM and hard drives, a cast-off network card from 3Com, and unaccelerated video by S3. He then loaded it up with Mandrake 8.0., which includes the 2.4 Linux kernel and up-to-date versions of most open-source applications, and got it up and running "with very little effort." Leibovitch argues that this ability to squeeze new life out of ancient hardware is one of the most underrated benefits of Linux and other open-source operating systems, and attributes it to the fact that Linux is driven by users rather than vendors. "Have a look at Windows XP or Macintosh OS X," he suggests. "What's the oldest hardware that can run them? Two years old?" Leibovitch also notes that Linux is growing in popularity in the less-developed parts of the world where people can't afford to upgrade their systems every two or three years (if they can afford computers at all) largely because of its old hardware friendliness. He cites the Chinese government's recent announcement that it will invest in Red Flag Software, China's largest Linux software developer, to try to curb Microsoft's dominance of the country's software market. A Bloomberg news report says that "China encourages government institutions and state-owned companies to use Red Flag Linux software to trim Microsoft's dominance in the market." Red Flag has also released Chinese 2000, a productivity software suite that combines applications such as a spreadsheet, a Chinese-language word processor, graphics and business programs written for small companies, to compete with Microsoft Windows and Office. On July 20, Richard M. Stallman President and founder of the Free Software Foundation, head quartered in Boston, officially launched the Free Software Foundation of India, the first affiliate in Asia of the Free Software Foundation, where Linux also has great appeal because of both its lack of license fees and its ability to run efficiently on older computers. Perhaps Apple should consider offering a stripped down, budget-priced version of OS X targeted at these markets. You can read Evan Leibovitch's column here:
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