Puppy Linux offers Negroponte a skinny OS

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BOSTON-- Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the One Laptop Per Child organization to bring inexpensive computers to children around the world, wants a version of Linux that's doesn't require fast new processors or large amounts of memory. Puppy Linux would like to help.

The Linux version is 60MB in size and has been successfully run on machines with 100MHz processors and 32MB of memory, said Raffy Mananghaya, the interim chairman of the Puppy Linux Foundation. However, it's better with more than 64MB of memory and 420MB of hard disk space, he said. An Australian named Barry Kauler launched the project in 2003.

Mananghaya approached the OLPC project in August about using its version of Linux, but received a response that Red Hat, the top seller of Linux, was involved.

Red Hat has a team of six or seven involved in the Fedora OLPC project, the company's chief technology officer, Brian Stevens, said in an interview here at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo.

Puppy isn't the only skinny Linux project. Others include Austrumi and Damn Small Linux.

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