April 6, 2006 12:10 PM PDT

Puppy Linux offers Negroponte a skinny OS

by Stephen Shankland
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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.

Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank.
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