This Blog Is Not For Reading

Luddite Memorial, Liversedge

Him: Bob, have a look at this video: LOLcats at work

Me: Did you intend to send a link with that?

Him: Yes, here it is: LOLcats at work

Me: Sorry, still no link. Remember, I don’t receive HTML e-mail…

Him: Wut? I’ve never heard of someone not receiving HTML e-mail!

E-mail was never designed for HTML; it is intended to be a plain-text medium. HTML is merely cobbled on, and mail clients have no standard way to render HTML messages, resulting in different displays on different mail programs. Some mail programs, especially those run from the command line, can’t show HTML rendered messages at all.

Although I use a graphical mail client (Thunderbird), I choose to not display HTML for two reasons:

1) Security: HTML mail can have Javascript code or other objects embedded. That’s a great way to get virus infections on your computer. I don’t want any code running on my computer that I didn’t put there myself.

2) Privacy: HTML mail that links to external images allows the owner of those images to track your mail usage: When you open the mail, how often you open it, the location you open it at, what computer you’re using, and whether you forward it to others (and then, when they open the mail, how often, their location, &c).

Not to mention that HTML messages are far bigger than text messages, especially when the HTML contains embedded images, fonts, and other stuff. Now, that’s not such a big deal with fast connections, unlimited download caps, and cheap disk drives, but it will still make a difference on small-format devices like phones and watches.

That said, if you do send me HTML e-mail, be sure to embed any images or LOLcat videos. That way I can still view them as static attachments, without revealing when, where, and how often I view them.

For more info have a look at the Wikipedia article on HTML e-mail

–Bob.

You can send HTML e-mail to Bob Jonkman at bjonkman@sobac.com

The Luddite Memorial, Liversedge by Tim Green is used under a Creative Commons — Attribution 2.0 Generic — CC BY 2.0 license.

This is a list of lightweight GNU/Linux (or other free/libre OS) distributions.

I’m specifically looking for a free/libre operating system that will run a Graphical User Interface on a 10-year-old laptop, 700 MHz Intel CPU, 256 MiBytes RAM (but 128 MiBytes would be better), an 8 GiByte hard drive and an 800×600 screen.

If you know of any other lightweight distributions please leave a comment. Also please leave a comment if you can help fill out the chart – the distributions’ documentation is pretty inadequate when it comes to listing minimium system requirements.

I expect this post to be a continuous work-in-progress.

–Bob.

Added 14 June 2011: Thanx for the suggestions from @dwa, @headphonica, @darkestkhan, @flying_squirrel and @circuidipity, all added above.

Added 17 June 2011: @schestowitz points me to a Linux Devices article on Tiny Core Linux.

Added 28 July 2011: @chaslinux reminded me of The Working Centre’s distribution, WCLP.

Added 4 August 2011:Just saw antiX mentioned on Identi.ca.

Added 12 October 2013: @tekk writes: @bobjonkman If driver support isn’t an issue, maybe look at http://dragora.org . I’d also put slackware on the list for that, maybe freebsd as well?

Added 23 November 2013: Bodhi Linux