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What linux distro is good for an older pc?
This entry was posted in Linux Live CDs and tagged amd, amd athlon, Athlon, athlon xp2500, computer, CPU, distro, distros, drive, DSL, dual-boot, Fedora, hard, Hard Drive, Laptop, Linux, mandriva, mhz, partition, puppy linux, RAM, windows xp. Bookmark the permalink.
5 Responses to What linux distro is good for an older pc?
You have a good amount of memory for a typical linux installation. I like Ubuntu, and was just going to recommend DSL but I see you have already tried it.
Also, look into OpenSolaris. It has pretty cool file system features based on a thing called ZFS, which lets you take snapshots of your hard drive. If you have a problem, you can rollback to a snapshot. It’s not Linux, but runs the user interface GNOME.
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Ubuntu will tax that laptop, you don’t have quite enough Ram or processor speed. They make a version of Ubuntu called Xubuntu, that will make a better fit.
http://www.xubuntu.org/ it has a different interface and is lighter on system resources.
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So CPU speed is very poor and that’s the only problem. You have got multiple solutions:
Ubuntu will go nice if you use previous releases(Ubuntu 8.10 will be really slow) of Ubuntu for faster response.. Xubuntu will be better.
If you like redhat distros and even Fedora Core 1 is slow then install Redhat Linux 9.
Slackware is also a fast distro..
Of course you need optimization (running less services) which will make all them faster.
Don’t even think about OpenSolaris or Solaris. They require very high cpu performance as threaded and advanced modern operating system.
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Puppy Linux. You will love it.
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For your specs.. I would recommend the following…
I agree, I am not big on DSL and Puppy. They are great for PII and older but why not get a little more substantial Linux…
(I have put Linux on machines similar to your specs)
Debian Linux http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst (has the most software, default is gnome which is a little sluggish but works, you can always install xfce if you need something lighter)
Dream Linux http://www.dreamlinux.com.br/ Nice looking linux
Tinyme http://www.tinymelinux.com/doku.php – Nice looking Light Linux based on PCLinuxOS.
Vector Linux – http://vectorlinux.com/ (I would get Light or standard Not SOHO) Nice Linux using XFCE by default
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