bjf123 Posted May 4, 2014 Share Posted May 4, 2014 Been a few years since I've posted anything over here. I've got an old Windows PC (Compaq Presario) with an AMD Sempron processor at 2.00 GHz and 768MB of RAM that I used when I switched to Macs to run Quicken and QuickBooks, since the Mac versions of those programs are not that good. I've since installed Parallels on my iMac and am running Windows in there. The Compaq now basically just crunches cancer research data. With XP no longer being supported, I'm thinking I might wipe it and throw a version of Linux on it. I dual booted with a version of Linux MANY years ago on a different Windows PC that is long gone. I'm thinking it was SuSE, but I don't remember. Anyway, I'm looking for suggestions for a version to install on this old PC, assuming it has enough horsepower to run anything. If not, I guess it's time to retire it to the recyclers. What say you? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebrke Posted May 5, 2014 Share Posted May 5, 2014 Anyway, I'm looking for suggestions for a version to install on this old PC, assuming it has enough horsepower to run anything. If not, I guess it's time to retire it to the recyclers. What say you? I just installed OpenSuSE 13.1 on a 10+ year old Dell Optiplex, P4 at 2.5 GHz, I think 1 gig ram. It's a little slow for KDE, but with Xfce desktop it chugs along pretty well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted May 5, 2014 Share Posted May 5, 2014 Debian with xfce and/or LXDE for a Desktop Environment would likely do great on it. Great to see you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted May 5, 2014 Share Posted May 5, 2014 Folding@Home works great on most Linux Distros. (If that is what you are using). http://folding.stanford.edu/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedon James Posted May 5, 2014 Share Posted May 5, 2014 I'm sure some others will chime in also, but in my experience, any of the following distros will likely be a good candidate for your older hardware: 1. AntiX - based on Debian and runs pretty well on low spec machines; IMO, stay with version 13.2 as MX-14 isn't quite ready yet; although perhaps you would prefer it? http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page 2. Zorin Lite - a low-resource LXDE desktop based on Ubuntu; probably the distro that most resembles good-old familiar looking windows; use the "Lite" tab for download http://zorin-os.com/free6.html 3. LXLE - a low-resource LXDE desktop based on Ubuntu, with "paradigms" that mimic WinXP, MacOSX, Unity, and/or old Gnome2 desktops in appearance; a "swiss army knife" distro, preloaded with an app for just about everything out of the box; extremely configurable; probably the fastest, most responsive distro I have experienced; it is my "go to" suggestion for older lower-specced hardware, with the caveat that the ISO for installation will NOT fit on a CD; must be burned to a DVD or a LiveUSB stick for demonstration and installation; if your hardware has neither capability, it can be circumvented with chain-load boot CD called PLoP, but that starts to get somewhat convoluted for a newer user to Linux. If you have decided that LXLE is the target distro you WANT, we can certainly help with that, though. http://www.lxle.net/download 4. Lubuntu - a low-resource LXDE desktop based on Ubuntu http://lubuntu.net/ Some other more popular recommendations might include Xubuntu (Ubuntu with XFCE desktop) and some versions of Mint, although I haven't had experience with either, so I cannot comment. Regardless, I'm fairly CERTAIN you can resuscitate that old machine with a linux distro and make it run better than it ever did with Windows, even when new! It's just gonna boil down to personal preferences of what you "like" the best! Good luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted May 5, 2014 Share Posted May 5, 2014 Debian Wheezy with Xfce. Linux Mint Xfce edition. Xubuntu, You're looking at 32 bit for sure with a machine like that. If your Sempron is a Socket A processor it won't support SSE2 so don't expect Flash to work. If that's important to you, it's recycle time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedon James Posted May 5, 2014 Share Posted May 5, 2014 Debian Wheezy with Xfce. Linux Mint Xfce edition. Xubuntu, You're looking at 32 bit for sure with a machine like that. If your Sempron is a Socket A processor it won't support SSE2 so don't expect Flash to work. If that's important to you, it's recycle time. What is SSE2 and how does that effect Flash? Looking to learn something new here... Alternatively, what about Google Chrome Browser and their version of flash "Pepper"? Would that be a viable substitute? Why or why not? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted May 5, 2014 Share Posted May 5, 2014 (edited) What is SSE2 and how does that effect Flash? Looking to learn something new here... Alternatively, what about Google Chrome Browser and their version of flash "Pepper"? Would that be a viable substitute? Why or why not? SSE2 is an instruction set that came in with Pentium 4 in 2001 and AMD processors in 2003 I think. Early Athlon, Athlon XP and Sempron processors don't have it. You can check in Linux with: cat /proc/cpuinfo and see if SSE2 is listed. In Linux, the latest versions of Flash (and for that matter Pepperflash) will not run if SSE2 is not present. They will in Windows but hey...how many Athlons from 2002 are going to be running anything but XP? In general terms you should be OK with Athlon 64 or above. You can sometimes get Gnash to work with the older processors but it isn't the most reliable when it comes to YouTube at least. Here's a possible workaround if you enjoy bashing your head against a wall: http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/1491 Edited May 5, 2014 by raymac46 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted May 5, 2014 Share Posted May 5, 2014 Just kidding... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted May 5, 2014 Share Posted May 5, 2014 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted May 5, 2014 Share Posted May 5, 2014 Even better... ===== Sorry, bjf123... just inserting a bit of humor here. Nice to see you again, by the way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted May 6, 2014 Share Posted May 6, 2014 http://www.makululinux.com/mate.htm Makulu Mate or Makulu XFCE should run well. I have Makulu Mate installed on an old 754 mobo and it runs sweetly. System Requirements What are the system Requirements for Makulu ? A 32-bit PAE-enabled x86 processor 512 MB RAM (1GB recommended for a comfortable usage). 8.5 GB of disk space ( Recommended ) Graphics card capable of 800×600 resolution CD/DVD drive or USB port Or any of the PUPPY variants should be fine. http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Puppy53?redirect=no Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted May 6, 2014 Share Posted May 6, 2014 1. AntiX - based on Debian and runs pretty well on low spec machines; IMO, stay with version 13.2 as MX-14 isn't quite ready yet; although perhaps you would prefer it? MX-14 has recently had a final release and I would highly recommend it after I took it for a quick spin in VBox. I wasn't knocked out by the previous RC but they have obviously worked hard on polishing it so it shines now. It comes with a nicely customised Xfce and they call it a "medium weight" distro. It boots live with 115MB memory use so should work well if you have 512MB or more. http://www.mepiscommunity.org/mx AntiX would still be preferred for really old machines with as little as 128MB RAM. It comes with basic Fluxbox or IceWM window managers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedon James Posted May 6, 2014 Share Posted May 6, 2014 MX-14 has recently had a final release and I would highly recommend it after I took it for a quick spin in VBox. I wasn't knocked out by the previous RC but they have obviously worked hard on polishing it so it shines now. It comes with a nicely customised Xfce and they call it a "medium weight" distro. It boots live with 115MB memory use so should work well if you have 512MB or more. http://www.mepiscommunity.org/mx AntiX would still be preferred for really old machines with as little as 128MB RAM. It comes with basic Fluxbox or IceWM window managers. Thanks for the tip sunrat! I had installed MX-14 in a VM, as it looked interesting to me, but I was disappointed. I liked the Unity layout and it looked great in screenshots and I wanted to like it, but it felt unfinished, unpolished, and just didn't "fit together" in my opinion. But in all fairness, I think it was the RC. Based on your say-so, I'm gonna give the final version another spin and see how it turned out! Thank you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burninbush Posted May 6, 2014 Share Posted May 6, 2014 Been a few years since I've posted anything over here. I've got an old Windows PC (Compaq Presario) with an AMD Sempron processor at 2.00 GHz and 768MB of RAM that I used when I switched to Macs to run Quicken and QuickBooks, since the Mac versions of those programs are not that good. I've since installed Parallels on my iMac and am running Windows in there. The Compaq now basically just crunches cancer research data. With XP no longer being supported, I'm thinking I might wipe it and throw a version of Linux on it. I dual booted with a version of Linux MANY years ago on a different Windows PC that is long gone. I'm thinking it was SuSE, but I don't remember. Anyway, I'm looking for suggestions for a version to install on this old PC, assuming it has enough horsepower to run anything. If not, I guess it's time to retire it to the recyclers. What say you? I think that if you are going to have a problem with a linux distro, it'll more likely come from not having enough memory. If it's possible to add another stick, do it. Back in the day I ran several different distros on an xp2400 with 512mb of memory. After that, in addition to what the others have suggested, why not give Porteus-32bit [i486] a try? For about a 200mb download you can make a live cd to test if it is going to work. And just to throw something else out on a linux board, win2k would probably run on your machine. I have it on an old P2 Thinkpad-600, works better than any linux on that ancient hardware. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjf123 Posted May 17, 2014 Author Share Posted May 17, 2014 Well, you've given me lots of options. Now, I just need a rainy weekend with nothing else going on to play around and see what works. Thanks. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capt.Crow Posted May 17, 2014 Share Posted May 17, 2014 On the off-chance you can get it ...Slackware 8.1 intel x86 16MB ram U got to have64mb to use X 500mb disk space recommended 2gb drivers for scsi and ide are there. That will get you off the ground .The others here will fall off their chairs laughing now . But thats how I got an old Gateway going just nicely . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted May 17, 2014 Share Posted May 17, 2014 Older versions of Slackware available here: ftp://slackware.oregonstate.edu/pub/slackware/ Beware, though... these older versions are not maintained any longer, so there may be vulnerabilities in them that were corrected in newer versions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted May 17, 2014 Share Posted May 17, 2014 (edited) There is also Minix 3: What Is MINIX 3? MINIX 3 is a free, open-source, operating system designed to be highly reliable, flexible, and secure. It is based on a tiny microkernel running in kernel mode with the rest of the operating system running as a collection of isolated, protected, processes in user mode. Modest hardware requirements. Learning More about MINIX 3 GETTING STARTED. If you are new to MINIX 3 DOWNLOAD. Get the current version DOCUMENTATION. Various articles COMMUNITY. Grow and help our community NEWS. Read our new posts WIKI. Read or add to the Wiki MINIX 3 Features POSIX compliant with a NetBSD userland Open source, with a BSD license Networking with TCP/IP X Window System Languages: C, Perl, Python, etc. Over 650 UNIX programs Research Projects MINIX 3 won a grant from the European Research Council for € 2.5 million to further research in highly reliable operating systems. Due to its modular nature and fault tolerance, it is easy to use it as a basis for operating systems research or for a product. Read more Edited May 17, 2014 by LilBambi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted May 17, 2014 Share Posted May 17, 2014 So right Eric. Not being maintained should cause a pause for reflection. I would prefer to use an OS that is just built small but is up to date OS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted May 17, 2014 Share Posted May 17, 2014 If you have young grandkids and you would like to have something for them to have to learn coding: Squeakland.org - Home of Squeak eToys Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capt.Crow Posted May 17, 2014 Share Posted May 17, 2014 Thats a lot of sugar. Good for wet or wintery days ,but i'm convinced that the younguns should be fishing and climbing trees as well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted May 17, 2014 Share Posted May 17, 2014 Of course, but there are rainy days...and Mondays... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted May 18, 2014 Share Posted May 18, 2014 There is also Minix 3: I knew I had heard that name before: MINIX also inspired the creation of the Linux kernel. MINIX (from "mini-Unix") was first released in 1987, with its complete source code made available to universities for study in courses and research. It has been free and open source software since it was re-licensed under the BSD license in April 2000......... The design principles Tanenbaum applied to MINIX greatly influenced the design decisions Linus Torvalds applied in the creation of the Linux kernel. Torvalds used and appreciated MINIX, but his design deviated from the MINIX architecture in significant ways, most notably by employing a monolithic kernel instead of a microkernel. This was famously disapproved of by Tanenbaum in the Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate. Tanenbaum explained again his rationale for using a microkernel in May 2006.[9] Early Linux kernel development was done on a MINIX host system, which led to Linux inheriting various features from MINIX, such as the MINIX file system..... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MINIX Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted May 18, 2014 Share Posted May 18, 2014 Yep! Minix was the very first NIX that Jim put on an ancient laptop similar to this AST Premium Exec 386SX/20 Vintage Portable Computer computer although it could have been older even than this (I can't remember) but it looks very much like this one: Anyway, Jim had to scarf up 'perfect' floppies for it and we only had one 'perfect' one, so Jim burned the first diskette image, installed it and while it asked for the 2nd diskette, he burned the next one, etc. until he had the entire Minix image on the x286 computer. It is still in the 'museum' here somewhere. Not sure if it still works or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted May 18, 2014 Share Posted May 18, 2014 I really like that MINIX 3 is a free open source. and that it still even though it is a more modern OS, it still has modest hardware requirements. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cookie Posted May 18, 2014 Share Posted May 18, 2014 Bodhi!!!! That distro makes me happy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted May 18, 2014 Share Posted May 18, 2014 Bodhi? Ahhhhhhhmmmmmm.... Ahhhhhhhhhmmmmmmm.... Mellow........... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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