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I have 3 ancient computers all of which work and would like opinions as to the best Linux Distrofor them. I hate to see them standing idle or broken down for parts. They will probably be given to a Linux noobie.
1) HP Pavilion XG823 700 Mhz Celeron 128 RAM 40 G HDD (11 years old)
2) Gateway Essential 500C 500 Mhz Celeron 256 RAM, 20 G HDD old
3) Gateway FlexatXST BRO Essential 900C 11 years old 900 Mhz Celeron 512 RAM, 40 G HDD Currently has Windows XP SP2
Thanks,
Dick
With 256MB of RAM, you can run most distros as long as you avoid big desktops like gnome and kde. I've run Debian, Crux and a form of Slackware on such a machine.
The box with 128 MB would certainly run Puppy. Other people will give you other suggestions.
Thank you. Basically I wanted to put an easy to use for a noobie distro on them before I give them away.
Dick
You could probably run anything you like on the 900 MHz machine. You could also probably swap its CPU for a 1 GHz P3 and get slightly better performance. Same goes for the 700 MHz machine, the motherboard will very probably support a 1 GHz P3 processor, I would, however, got to eBay and buy a half gig of ram for it. In your place I'd install Xubuntu 10.04 LTS on these two machines and google for how to replace OOo with LibreOffice and get an up-to-date version of Firefox in them.
The info isn't large, I'll just paste it in. Here are the terminal commands.
For LibreOffice:
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sudo apt-get purge openoffice*.*
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libreoffice
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First install firefox, using the "Install Firefox" command in the software menu (under Network), then use the following terminal commands (this will create all sort of errors if Firefox isn't first installed):
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sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
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Chances are the 500 MHz machine can't be upgraded so I'd install Slitaz on it. You won't have quite the wealth of software choices you'd have with some other distros but it should run very nicely and surprisingly fast.
$.02
I would recommend Debian Stable, with the default GNOME2 interface.
I would very strongly recommend using the 500mhz machine for spare parts, and to move its 256 megs of ram to the 700mhz machine. The RAM should be compatible SDRAM. This will mean the 700mhz machine has 384megs of RAM, which will be far more comfortable.
You could get by with less RAM, especially if you use a lightweight window manager rather than GNOME--but this won't help the 500mhz machine much as it struggles to deal with modern web sites. Things will still be sluggish with the 700mhz machine, but it will be bit more bearable.
Unfortunately, even the 900mhz computer will have extreme difficulties with Flash, web video, or web games.
AntiX, Lubuntu, legacyOS, and puppy should all work, but as Isaac states, anything using flash might be slow.
I would strongly agree that what these machines need more than anything else is more ram, and if you can't get more easily and cheaply, I would also advise scrapping the 500 MHz machine for its ram.
To help with browsing, install two Firefox extensions/add-ons: AdBlock Plus and NoScript. NoScript will block Javascript until you enable it site by site, which aids security and blocks Flash until you click to enable it. By blocking ads and flash, web pages will load quicker. You can still view Flash videos by clicking on them to enable them, but it will prevent Flash ads from bogging down page loads.
That (TVGuide) doesn't seem to have fixed it.
Sorry, posted on wrong thread I had open.
I have an old Pentium II 450 MHz with 312 MB of RAM which is perfectly happy running Debian Lenny. It can be a bit slow at times but perfectly serviceable. It can't play embedded youtube videos (too slow), but it can play them if downloaded first. I used for editing audio as it has a good sound card, and also as a spare machine for surfing and email and also backups.
1. The RAM is the importan tthing. 2. There may be video card problems finding the correct driver software.
I would use Puppy for the oldest and try it on others to see what you have got. 3. Danceman's browser tips are important.
4 I get good results with XFCE , Open SUSE 12.4 on 512 RAM, 1000Hz AMD chip, video chip circa 2000, for browsing, email Libreoffice and audio discs (I do not use Video discs fso no experience) Using old HP printer drivers with modern 2011 OKI printer.