Linux help - newbie old pc

[bannik]

I have a really old pc

ad emachine
900MHZ
128mb ram (syncdram)
20gb harddrive

Iam using windows xp sp3 (it works) but it is slow....I mainly want a stable pc with witch i can use

SKYPE
IRC
MOZILLA FIREFOX
GNUMETRIC (or any excel alternative)
music program and Utorrent


those are basically what I really need my pc too do.....i really dont care about anything else...I just want too use the internet for browsing use IRC for chatting and everything else should be basics

so i am really looking for a small linux that uses less resources then windows xp....

I have looked into DSL but its dead so i am sorta looking for one thats active and keeps up with modern updates for my needed programms....

I dont mind using any linux and i WANT too learn too programm with it but because of financial reason i am stuck with a small old pc FOR now...and since its not that important i was hoping on practicing command line work with linux....


someone suggested i should look into getting older version of popular linuxes like ubuntu which might use less resources....


anyways any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

Check this thread for favorite distro for low spec computer hardware as voted by our membership:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/cof...re-2010-a.html

[reed9]

I don't recommend using old versions of linux distros. Unsupported distros are going to give you no end of trouble and don't receive security updates.

There are lightweight distros that should work fine on your machine.

I would take a look at
Antix
Puppy Linux
Slitaz
TinyMe (though they don't have a stable release yet, it looks quite promising)
Vector Linux Light
Fedora LXDE Spin
Crunchbang Linux

Basically, anything that uses just a window manager like openbox, fluxbox, jwm, pekwm, etc. or uses the LXDE desktop environment should work ok. Avoid GNOME and KDE, XFCE might be tolerable depending on the distro.

[bannik]

I dont mind using 1 program at a time, the reason i need a linux is so that i can practice with it and not worry about my software hanging or crashing when i am doing thins (which happens with xp) honestly xp works for me but its slow and youtube and websites are slow too load....but since i dont multisk and usually only use 1 software at a time (i e i only use firefox and nothing else) i was thinking that xubuntu might be a good choice,

its powerful, supported and i assume uses less resources then XP sp3

[reed9]

Flash will probably be a bit problematic no matter what, since you have so little RAM and an underpowered processor.
Adobe - Flash Player 10: System requirements

Xubuntu is one of the heaviest implementations of an XFCE desktop. They load a lot of GNOME libraries and use some pretty heavy applications. It's worth a try, but I wouldn't expect great performance.

[bannik]

would it be better or same as xp
thats the question


you see i know my pc is rather outdated but i just want it too perform better then xp

plus because of the lack of ram my pc doenst have a virus scanner or spyware software...because it uses so much and since linux is not affected by window virus i would assume its a bonus

the main question is....will it be better performer then windows xp sp3...as long as flash works the same (which it works fine in xp3 i can view moview etc but they load longer) and doesnt crash as often i dont mind

[reed9]

I'm not sure if Xubuntu would be better than XP. XP was released a loooong time ago, and it does have pretty modest requirements.

Other, lighter, distros would be faster, but you necessarily sacrifice some "user friendliness", though not power, for speed.

Flash, however, is not as good in linux as is it with windows. It's a proprietary program and Adobe simply doesn't put as much attention to their linux flash player. So it may be that flash performance in any linux distro will be worse. But maybe not. You'll have to try it, really, and see how the performance is on your machine.