Some advice please

[herschybar]

I have anold laptop which is struggling to cope with the ever expanding updates and programs required to operate in Windows.

I am looking to do a clean install of linux. I have tried Ubuntu 10.4 but it does not recognise the screen resolution and things disappear off the edge of the screen. I have also tried Ubuntu 10.4 for netbook but the icons were blurred and unreadable.

I wondered if anyone could recomment a version which would be suitable to install on this old machine.

It is a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo L7320 with Intel Celeron M 1.7 GHz processor and 512 MB ram. The computer is around 5 years old.

Any advice greatly received.

herschybar

[yancek]

The RAM you show would be a problem for many of the full distros suck as Ubuntu which requires a minimum of 512MB and recommends a gigabyte. Any Puppy derivative should work. Slitaz would but it is a very minimalist distribution. You might go to distrowatch or google light weight linux or check this site:

What's the best lightweight Linux distro? | TuxRadar Linux

[herschybar]

Many thanks yancek, I will check this out.

[reed9]

Any distro using LXDE or XFCE should perform adequately on your specs. I would not go with one of the specialized super mini distros to begin with, such as DSL, Slitaz, or TinyCore, though you may want to experiment with the later on. Puppy might be a reasonable choice, however.

Otherwise, I would check out Lubuntu, Antix, Fedora LXDE or XFCE spins, or OpenSuse's LXDE or XFCE versions.

Antix is probably the lightest of the bunch.

[Freston]

It is a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo L7320 with Intel Celeron M 1.7 GHz processor and 512 MB ram. The computer is around 5 years old.

That should work quite well with VectorLinux. I've seen less than 1Ghz, 256MB machines run fine.

[herschybar]

thanks for the help guys, some food for thought. I think I will try a few different ones and see what works and feels good.

[MASONTX]

AntiX, PClinuxOS or legacy os would all be good options also.