Should I try Linux?

Linux Support
1

Hi all.

I have an 8-year old laptop here (Toshiba Satellite 3000) which I’ve been trying to get to a presentable state on and off for several months now. The trouble seems to be that it simply isn’t powerful enough to run Windows XP. I’ve removed every unnecessary program and setting I can find, and it still has extreme difficulty performing simple tasks (it takes up to five minutes to open a browser).

Here are the basic specs:

256MB RAM <— This is the primary concern, as Windows seems to need about 600MB
Intel Pentium III Processor (833MHz, from memory)
NVidia GeForce2 Go
18GB Hard drive
Windows XP 32-bit

Will it be worth installing Linux on this computer? Does it generally run more efficiently?

2

Yes, there are LOTS of distros that will run quite happily (and more efficiently than XP) on a machine of that spec.

You might want to go for one of the “light weight” distro such as :-

Lubuntu
or
antiX
or
SliTaz
or
Damn Small Linux
or
Zenwalk
or
Puppy Linux
or
Xubuntu
etc.

Those only require 128 - 192mb RAM (or less) as a minimum spec.

Also, take a look at these:
http://www.tuxradar.com/content/whats-best-lightweight-linux-distro
and
http://lightlinux.blogspot.com/2008/06/top-10-of-lightweight-linux_24.html

3

Yes it willbe worth installing Linux on your computer.
windows runs a Lot of stuff in the back ground you dont need.
you can try Linux before you instate it.
from a CD or USB drive.
you should try Damn Small Linux.
or Ubuntu 10.10.
you can use some windows programs with Linux to!
you will need Wine.
you can find there web site with a search.
you still have to do some work to get Linux to do every thing you wont.
but its as good as windows XP.
soon it will pass it.

4

Full blown GNOME desktop distros such as Ubuntu 10.10 would probably be a bit heavy for your systems spec.

and Damn Small Linux may be a bit simplistic for you… although as its name suggests it IS small, and very easy on system resources.

Lubuntu or Xubuntu would probably be a better bet. (basically Ubuntu with the LXDE or Xfce desktops respectively)

Surpassed it years ago, that’s why Later Windows versions try (and fail) to emulate it :wink:

5

Thanks for the replies :slight_smile:

I’m downloading Lubuntu at the moment, for several reasons:

I’m completely new to Linux (as you may have guessed), so choosing a variant of Ubuntu (which is very mainstream, as I understand it) seems like a good idea.
It has a nice name.
It looks pretty.
I only managed to open two other pages in the ten minutes it took me to get to the download page, and I don’t want to face the prospect of looking through all of those links at 3-6 minutes per tab.

On a side note, the difference between the memory and disk usage of these distros and Windows is amazing… The idea of a whole OS using less than a GB of my drive is completely new to me.

Again, thanks.

6

Your welcome… good luck, and if you have any problems give us a shout :slight_smile:

7

It’s installed, it’s using 120MB RAM(yay!), but it’s still running extremely slowly and apparently using 100% CPU. Is that just the installation doing its stuff as it’s the first time I’ve run it?

EDIT: Now it’s just being weird…

Everything except the background and the cursor has disappeared.

EDIT 2: OK, I gave up on Lubuntu. It ran slowly and kept crashing. What I’ve done instead is install SliTaz, and it’s amazing! It looks fairly ugly, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen this computer run at a normal speed. Anyway, thanks for the links :slight_smile:

8

Are you sure you don’t have any hard drive issues ?