Which linux?? and would it help??

Discussion in 'Software' started by inks, Apr 10, 2012.

  1. inks

    inks Private E-2

    Hi everybody,
    Yesterday I decided to try and do something with an old Iqon pc I had doing nothing.
    When I right click my computer and properties its says:

    Celeron(R) CPU 2.93GHz
    2.93GHz, 480MB of RAM

    It currently has windows xp running on it but it takes ages to respond to anything I try to open. I decided to try puppy linux, which I booted the pc with using a disk. All went well but when I tried to watch a you tube clip or any other clip it became jerky and slow to respond.

    Would it help if I totally got rid of winxp all together and installed a linux system on to my pc??

    If so which linux system would you recommend?? I just want to be able to watch you tube clips and maybe access facebook.

    Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope somebody can help.
     
  2. shnerdly

    shnerdly MajorGeek

    I've heard a lot of good talk about Puppy Linux and also Mint Linux. The pausing in videos could be due to not having a swap space available. Swap space is essentially the same as Virtual Memory on a Windows Machine. Installing to the HDD would solve that but may not necessarily solve the entire problem.

    Your system appears to have 512MB of RAM of which 32MB is dedicated to video RAM giving the system 480MB. If you could add some RAM it may help and also adding a Video Controller might help. Many onboard Video Controllers don't do well with heavy graphics use.

    Another possibility would be to add RAM and increase the amount of RAM available to the Video Controller in the BIOS.

    Also, if you have an old HDD around, even something as small as 1 gigabyte, you could install it for swap space. That would require some configuration. If you decide to try that, post back and we'll get you some instructions on how to create the swap space.
     
  3. inks

    inks Private E-2


    Is it possible to use a 1,2 or 4 gigabyte memory stick and use that as swap space??
     
  4. BoredOutOfMyMind

    BoredOutOfMyMind Picabo, ICU

    You do no use swap on memory. Swap is allocated on the Hard Drive.

    Any distrobution could run, but you need to look at a low memory, low resources window manager like XFCE, or Openbox.

    A member of the Crunchbang forums evaluated 30 different Window Managers

    How do you get only 480K of RAM? Is that from Windows System info? snerdly has a point, that adding RAM or a new video card is a bandaid that may or may not work. I added RAM and installed a video card in my Dell years back and it overstressed my system. At some point, upgrade is a better alternative.
     
  5. shnerdly

    shnerdly MajorGeek

    If your computer has the slots available, I would just add 512 MB of RAM and increase the amount allocated to Video to 64MB if possible.

    Also adding some swap space might help. If you don't have another HDD around, perhaps you could add a partition to the current HDD of 512-1024MB to use as a swap space. There are a lot of different programs out there that can do that. Partition Magic is one that I know of.
     
  6. plodr

    plodr Major Geek Super Extraordinaire

  7. hitest

    hitest Staff Sergeant

    Many versions of Linux will run just fine on your unit, but, as you have a limited amount of RAM a lighter desktop environment or window manager will function better than something like KDE or Gnome. I would first try the desktop environment XFce4 on your unit and if that lags too much then try something lighter like Fluxbox. XFce4 should work just fine on your box.
    Debian Linux would be a nice choice on that box.
     
  8. ichase

    ichase Corporal

    I know this is an older thread and hope that the original poster will return to let us know how things went, but I wanted to recommend Bodhi Linux I had Bodhi running on an old Toshiba Satallite with a max of 512 of RAM. This laptop ran fast. Bodhi uses the Enlightenment (E17) Desktop Environment which is very configurable and fun to use. Jeff Hoogland (Lead developer for Bodhi) did an amazing job creating an OS that not only works VERY proficeint on older hardware but does not lack the tools that one would expect from a higher end OS.

    Have not been on MG in a while and wanted to give my .02

    Ian
     

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