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To all the people who like to use Linux. What distro would you recommend for a laptop with the following specs:
Pentium 4, about 1.8 GHz
256 MB ram
32MB ATI mobility radeon 9000 series graphics card (don't know the exact model because ATI doesn't seem to want to display it in dxdiag)
30GB hard drive
14" monitor, it's not a netbook but a notebook that's very old.
As you can see the laptop is very old. And very slow. It's currently running XP but it's so slow that it's almost unusable even when trying to do something as trivial as launching firefox. And no, I haven't been infected with a virus or anything. I think no one will argue with me when I say that XP doesn't play nice with only 256 MB of ram, which is why I want to have it run Linux so it will be a lot faster.
I just need this computer to run office 2007open office 2007 files, browse the web, and play spider solitaire. Was originally thinking of Ubuntu but maybe it's a bit too heavy?
Edit: You guys are right, I don't need MS Office but I do need to be able to open MS Office files. OpenOffice should be fine, but if anyone knows some good, lightweight standalone applications for word processing and spreadsheets, that would be even greater! AbiWord is nice, is there an Excel equivalent?
 
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Zurich15362 Posts
Well you have to realize that Linux can not magically make your Firefox go faster on 256 RAM. What Linux offers is the freedom to not use a lot of software to save RAM.
I am sure there are a number of modified Debian distributions out there specifically designed to run on old hardware, try Google. You could also get a plain Debian and run a light desktop environment like FluxBox or XFCE.
In any case you will have to do some work to make it run fast. Again, Linux is not faster per se but allows you to do without a lot of stuff, but you’ll probably have to make it happen yourself.
Edi, reading your Edit: Office 2007 (doesn't run on Linux anyway) and Firefox are just huge pieces of software. They won't run fast on your hardware no matter what OS you have under the hood.
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First of all Office 2007 doesn't run on Linux. You need to fallback to some other solution like openoffice.org or something else.
I would recommend going for a lightweight desktop manager (i.e. not Ubuntu which comes with GNOME). An expert could totally build a really nice system for your Specs with XFCE or even something more lightweight like LXDE, but I don't suppose that you know how to build a modular system yourself?
You could try Lubuntu which comes with LXDE and is easy enough to install because it is based on Ubuntu. Here's a review which recommends it for your purposes:
http://desktoplinuxreviews.com/2010/06/12/lubuntu-10-04/6/
Cheers
Bastian
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Vanilla Ubuntu is probably a bit too heavy, I'd go with Xubuntu if you're looking to run any ubuntu variant. Ubuntu Netbook Remix should work too, but that is obviously not meant for desktop boxes.
Personally, I run Debian on basically anything, since that's rock solid and can be configured to grab as little or much resources as you want it to. Try going for an older version, like stable or even oldstable. If the standard GNOME UI is too heavy, I'd go for a simple window manager with some kind of menu system and leave off all the other cruft.
Still, though, you mention Office 2007, which I'm unsure how you are planning on running on a linux box.. Are you planning on running it through WINE? Staying on XP is probably wiser in that case. If you want to run OpenOffice.org, that has its own problems as a resource hog as well.
Really, I think your biggest problem is to run a somewhat modern office suit on nothing more than 256 MB, not specifically XP (although that probably doesn't help).
What functionality are you after, exactly, when you say Office 2007? Word processing? Try Abiword. I'm sure there are lighter programs to use for spreadsheets as well, although I'm no expert on those.
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Abiword and Gnumeric are really nice alternatives to Word/Excel/OpenOffice.org
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There are 3 linux distro's which i really like:
Ubuntu
Everyone knows and loves ubuntu. It is by far the most polished, enterprise-ready distro out there. It Just Works(tm). Not much else to say. Personally i'm using ubuntu on a laptop which is quite slow as well. 1ghz celeron and 386mb ram - oh yeah. The default window manager, gnome, "runs" but its quite slow. What i did was replace it with fluxbox, which runs amazingly fast considering the hardware.
Fedora
Uses the RPM package system, unlike ubuntu/debian. Not quite as polished as ubuntu, has a bit more focus on security which means you have to get comfortable with SeLinux (or just disable it =P). They dont include nearly as many packages (applications) in their official repositories as ubuntu which can be a pain.
Arch linux
If you have no life, this is a very good distro. It allows you to tweak just about everything, without going to extremes like LFS or Gentoo (Both of which i really, really dislike but thats a whole other discussion).
You say you need your computer for office 2007. You may or may not have some issues running office in linux, no matter what distro you pick. StarOffice/OpenOffice and Google Docs are great alternatives tho.
Edit:
Try going for an older version, like stable or even oldstable.
I really dont like this advice for a desktop machine. For production servers, sure, but for a desktop machine? Why oh why?
Edit2:
As someone else suggested, try using Google chromium - its fast!
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On June 29 2010 23:04 pettter wrote:
Vanilla Ubuntu is probably a bit too heavy, I'd go with Xubuntu if you're looking to run any ubuntu variant. Ubuntu Netbook Remix should work too, but that is obviously not meant for desktop boxes.
Personally, I run Debian on basically anything, since that's rock solid and can be configured to grab as little or much resources as you want it to. Try going for an older version, like stable or even oldstable. If the standard GNOME UI is too heavy, I'd go for a simple window manager with some kind of menu system and leave off all the other cruft.
Still, though, you mention Office 2007, which I'm unsure how you are planning on running on a linux box.. Are you planning on running it through WINE? Staying on XP is probably wiser in that case. If you want to run OpenOffice.org, that has its own problems as a resource hog as well.
Really, I think your biggest problem is to run a somewhat modern office suit on nothing more than 256 MB, not specifically XP (although that probably doesn't help).
What functionality are you after, exactly, when you say Office 2007? Word processing? Try Abiword. I'm sure there are lighter programs to use for spreadsheets as well, although I'm no expert on those.
Xubuntu definitely. I've been able to run it on way worse machines without a problem. Theoretically, open office should run on your machine according to the requirements. But 256MB of RAM is definitely small, and so you might run into lagginess.
I've used a word processor on linux that will do word processing without a lot of memory usage, I just don't remember the name after so long. I'd recommend just to look around and do some searches for the applications and find some that work for you.
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With your amount of RAM, I'd definitely go for Xfce, as it's the most light-weight X environment available. I personally use Debian, because of it's stability and package manager, but there are a lot of other good distros out there.
With OpenOffice 3 you are able to open docx/pptx/etc files, so that's no problem.
For web browswing I wouldn't use Firefox, but something "lighter", like Google Chrome (which is oficially available for Linux now).
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On June 29 2010 23:08 mgj wrote:Edit: I really dont like this advice for a desktop machine. For production servers, sure, but for a desktop machine? Why oh why?
The short answer: because older versions are faster.
The long answer: As programs develop over the years, hardware gets better and better, so programmers can cut corners in engineering and pile on feature after feature requiring more and more resources, leading to modern programs likely not even starting on a computer bought around the turn of the millenium. As both stable and oldstable are still more or less actively maintained, the usual problem with old software (unfixed, well-known security holes) is usually not present, or at least alleviated somewhat.
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The short answer: because older versions are faster.
I'm sorry, but i have to call bullshit on that one. It's simply not true. If i'm not mistaken, debian only allows critical security patches into stable, thus leaving out any performance improving and new feature patches. When you are on a desktop machine, you want those more than you want security.
Now I have to be honest, i have not used debian for a long time. I believe "sarge" was hot when i used it last. Back then, i remember SID using something crazy like 20% less memory with gnome running, compared to stable.
Maybe debian have changed their policy about updates to stable, but i doubt it.
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Puppy Linux is a pretty popular lightweight distro that focuses on usability. It can also use Ubuntu binary packages.
edit: if you're coming from Windows looking for something faster, you're probably not going to want to learn a "hardcore" distro for power users, even if it can be built and configured to be really fast. Also, I'd stay away from distros with stricter adherence to free software philosophy over usability. You also don't need enterprise-level server stability.
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Damn, forgot about compatibility issues with Office + Linux. I do need to at least open .docx and .xlsx files but my last experience with OpenOffice (2.0 I think) was even worse than Microsoft Office. Wine is probably not a solution because I'm assuming that it will be even slower. I can probably live with OpenOffice though 
Poll: Which Distro?Xubuntu (7) 78% Debian (2) 22% 9 total votes Your vote: Which Distro? (Vote): Xubuntu
(Vote): Debian
edit: You guys are right, I don't need MS Office but I do need to be able to open MS Office files. OpenOffice should be fine, but if anyone knows some good, lightweight standalone applications for word processing and spreadsheets, that would be even greater! AbiWord is nice, is there an Excel
equivalent?
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I'm not an expert, but I have read numerous times that Xubuntu is not faster than Ubuntu. If you want a flavor of Ubuntu you should definetely go for Lubuntu.
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On June 29 2010 23:41 Myrmidon wrote:
edit: if you're coming from Windows looking for something faster, you're probably not going to want to learn a "hardcore" distro for power users, even if it can be built and configured to be really fast. Also, I'd stay away from distros with stricter adherence to free software philosophy over usability. You also don't need enterprise-level server stability.
This man speaks the truth! For this reason I would not consider debian as an option in your case, but the choice is, ofcourse, yours.
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Downloading Xubuntu, thanks for the help! Now go watch the second half of Japan vs Paraguay.
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I have to say, I'm worried if you try Xubuntu if XP is really THAT slow. I had a similar comp, and the first thing I put on it was Xubuntu; it was slightly better, but still slow.
What I recommend is something like crunchbang linux, a distro that's specifically recommended for older computers, or if that's not fast enough, than something even faster, like damn small linux.
The great thing about linux is that you can pretty much always just keep on uninstalling then reinstalling new distros, trying them out. Learn to use gparted as well, very helpful
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Kyrgyz Republic1462 Posts
If you need to work with Office file often, I would just get more RAM from eBay, re-install XP from scratch, and use Chrome instead of Firefox. OpenOffice.org is slow and ugly.
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There is somebody who uses Debian testing here? I think it's really good 
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EPT
