[Don@VB]

I have an old PC with a Pentium 1 it is ok for email etc.. I thought it might run faster with LINUX. We recently purchased an ASUS Netbook: It has a limited amount of capacity but runs very well on LINUX. I was considering a switch to LINUX for our older PC. How hard is it to do? The LINUX website seemed quite vast and I wasn't sure where to start. Any feedback is helpful and appreciated. PS I'll be offline for a while so I wont be able to participate on this right away. Thanks!! Don

[maclay]

I’ve nothing to add, but am also intersted in doing this.

[Redcloak]

Faster? Perhaps. More reliably? Probably. With Linux, you won’t be taxing the POT with anti-virus software or a hokey file allocation system. As for installing, that’s easy now. My mom could probably install Ubuntu or one of its cousins.

[lormand]

I just converted an old Gateway desktop to the Ubuntu version of Linux. All the drivers including the wireless nic driver installed with no problems.

I'm staging it to run my online photo gallery so I can retire my old PC.

[gridlock]

I have an old laptop/doorstop that could be fun to try a LINUX install on...

[rabscuttle385]

Look, my advice to you is to go fishing on eBay for a Pentium III with 256+ megabytes of RAM (note that RAM != hard drive). I got one (the whole computer) for $2.00 a week or so ago.

[Astronaut]

Instead of Linux, take a look at OpenSolaris at http://www.opensolaris.com. Its the open source version of Sun Microsystem’s Solaris 10. They’ll send you a free Live CD that you can also use to install the operating system. OpenSolaris is like Linux, but its real UNIX and its supported by Sun. There is a nice graphical package manager that makes installing software a snap. Its also completely free.

[Bulwinkle]

Replacing windows?
I would suggest The Window Man
http://www.thewindowman.com/

Line-X??? It’s great!!!
http://www.linex.com/

[The Great RJ]

I have heard good things about A href=”http://www.puppylinux.org/";>Puppy Linux</a> as a very basic operating system.

[TexasTransplant]

Mark for later

[Chartist]

Not very hard to do with the Ubuntu flavor of Linux and you can even try it out without making any changes to your PC.

Go to http://www.ubuntulinux.org/getubuntu/download and get an .iso file which you then burn to a CD.

You can then boot from this CD, run it, play with it and later reboot, remove the disc and your PC is back to windows.

If you like it, back up everything on your PC and permanently install Linux — even Windows too in another partition.

Apologies that this thread is off topic.

[oh8eleven]

I just did this last weekend. I had an old PC just sitting in the basement collecting dust (533Mhz CPU, 256MB Ram and a 16GB HD,) so I figured what the hey.
I tried installing Kubuntu 8.1, but had graphics problems. Then I tried PCLinuxOS and again the same graphics problem - I get the splash screen, then the screen goes black while the OS is loading.
Then I tried Linux Mint 6 and bingo, worked like a charm. The install is not hard, very intuitive and all menu driven. This review says it all.

[enduserindy]

http://iso.linuxquestions.org/
Good place to get LINUX.
P1 is too old.

[databoss]

try debris linux

enjoy!

[chuckles]

I've been wanting to do this for years. I've tried pretty much everything and still use Windoze. The "Live disks" give you a chance to look without changing anything, but you will never get how difficult it is to "do" things with your new OS. It may as well be Korean or something. I can't even install an upgrade or a codec or almost any minor software adjustment without a huge hassle if at all.

Another fallacy is Linux takes less horsepower to run. The more modern distro's take just as much as Windows if not more. Also, the driver situation is lacking on some hardware you may own. I have Mandriva on one box and I can't get my Matrox G450 to work properly so I had to opt for a "throw down" card that doesn't show off Mandriva's capabilities and doesn't meet my needs for multiple monitors. The Linux lovers say "Well, just buy a new card", but that was supposed to be a perk with Linux to use your older hardware. The G450 works fine on XP and would probably work fine on Vista, I just don't have the desire for Vista yet.

You have to learn new things which doesn't make sense to Windoze users. Like why do I have to mount a drive to see it? It's transparent in Windows. Why can't I have an .exe file to install things? Later you find that certain distro's have .rpms which are easier to deal with, but still are a mystery where they put the files. Just upgrading FireFox from the website take hours of reading and downloading trying to get the simplest things done. Just changing the wallpaper on the desktop can get involved instead of 2 clicks. Most things in Windows happen automatically and we take the ease of use for granted.

I hate windows and am a clear candidate for a change, but I will get flamed just for saying Linux isn't easy. I have done Microsoft since DOS 3.1 and 286's and am not an idiot. It's just is like learning Polish after 60 years of English. Without a tutor to ask questions, you will be limited to e mail and web surfing for awhile. And the "junk box" will need an older distro to work. Ubuntu, Mandriva, and others today, need at least 512megs ram and a p4 to run without pain. Frankly, if you just need to read e mail and surf, Maybe a trip to Windows 98 would do the same faster without needing more hardware. If you are looking for the spinning desktops and other bells and whistles, it won't work on a door stop. In fact, If all you want is e mail and web surfing, maybe a smart phone is in order and you could clean out that spare bedroom with the 486's, 2 gig hard drives, EDO memory sticks and boxes big enough to jack the car up in the front yard. I know, I'm in therapy right now for the same malady. (I just tossed a Commodore 64 in the trash about a month ago) I kept thinking I would put in on Ebay some day. Believe it or not I still have my first 286 with an add on accelerator that boosted it to 12,mhz in a pile in a spare bedroom. I gave $2400 in '84. It has a 20 meg hd rll'ed to 30 megs. At the time, 5-10 megs was the norm. I was the envy of everyone I knew. I even payed extra for a 1.44 floppy drive. I found out you could drill the hole in the 720's to get 1.44 so I wanted the larger drive.

With a Pentium I, you will have to go way back to get a distro to run on it. Not sure it's worth the trouble. Pentium III, maybe a better beginning point.

[MediaMole]

You may have some difficulties with a machine that old.

First, almost any distro will require 64mb ram memory.

Second, make sure that the computer will boot from a CD. In the days of Pentium 1’s, most PCs would only boot from a floppy drive or the hard drive. If the computer won’t boot from a CD, you will have to find a distro that can boot from a floppy.

You will have to look for a very lightweight version of Linux. Puppy Linux seems to be a popular lightweight distribution. Ubuntu will probably be too resource intensive to run well.

Any lightweight distro will trade some user-friendliness to save resources. You will probably get a more basic window manager like Xfce instead of KDE or Gnome. Some things like the auto mounting of floppys and CDs may be missing.

Finally, support for some hardware may be discontinued. Assume your modem won’t work, although networking should.

[ShadowAce]

[N3WBI3]

It wont be that hard to put linux on but beware which distro you use, some are nearly as bad as Windows regarding memory.

You can use Damn Small Linux is a good one and you can try it out via live cd (if that computer can boot off of cd)

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8121628070.html

This will give you a good look and you can see if this is the way you want to go..

[Billthedrill]

If you have a CD drive on the thing (and another machine that will allow you to download ISO images and burn them to disk) it's fairly easy to try various flavors of OS out without slicking your hard drive. HERE is a list of "live" CD distros; that is, you burn a live CD and it will boot the OS of your choice for you. Bear in mind that you're booting from a CD so it'll take a performance hit there; this isn't for benchmarking but just to see if your system will run the candidate. I've played with Puppy and PCLinuxOS in minimal-footprint modes but I'm not a Linux expert. YMMV. Best of luck.

[TexasRepublic]

I don’t believe any recent version of Linux will run acceptably on a Pentium 1. How much memory does it have, 16 MB? Years ago I tried intalling Red Hat on that class of PC and gave up — booting up took several minutes, and loading the browser took several more minutes. By comparison, Windows 95 had run on that machine just fine. On a decent computer, I prefer Ubuntu.

[rdb3]

Get Ubuntu, and you'll be just fine with it.

Amazing << Hear this. Feel this, and tell me that this isn't music.
And dont sleep on these two, either.