Ping for help. Thanks.
No video card? I thought you wanted to do photo and video editing? Does it have a good on board one?
A magnet.
Yikes! Well go with a linux distro like Ubuntu and some free editing software, but if its as old as I am thinking in my head you are still going to be pulling hair out at how slow it renders images and video.
So what is the motherboard?
You must have an onboard video...is it Nvidia or ATI? Most Nvidia based boards seem ok,...ATI based ,...prior to the latest can be a problem.... XORG will be a likely problem area ...newer versions of various Distros have upgraded in a newer Xorg which I am having trouble with ...
Never did like any of the **buntu’s. I’d recommend PCLinuxOS, or Mepis.
btrl
Another thought...why not reinstall Windows 2000? If you don’t have the install disk, you can get Win2K Pro OEM pretty cheap on ebay...
I would use BootitNG to remove windows xp and get the partition on your hard drive ready for linux. It can be found here: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/index.htm
I would recommend backing up your windows xp with it just in case you feel like going back at a later time. Just put the backup file on another partition. Anyway this is what I would do. I have been using bootitng for years and it makes system restores take about 15 minutes.
Make sure your computer meets Windows XP memory and hard drive requirements.
It's not snappy but it's quick enough -- with a video card the only concession to speed.
You said MS wants some bucks for an additional key.
Are you installing WinXP from a CD using a key already utilized in an activation?
Unix is great if your a geek that needs geeky programs written by geeks for geeeks to do geeky things. Are you a geek? Have you ever flashed your mobo BIOS? Have you ever flashed your video card BIOS? HAve you ever tweaked the mobo register settings?
Have you ever editted Windows OS registry beehive manually? Are you familiar with, or have ever used Wine? Have you ever gotten into the guts of an applications configuration files and tweaked them manually?
Does the issue of manual installation of device drivers scare you? Have you ever installed a device driver manually? Are you comfortable working at the command prompt level (basic DOS style text based interface using commands, parameters and flags).
How well versed are you respect to antivirus and firewall configuration?
If the answer to the foregoing is predominantly NO, then I’d recommend against Unix flavored OS in general.
Yes, Ubantu has a great leap in the Unix platform with regards to GUI. And for those who are willing to expend the heartbeats to learn, and hang out on the various tech forums dedicated to Unix-like OS’s gathering knowlege through osmosis, that may be the way to go. However, for somebody’s accumen with respect to IT in general and hardware in particular is minimal, I’d frown upon the idea.
Google WinXP Pro SP2 Student Edition on the internet. You should be able to get it for about $100. If you know a student, they can get it for free from MS Dream-bla-bla-bla (something or another) program. That would allow them to download an IDO image which needs to be burned to a CD. That disk effectively becomes a legit bonafide installation CD.
Before installing WinXP Pro SP2, make sure that you download the SP3 (complete) patch. Doing so will save you tons of time downloading the 100+ service patch/updates to WinXP Pro SP2.
Now I’m certain that I’m going to catch a whole lot of flak from my geek bretheren, but if you question them to the particulars, they’ll tell you that none of it scares them, they’ve had their box apart several times, and all the foregoing issues are moot points to them. This is because they have experience, apptitude, adaptability necessary to surmount the hurdles and unforseen gotchyas.
I previously mentioned Wine. Wine is an emulator that allows Windows applications to be “emulated”, i.e., run natively in Unix-like OS even so they’re MS Windows executables. WIll it work? Yes. Is it optimal? NO. Does inefficiency bother you? If it does, than can you handle the lack of functionality and/or feature set of native Unix-like platformed applications?
Dude, why don’t you just scrap everything, through the crap out the 35th story window, run over it all with a bus snd buy a Mac?
Macs are great I heard.
Ubuntu comes in multiple flavors. The standard Ubuntu uses the Gnome desktop. Kubuntu uses KDE as it's desktop. Xubuntu uses XFCE as it's desktop.
Then there's Edubuntu. It comes with lots of educational software for children. Gobuntu is a flavor of Ubuntu that comes with only free software, no proprietary drivers like nVidia or proprietary programs like Flash.
There's Mythbuntu that turns your PC into a media center, Ubuntu Mobile is designed for touch screen PCS. And the newest is Ubuntu Netbook, designed for sub-notebooks like the EeePC.
If you're going to be doing a lot of video and audio work I recommend the Ubuntu flavor designed for that.
All software packaged for Ubuntu (the filename will end in .deb) will run on most any flavor of Ubuntu. Just use Synaptic (Gnome) or Adept (KDE) to choose the software you want and it will download and install it.
The different flavors are therefore not that different. They will all run the same software. The primary difference is in how they are initially set up.
With tens of thousands of different software packages available, each Ubuntu flavor has to choose which ones to install during your initial setup. For instance, the standard Ubuntu might have OpenOffice installed and few games, while Edubuntu will have lots of educational packages and some games and little productivity software.
But since you are free to crank up the package manager and install anything you want they really aren't that different.
As far as the video card goes, your machine is an Athlon XP so probably AGP 2x or 4x. You can get decent used video cards for that incredibly cheap on eBay or other places for under $40, like an nVidia 6 series with 128 MB RAM. Stick with nVidia cards since ATI cards didn’t play well with AMD machines back then.