OS for very old PC

Kotu

Kotu

Kotu

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Joined
18 Oct 2002
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885
Location
UK
I have an old toshiba satellite laptop with the following spec:

333MHz K6-2
96MB ram
4GB HD

its original os is windows98, but this is pretty unusable on the net now, I tried a "performance edition" of windows xp but it takes ~10 minutes to boot and just loading firefox takes another 5 minutes. I also tried to install Ubuntu 10 and 9, neither of which manages to even load the installer.

Basically I just want to be able to use it for dealing with email and some browsing (none flash stuff/video of course) but I don't want to wait forever for anything to load :(

any advice on which OS would be the best choice for just browsing?
 
xubuntu? ubuntu with a lightweight desktop basically. There are quite a few linux distro's about that will run on those specs, thats if all the hgardware is compatible.

most of them have live cd's,so you can try before you install.
 
Could be a dodgy HDD ,it has got to be old with that spec.Can you try a newer/different hdd?
Even with that spec i would expect firefox to be quicker
 
As above, try and get a newer HD like a 20 or 40GB drive. Also a little more memory if possible? I would guess it would be PC66 or PC100 SDRAM.
 
For the price of an OS you could probably get a second hand ancient laptop that is still many times faster than that one! :)
 
Xubuntu is no less resource intensive than Ubuntu now for some reason, they've put too much effort into giving XFCE the same features as Gnome and not enough on being speedy.

Pretty much any Linux OS will run smooth on any CPU (PII era and above). Where it all falls down of course is RAM, 256MB is recommended for a lot of distros (Ubuntu etc.) but you can often get away with less... 96MB is pushing it though, have a look at Slitaz - especially the loram versions, just make sure you get a decent sized SWAP partition.

http://www.slitaz.org/en/
 
Maybe a second hand PDA or iPod Touch would be perfect for that?

I browse and check my e-mail's all the time on my iPhone 4 and its very easy and simple to use. Checking e-mail's on my iPhone is actually easier than checking it on my computer.
 
Which Toshiba model is it, exactly?

You could easily upgrade it by adding some RAM and a faster/larger harddrive - also opening up your avenues, OS wise.
 
it's a Toshiba Satellite 2060CDS, I don't think it is worth spending more on for a different hard drive or RAM thought considering how old it is. Windows 98 is a bit to virus prone now unfortunately, if I use linux at least this issue is avoided.
 
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