Using Linux to breathe life into an old computer

spudbynight

spudbynight

spudbynight

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8 Nov 2006
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I have been helping a friend out with his "IT issues".

He has an old desktop computer (circa 2007) which I have been looking at. I started it up and was amazed at just how slow it was. Currently it runs Vista in 1GB of RAM and straight away I knew that was going to be a problem. It runs on a 3.46Ghz Celeron - not sure if single core or double core.

The machine is used simply for some email, light word processing and that is about it. It has been having some issues connecting to the router my friend has (although it would connect to my phone as a WiFi hotspot).

I was going to stick Linux on a USB stick and let them try it out for a few days as I think it will be more useable on the machine. Any advice on the a nice light distro for that sort of machine? I want something that requires minimal management from the enduser and is easy to use.
 
another vote for mint cinnamon.

i recently installed it onto an old toshiba satellite only a celery 1.6ghz...bumped it up to 4gb of memory for £25 did a nice fresh install from a usb stick and it flies.
 
How will Cinnamon feel on such old hardware? Will it fall over in 1GB of RAM?

I have been looking at Zorin as a distro - what do people think of it?
 
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mint will be much less demanding than vista on your hardware.

cpu-z the machine see what cpu is in there and go from there if its a single core intel with 1gb of memory go for the 32-bit version.

it will probably pay off to try and beef the ram up a bit, wont cost much for some old pc3200 ddr!
 
Yep as above Mint Cinnamon will be perfect.

If it runs Vista albeit slowly, it will run Mint fine as it's a lot lighter than any version of Windows.

Libre office, Firefox and Thunderbird (mail client) are available from the built in repositories (app store).

I don't know about Zorin and while it may be very good, I'd just add that Mint is also very noob friendly. If a person can navigate Windows then Mint will feel very familiar but also refreshingly different.
 
spudbynight said:
Any advice on the a nice light distro for that sort of machine? I want something that requires minimal management from the enduser and is easy to use.
Click to expand...

Lubuntu, Puppy or CrunchBang all come to mind.

Mint 16 is great, MATE uses less resources than Cinnamon if that's an issue.

Not tried Zorin yet but I plan to at some point.
 
Linux Mint XFCE. Surprisingly the UI is rather polished and feels similar to Cinnamon crossed with MATE. It's very usable, n00b friendly and much lighter again than even Cinnamon while being 100% Mint underneath.
 
One question - how will Mint react if it isn't updated.

If for example, in two years time, not a single update has been installed - how will it fare?
 
It'll work just fine if it's not updated. However, if it's on an internet connected machine then I would let it update just the security updates at the very least.
 
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