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- Name
- Peter
- Edit My Images
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Hello again, everyone.
Since it seems that quite a lot of people is buying new computers these days, I've been wondering what you lot do with older machines that used to run Windows 98, ME, or Windows 2000.
Windows 98 and ME aren't supported by Microsoft at all now. Support for Windows 2000 should end completely in 2010.
So if you have a Pentium II 350 MHz or faster with at least 128 MB of RAM, you might get Linux running on it fairly swiftly.
I have succesully configured and run (fairly swiftly too) Linux with some up to date apps on a Pentium II 350 MHz with 192 MB of RAM, a 20 GB HDD (smaller one should do too, depends on what you'll install) and a Geforce FX5700 (don't laugh, it was the only decent spare one I had at the time).
I have used Arch Linux on it because I do have sufficient Linux experience to handle it.
If you've never used Linux before and you'd like to use it on an older machine, perhaps TinyME, PCFluxboxOS or Fluxbuntu would be better for you.
The most critical part of making this real is what software you run on these old boxes.
Since Arch allows me to install pretty much only what I really want and need (with dependencies), I only installed the basic stuff, enabled networking, hal, dbus (don't worry, the other Linux distributions I suggested above run these by default) and firestarter (a firewall, the other ones might use a different firewall or a firewall GUI).
After getting Fluxbox installed (I found Openbox started slower than Fluxbox, somehow), I have also installed these:
Internet (you can run these on Windows too):
- Opera (don't even think about Firefox, Kazehakase might not be bad, but I think Opera's better)
- Claws-Mail (like Outlook Express, maybe a little better)
- I used meebo for IM, but perhaps Pidgin be fast enough
Office:
- if you need a full featured office suite, then OpenOffice.org is the way to go, otherwise stick to
- Abiword for word processing
- Gnumeric for spreadsheets
- home accounting can be done, there seem to be two decent alternatives, but since I don't have the need to do so yet, I haven't tested them
Multimedia:
- mplayer - actually handles movie AND music playback fairly smoothly, although you might want someting like xmms (it's like the good old Winamp) for music playback
mplayer can also play your DVDs, even though I'm not sure it's enabled out of the box with the above distributions due to legal reasons
Image editing:
- nothing beats the GIMP here, (un)fortunately, it's not too much of a resource hog, though
- for image viewing, it entirely depends on what you want: if only a simple image viewer, then even qiv might do, if you want a strip with thumbnails, then GQView is still fairly swift, I didn't go further than that
File management:
- XFE is like a swiss knife, really. It's very fast, enables you to manipulate many kinds of archives, it's almost like Windows Explorer on steroids (alright, it doesn't have a slideshow feature, which I almost never use anyway. If you want thumbnails, GQView might server you better)
- Thunar is still light enough for most of these oldies, makes a good pair with Squeeze (an archive manager) and Scite (a text editor, runs on Windows too).
System configuration is a little different in each of the above distributions.
Arch has no GUI tools, for example, but almost all configuration I needed to change was done in a single file (except for X server configuration).
The other ones should have GUI tools for almost everything.
Of course, there are more Linux distributions and if you feel like going alternative, you can choose more full featured distributions, like Fedora, PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu or even go for a BSD instead of Linux, with PC-BSD (frickin' fast!) or DesktopBSD.
Any comments?
Since it seems that quite a lot of people is buying new computers these days, I've been wondering what you lot do with older machines that used to run Windows 98, ME, or Windows 2000.
Windows 98 and ME aren't supported by Microsoft at all now. Support for Windows 2000 should end completely in 2010.
So if you have a Pentium II 350 MHz or faster with at least 128 MB of RAM, you might get Linux running on it fairly swiftly.
I have succesully configured and run (fairly swiftly too) Linux with some up to date apps on a Pentium II 350 MHz with 192 MB of RAM, a 20 GB HDD (smaller one should do too, depends on what you'll install) and a Geforce FX5700 (don't laugh, it was the only decent spare one I had at the time).
I have used Arch Linux on it because I do have sufficient Linux experience to handle it.
If you've never used Linux before and you'd like to use it on an older machine, perhaps TinyME, PCFluxboxOS or Fluxbuntu would be better for you.
The most critical part of making this real is what software you run on these old boxes.
Since Arch allows me to install pretty much only what I really want and need (with dependencies), I only installed the basic stuff, enabled networking, hal, dbus (don't worry, the other Linux distributions I suggested above run these by default) and firestarter (a firewall, the other ones might use a different firewall or a firewall GUI).
After getting Fluxbox installed (I found Openbox started slower than Fluxbox, somehow), I have also installed these:
Internet (you can run these on Windows too):
- Opera (don't even think about Firefox, Kazehakase might not be bad, but I think Opera's better)
- Claws-Mail (like Outlook Express, maybe a little better)
- I used meebo for IM, but perhaps Pidgin be fast enough
Office:
- if you need a full featured office suite, then OpenOffice.org is the way to go, otherwise stick to
- Abiword for word processing
- Gnumeric for spreadsheets
- home accounting can be done, there seem to be two decent alternatives, but since I don't have the need to do so yet, I haven't tested them
Multimedia:
- mplayer - actually handles movie AND music playback fairly smoothly, although you might want someting like xmms (it's like the good old Winamp) for music playback
mplayer can also play your DVDs, even though I'm not sure it's enabled out of the box with the above distributions due to legal reasons
Image editing:
- nothing beats the GIMP here, (un)fortunately, it's not too much of a resource hog, though
- for image viewing, it entirely depends on what you want: if only a simple image viewer, then even qiv might do, if you want a strip with thumbnails, then GQView is still fairly swift, I didn't go further than that
File management:
- XFE is like a swiss knife, really. It's very fast, enables you to manipulate many kinds of archives, it's almost like Windows Explorer on steroids (alright, it doesn't have a slideshow feature, which I almost never use anyway. If you want thumbnails, GQView might server you better)
- Thunar is still light enough for most of these oldies, makes a good pair with Squeeze (an archive manager) and Scite (a text editor, runs on Windows too).
System configuration is a little different in each of the above distributions.
Arch has no GUI tools, for example, but almost all configuration I needed to change was done in a single file (except for X server configuration).
The other ones should have GUI tools for almost everything.
Of course, there are more Linux distributions and if you feel like going alternative, you can choose more full featured distributions, like Fedora, PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu or even go for a BSD instead of Linux, with PC-BSD (frickin' fast!) or DesktopBSD.
Any comments?
and it saves all his data on the HP in his own account, I'm well chuffed really, not only because I found a use for the old hardware but It works 
