I had one sat under my desk at home - 800MHz processor and 26somethingK RAM, I got a good deal recently on a megasquirt so I thought I'd try
bringing it back to life as it's got parallel and serial connectors......XP (even cut down versions) just had the hard drive light flickering
constantly whatever I did........thought I'd give Linux a go and after a couple of false starts I came across Lucid Puppy 525 Linux. The old
thing is amazingly now quicker than Mrs Beddows's 2 year old 2.6MHZ laptop running on XP for most things! As a bonus Linux isn't nearly as
geeky to use as I thought it would be and it's cost me about 25 quid and a dead laptop to get a slightly oversized but very usable netbook 
Double bonus is that I gained huge brownie points at work today by being able to get one of the directors at work's photos he thought he'd
lost forever off a laptop his kids had 'modified' by downloading virus/porn type stuff just by sticking in a Linux CD 
i'm interested in this. Ive got a toughbook CF-28 with 256mb RAM and its painfulls slow when using MS. how did you upgrade? did you remove everything and start again? Can i set up another partition for LINUX?
I've had a poor experience running Linux on a lower spec. machine; an 800MHz Duron with 512MB RAM and onboard graphics; XP ran very nicely on it,
but Ubuntu, SUSE and one of the tiny Linux distributions were so slow as to be unusable. Possibly a compatibility problem I guess.
Still, it's been a few years since I last tried Linux, it's possibly time to spend another day or two trying it again.
i too i would like to know
I've just cobbled together a PC for the workshop out of old bits (1.6GHz single core, 512 RAM, 40Gb HDD etc) and I put Ubuntu 10.10 on it. Works
like a charm, and stops me getting oily hands all over the 'good' computer. All I really need it for is to access the web and view PDFs.
It detected all of the hardware immediately including an old Belkin WiFi adaptor so I didn't need to do very much at all to get it up and
running.
To those asking how to do it: You just need to download Ununtu (or another version of Linux if you'd prefer), burn it to a CD and then boot the
old slow PC/laptop from this CD. When it starts up, you'll get options to install it over the top of everything else, install it alongside
whatever is already there on a new partition, or just run it from the CD to try it out. It's all fairly simple and the on-screen instructions
are dead easy to follow.
Ed.
quote:
Originally posted by MikeRJ
I've had a poor experience running Linux on a lower spec. machine; an 800MHz Duron with 512MB RAM and onboard graphics; XP ran very nicely on it, but Ubuntu, SUSE and one of the tiny Linux distributions were so slow as to be unusable. Possibly a compatibility problem I guess.
Still, it's been a few years since I last tried Linux, it's possibly time to spend another day or two trying it again.
quote:
Originally posted by D Beddows
I had one sat under my desk at home - 800MHz processor and 26somethingK RAM, I got a good deal recently on a megasquirt so I thought I'd try bringing it back to life as it's got parallel and serial connectors......XP (even cut down versions) just had the hard drive light flickering constantly whatever I did........thought I'd give Linux a go and after a couple of false starts I came across Lucid Puppy 525 Linux. The old thing is amazingly now quicker than Mrs Beddows's 2 year old 2.6MHZ laptop running on XP for most things! As a bonus Linux isn't nearly as geeky to use as I thought it would be and it's cost me about 25 quid and a dead laptop to get a slightly oversized but very usable netbook
Double bonus is that I gained huge brownie points at work today by being able to get one of the directors at work's photos he thought he'd lost forever off a laptop his kids had 'modified' by downloading virus/porn type stuff just by sticking in a Linux CD
I'm going to try linux out again soon on an old pc ^_^
[Edited on 22-10-2011 by Benzine]
I use ubuntu 10.10 no probs so far , use it at work on Laptop and at home on desktop
print ca be a bit of a pain if you printer is not supported but that's about it
I'll be honest, until a couple of weeks ago I thought Linux was for people who needed to get out more and was all about typing obscure
commands at a flashing cursor but it's really not and the experience has been something of a revelation!
All you need to do is download a version of Linux (which can be a bit trial and error to find one that has everything you need - and that works well
on your computer if it's getting on a bit it has to be said) burn it to a CD, set your computer to boot from the CD drive and bobs your uncle!
When it boots up (which only takes a couple of minutes) you have a desktop which isn't a million miles away from a windows one, most of the
programs you'll ever need are already installed and it will have recognised most, if not all your hardware! AND it's all free!!!!!!
It'll probably take you a couple of days to get used to it not being Windows but it really isn't that hard.
I tried loads of Linux varieties but Lucid Puppy 525 seems to works best on my laptop and has everything I need so if you fancy just trying Linux out
I can recommend it. Whatever Windows version you have already installed wont be affected in the slightest either so it's win win really. I will
say that if your computer expertise just stretches to pushing the 'on' button Linux probably isn't for you but you certainly don't
need to be a computer geek either.
I have Puppy Linux on a USB disk - it really works well on an aged Toshiba laptop I've got.
I tried Android on my Netbook running off a USB drive result was blindingly fast on the internet but not a lot of good for anything else and no wifi driver only wired Ethernet.
Ive downloaded three versions of Linux, and plan to try them on my old toughbook after the car is all tuned up.