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Raz · Thu Jun 07, 2007 2:05 am

Hello once again tech report. I am currently in the process of deciding if i want to try ubuntu on a very old system that I have. I believe is a 933 mhz intel CPU. With Windows millenium edition on it at the moment. I'm just curious about somthing. On the ubuntu site they have a thing called Xubuntu which is designed for older machines which can be found here: http://www.xubuntu.org/
The old machine we have is from maybe... 98... I'm wondering if there's any way to tell if xubuntu wouldn't work on it? or should i just give it a go and hope for the best?

Thanks in advance, Raz

Usacomp2k3 · Thu Jun 07, 2007 2:08 am

Burn a live-cd and give it a whirl!
http://torrent.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/relea ... so.torrent

BTW, the difference with XUbuntu is that it uses the Xfce GUI as opposed to Kubuntu's KDE, or Ubuntu's Gnome. They say that Xfce is lighter on the resources. So it's not a matter of it being more likely to support the older hardware from a driver-level, but rather it will run better on a slower machine.

Raz · Thu Jun 07, 2007 2:18 am

Hey thanks for the fast response Usacomp2k3 I appreciate it. I give it a whirl tomorrow

Nitrodist · Thu Jun 07, 2007 2:54 am

Torrent? Direct HTTP is so much faster.

http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu-iso/DV ... p-i386.iso

StarkMjolk · Thu Jun 07, 2007 3:59 am

Most older systems run well in ubuntu. I had a P3 700MHz laptop with ubuntu earlier, and it ran Ubuntu smoothly. This was with 576MB of RAM though, and I'd recoomenend 512MB for heavier firefox usage.

If you want Ubuntu or Xubuntu or Kubuntu, you have to descide yourself. But I think all would run fine on a 933 MHz CPU if the rest of the hardware is simular in spec.

Raz · Thu Jun 07, 2007 9:49 am

Cool guys thanks for the info, I appreciate it

Klyith · Thu Jun 07, 2007 3:31 pm

I run ubuntu on a p3-800 laptop w/ 256mb ram. The gnome wm works pretty well, though I do disable the evolution background service. But I use xfce most of the time, it's much snappier. Xfce is also quite easy to configure for me.

I don't like the xfce file manager much. But I'm still running ubuntu 6 (also a conversion job from regular ubuntu, not xubuntu)... It looks like that has improved a lot with ubuntu 7 / xfce 4.4+.

Raz · Fri Jun 08, 2007 5:05 pm

I just thought of somthing that might be a problem. The old system we have is a HP Desktop. Ive never tried to format a pre built desktop from a company with a different OS. Will this still work?

fishmahn · Fri Jun 08, 2007 9:46 pm

Should be no problem. I have a machine running Ubuntu 6 on an HP Pavilion w/ a Celeron 700.

Mike.

Raz · Fri Jun 08, 2007 11:31 pm

Alrighty thanks man

MBIlover · Wed Jun 20, 2007 1:58 pm

Loaded it up on an ancient PIII-500, 256 machine (eMonster "best gaming machine on the planet", ha!!!). Took several tries to get the disc to load up correctly. Using FF and IM uses up 25-35% of system resources. Fun to play with, but definitely not my main system. Win98SE on it before was actually much faster and I almost miss it...almost. :lol:

jonbey · Sat Jun 23, 2007 5:20 pm

Hi

Is the download above one of those operating systems that run from a disk? I am very new to all that is Linux. A friend suggested that I try Ubuntu, and also mentioned that you can get disks which allow you to run the OS direct so that you can have a play before installing. Is this one of those?

Cheers,

Jon.

bitvector · Sat Jun 23, 2007 7:31 pm

jonbey wrote:
Is the download above one of those operating systems that run from a disk? I am very new to all that is Linux. A friend suggested that I try Ubuntu, and also mentioned that you can get disks which allow you to run the OS direct so that you can have a play before installing. Is this one of those?

An OS configured to run from the CD rather than installing it is called a LiveCD. Ubuntu has a LiveCD but there's also many other Linux LiveCD choices. In particular, I'd suggest trying Knoppix. I've found Knoppix to be much better as a LiveCD than Ubuntu's. Now Ubuntu is a great distro to install on your hard drive, but Knoppix is sort of a gold standard for LiveCDs.

There are also a lot of "themed" LiveCDs tailored towards specific applications or uses (e.g. security-oriented, MythTV oriented, game oriented, rescue oriented, etc.).

d2brothe · Sat Jun 23, 2007 8:07 pm

Heh, 933 Mhz intel CPU, thats faster than most of the machines in my house. I still use several p3 450s for various things including my linux box, which I installed Knoppix on years ago. Certainl,y should be able to get some form of linux to run on it. Although, if its currently running ME, upgrading to say windows 2000, or even windows XP (yes that machine with sufficient ram should run XP fine) would be an enormous improvement to begin with.

monts · Sun Jun 24, 2007 7:19 am

You shouldn't have any troubles. I'm running Gentoo with the lastest GNOME ( 2.18 ) on a secondary machine, P3 733 512MB Ram onboard graphics, its ok so ubuntu or xubuntu will be fine.

I've turned from GNOME to Xfce on my main machine and just waiting for xfce to emerge on that older machine to run it on that (emerging that many packages is an overnight job and hoping the power doesn't go out)

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