XP or Linux: Which one for an old computer?


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Well guys, I tried #! and I don't think It's my cup of tea. :(

Next month I should be getting some more (newer) old parts from him:

- AM2 Mobo (No Overclocking or virtulization on it, unfortunatly)

- Dual core 64 bit athlon @ 2 GHz

- 2 GB DDR2 ram

I'll use my 1GB GDDR3 NVIDIA 250 that I just replaced with my 550TI and I also finally found a 120 GB SATA drive. I'll probobly throw Kubuntu 12.10 or maybe even Mint on it who knows--anything but vanilla Ubuntu. I'll probobly have to get a few 120mm and 140mm fans, but those are pretty cheap.

As for the current one we're talking about, I'll keep XP on it until next month. Then it'll go to hardware heaven and chill with my G4 PowerMac and my 500MHz Slot A. :p

what happened with #!? :(

you do have a lot of options.. archbang is also good, there are others xfce arch based as well.. this linux lite seems great by looking at it!

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what happened with #!? :(

I installed my graphics driver and it positioned the left half of my screen in the center. I googled and probably spent 2 hours on it, so I just said Eff it. Good thing I installed it on a spare 40 instead of wiping my XP.

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The hardware you have should be good enough for you not to need an ultra light Linux distribution, at a push you could even run Windows 7 on it with a low end DX9 card, I've seen 7 on Pentium 4 2.4 GHZ machines (similar performance to this machine) and they handle it fine. Windows 8 however will not be a possibility, the Athlon XP processors do not support NX or SSE2

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I installed my graphics driver and it positioned the left half of my screen in the center. I googled and probably spent 2 hours on it, so I just said Eff it. Good thing I installed it on a spare 40 instead of wiping my XP.

I still say you should dual boot- possibly use the puppy.exe install that way it installs similar to the wubi install. Where it becomes a compressed image inside a folder and keeps the WinXP boot loader.
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I know that people are clinging to XP with fuzzy happy memories but realistically...let it go for obvious reasons. That machine of yours will fly with just about any distro you choose.

I have my favorite distros but I think people should try a few to know what 'fits'. Linux is like buying shoes IMO. You will know when you find your fit. Mine was Ubuntu (7 years) now Mint 13.

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