Niki Kovacs wrote: > Dmitry a écrit : >> Hi. >> >> Could you please give me advice about issue described below. >> >> My friends have to use a PC with old hardware for a few months. They've >> got 128MB of RAM, 20 GB hard drive; Pentium 3 processor. >> >> At the moment they have windows xp running on it, but it's very slow. >> >> What are the system requirements for CentOS 2 or any other version of >> this OS that may be suitable? >> >> Can you recommend any other Linux distro that would be easy to install >> and to use? > > Yes. CentOS 5. Start with a minimal install (base system). Install and > configure X. Only install packages you really need, be sure to > deactivate all unnecessary services. Go for XFCE, IceWM, Fluxbox or some > other lighter window manager. This sort of configuration is running in > my neighbour's home, I installed it for them on their old PIII-500 with > 128 MB RAM. > To add - I run CentOS 5 just fine on an IBM Thinkpad T20 (700MHz PIII when plugged in, 550MHz on battery) with 384MB of ram. I ran it just fine on 256MB until one of the ram modules died. I then ran it on 128MB painfully while waiting for the replacement (256MB) chip to arrive. Note though that I'm running the full gnome GUI. Disable JavaScript except when you absolutely must have it, browsing with JS / flash enabled crashes low memory machines. Don't use OpenOffice - AbiWord an Gnumeric both do well on low memory machines. For that matter, so does LaTeX as it just uses a text editor until you are ready to compile your document, but LaTeX has quite a learning curve. If the 20GB HD is a 5400RPM (probably is) try to get a 7200RPM drive - that's what I did in my old laptop and the difference was night and day. If it is a desktop, and you do replace the drive with faster spinning, if there's room to continue using the older drive - you can use the older drive as dedicated swap, which will help a lot. You don't need 20GB of swap, you can partition it, but don't use the non swap for anything much other than storage of stuff you don't need to access often. This, btw, is what I love about Linux. Old hardware stays useful for much longer, reducing waste in the land fills.