Setting up for Linux - need advice

+1 for lite. It might be the best distro for those who want a smooth transition from XP to linux.

 

There isn't much "original equipment" in that computer I have a good tech & I tell him to keep it running no matter what.

 

Excellent, you will soon have been running 'that' box for 20 years. 'That' because as the components change, the computer becomes a new one by degrees.

I have found that GNU/Linux desktop performance depends on the video card as well as the raw processing power of the computer. It would help us to know what video card is fitted.

As fblais remarked, you may wish to avoid the 'heavier' graphical environments such as Cinnamon.

 

Check for PAE by going into BIOS and check your CPU specs.
Older processors without PAE (or where the PAE flag isn't read properly), won't run the latest versions of Ubuntu/Mint.

With the Intel Celeron (with Physical Address Extension/PAE) link and 2GB on the system Bellgamin uses, it's not relevant for him though.

 

AFAIK it is VIA/S3G UniChrome Pro IGP. Is that enough for Mint? If not, I can ask my Tech to upgrade as necessary [I am not interested in game capability, but I do want my box to have .. uh .. Linux capability. ]

 

Unichrome is adequate for Mate Desktop or LXDE, not so much for Cinnamon. It's pretty awful as video hardware goes.

In my very limited experience, ATI cards work very well with the open source driver, whereas nVidia cards require an epic struggle to get working right. Different story if you're a gamer, but since you're not, you can avoid that nuisance...

 

I'd post the model of the motherboard. But if it doesn't have PCI-E, you can still get a modern PCI graphic card like a GeForce GT 610.

Nvidia cards work alright with nouveau these days. But for either ATI/AMD or nvidia you can always install the official drivers.

 

No offense but this tech-speak about Video cards & motherboards etc is a bit off-putting to a non-technical computer user like myself. I have 4 friends with fairly old computers & they all installed Linux Mint without a hitch -- and they don't even know how to spell "video card".

Is this the sort of thing that makes some folks think that Linux is still too complex for "the rest of us"? If these hardware factors are such a major issue with Linux, why are users of Windows OS not confronted with them, I wonder?

 

The graphics card will affect what DE/WM you can run and how well it will run. Gnome, for example, says it should run on computers 4-5 years old; they're not very specific but you do need some basic 3D capabilities.

Either they are running an older version of Windows on older hardware or their hardware is sufficient. FWIW to run Windows Vista (and later) you need a DirectX 9 capable card.

 

There are many different Linux distros and several desktop environments available.
Some are more heavier and require more modern hardware.
That's why in a previous post I told you I was unsure Cinnamon would run well on your machine.
With older hardware, I'd stick with XFCE or MATE desktop environments.
LXDE is even more lighter, but too simplistic to my taste.
As for myself my favorite DE is still good ol' Gnome 2.

 

Because the hardware runs the OS/GUI/software. You mentioned an older machine- I'm trying to get an idea of how old while also offering suggestions. I run a Pentium III box with a PCI 520 myself which was also my first machine I ever got into Linux on. You saying you had a 1996 computer- you'd have people suggesting distros like DSL, or Tinycore. But cause you mentioned some of the other hardware being more modern, then people can suggest XFCE or other lightweight sort of stuff that'd still suit your older system while not being too lightweight.

Hardware is very important in picking out an OS. Just like you wouldn't run Windows 8 on a system built in the 90s. Cept with Linux there's versions made for all types of hardware.

 

TO ALL: I just ordered the following distros:

• Damn Small Linux 4.4.10
• antiX MX-14
• Tiny Core 5.2
• Crunchbang 11 {I love this distro's name!!! I just absolutely could NOT pass up giving it a trial.}
• Bodhi 2.4.0
• Legacy OS 2.1 LTS

I will have waaay too many distros to check them all out myself, so I'll give some of them to my tech guy to play with. Three reasons why I am buying too many: (1) I really want to select a good one. (2) I enjoy the idea that osDisc.com says that up to 40% of the payment for each order goes to fund open source developers & forums. (3) Messing with this sort of thing has become my #2 hobby because it is a LOT of fun!

QUESTION TO ALL: Is there a way to readily find out which distros are being actively supported/updated? (It seems that just about every distro has its own website with a "Donate" button. I want to be sure that I donate to only those distros which are being actively supported.)

My computer's box is old, but many of its internal parts are replacements. As keithpeter commented: "Excellent, you will soon have been running 'that' box for 20 years. 'That' because as the components change, the computer becomes a new one by degrees."

 

Well to start with you can look at when the latest stable version was released. Beware that some distros have long times between releases (like Debian Stable). Next see if the website has any recent news items. Finally you might want to visit the OS's forum (if it has one) and see if the developer actively posts or has made any other announcements (if different from the homepage). You might also want to judge if the forum has lot of user activity and what the community is like.

 

LXLE - I played with LXLE for a couple of hours. I like it. Could not get the mouse speed to slow down. I found the settings & set the mouse slider to the slowest possible setting. Doing that had zero effect. Surfed the internet for a while. I visited Wilders but couldn't login because my Password Manager is a Windows app & it wouldn't execute. I have several hundred passwords so I have not memorized any of them except for the password to activate my password manager. I must study how to use Wine in order to run Windows programs on Linux.

Zorin - At boot, Zorin gave the message: "Screen, graphics card, & input device settings could not be detected correctly." It then gave me a Yes/No option for "System Run in low graphics mode." I clicked "Yes". Zorin hung.

QUESTION TO ALL: If I use a really small Linux distro, such as Tiny Core, what am I giving up by not running one of the BIG distros?

@WSFuser - Good suggestions Very helpful. Thank you!

 

Out of curiosity, what program do you use for passwords? Also if the program lets you export your passwords to a file, you may consider switching to another program and then importing that file (if possible).

Possibly the number and variety of programs you can install from the distro's repositories. Also some of those tiny distros rely on using older versions of programs in order to be achieve a small size.

 

@ bellgamin:

my advice is to get a faster computer.
that thing you got is way too old.

the only half-decent OS i could run on the office computer, which is almost the same as yours, was Lubuntu 10.04.

i'd recommend you get a computer that can at least run XFCE.

 

Another Linux distro that's worth a mention is Tails:
https://tails.boum.org/

It's a privacy/security based distro- but it's not meant to install but just to be run from as a live cd (booted into ram). That might be a good one to get the feel down seeing as you wouldn't be installing anything.

I'd only use TinyCore or DSL on systems entirely made up of 90s parts- I don't even think they include Firefox (or have support for Flash), stuff like that. I've had DSL running on a 86mhz machine for instance. Both are great to play with but aren't really what you'd want for either a full time distro or a beginners distro. But I'd also still recommend them just because they're great at what they're made for- being lightweight and small.

When you start playing around with different Linux distros you'll start seeing differences in what they include and why.

edit

But, personally, I run Fedora i686 on my old Pentium III 1.4gh, 1gb ram system and either use Cinnamon or XFCE. So I think your system, like my Pentium III rig, is in that gray area of either using something like Tiny Core for speed, or something more beefy and full. Either or.

 

Excellent, *and* you have the services of a technician. I'm sure you will find something that works for you.

I asked about the video card because in my experience that component can have an effect on the way the desktop works in practice. I didn't mean to complexify the issue!

 

You can glean some information from http://distrowatch.com/
Take a look at the status information of a particular distro e.g. http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mint (Active) or http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=solusos (Discontinued). As WSFuser mentioned you can also check to see when the latest stable version was released, to do this scroll down the page for release dates.

Re: Passwords, I use Keepass on Mint, Fedora, openSUSE and Windows 8.1 and find it works well.

For Crunchbang I have always loved this distro as it uses very little ram and is quick and light. However I never mentioned it as it uses openbox and isn't much like a windows experience. It doesn't have a menu on the panel you have to right click the desktop for it and also updates have to be run manually in a terminal. LXDE or XFCE can easily be installed on it but I would suggest you try this distro after you have become familiar with another simpler one.

 

Thank you. I think I went to BIOS and saw no CPU specs. I ran Everest - there the info is not clear. This being Bellgamin's thread, let's not discuss now. I may post a separate thread.