EggXpert

I'm going to trade my recently replaced laptop with my brother for his compaq desktop (well he hasn't agreed to it but when I'm offering him a better computer for free I think I hold the cards ;) )

 The thing has roughly:

2.4ghz P4 (LG775 socket, not sure about the core)

512 DDR RAM

I think intel integrated gpu but again, don't remember which one

large HDD, about 250gb (well, large considering the age of the compy)

It also has a TV tuner card in it which I'll probably transplant into a different PC, unless I can find a program to utilize it in linux.

Basically, what's the ideal distro for a computer with these specs? My brother has attempted to run the latest version of Ubuntu on it but it doesn't run much better than XP SP2. I'm just using it as a hobby computer, playing around with linux and surfing. Would be cool if I could use it as a media center but with only half a gig of RAM I think this could be challanging (and I've checked on buying more RAM for it and it's quite expensive due to its dated nature). I'd have to replace RAM since Compaq thought it would be wise to shove 4 128mb sticks into it instead of 2 256mb's. 

Mostly seeing if I can salvage this thing without having to put much, if any, money into it. I'm a novice when it comes to Linux but have tried using it before. Just found it frustrating to dual-boot so now that I potentially have a computer I can make a Linux box I thought I'd give it more attention.

Personally I will go with XP but if you are going to run Linux   here are some useful info:

 http://www.eggxpert.com/forums/thread/399992.aspx

it might be Intel 915 or 945 chipset, but it will be okay.

If I can find a program that will let me change the boot sequence of XP and Linux then I'll keep a copy of XP on there, but I'd like to use it for Linux playing around. I already have a gaming desktop and a nice new laptop so this is back-up, back-up. Basically I just want to play around with it instead of having my parents throw it out.

I use to have a CD of a program that can change the order, but I dont remember the name of the program and I have a bunch of CD's I've burned stuff to that I never labelled... makes me feel pretty smart. :/

Hi Rfarr, My daughter's PC is running PClinuxOS with an Athlon 1.00 GHz and 640 of RAM. She  uses it to play DVD, videos and Linux games.

About using XP or Linux, you can use both. All the computers in my home are double booted.  The secret is to first install Windows XP, and use the XP set up to create two partitions. Leaving the second without formatting. In the first you install XP, then when you install Linux it's more easy.

The dual boot is simple with PCLinuxOS. After one uses the Draklive to install it, one goes into the PCLOS control Panel PCC and change the bootloader anyway wanted. I made you a couple of screen shoots:

In this first screen one can change how many seconds before the system boots.

http://i726.photobucket.com/albums/ww268/wow_clan/setup-boot-1.png

And on this one, you can see this machine is currently triple booted with PCLOS, XP and Vista.

http://i726.photobucket.com/albums/ww268/wow_clan/setup-boot-2.png

I can change the default (the OS the system automatically boots into) at any time. Even change the name it displays in the main menu. One of my customers didn't want their children to know Windows was still in their computer, so I just change the windows name for her name, and password protected it.

Another thing you can do after you install it, is to remove the programs you don't need, install the ones you want, and make your own remaster. Like with XP, you can stop the services you don't need to start with the system. Making it faster.

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Running Debian 5 on an old dual 500mhz sparc box and it runs fine, I really only use it to play doom any more but it does that well and play mp3 searchs the web, etc, etc, etc.

Its not the distro so much as the X enviroment, All the MAIN distros will run fine.(Opensuse, fedora, ubuntu, debian, redhat, slackware) And thats really not that old of hardware. Though I wouldn't run KDE 4, just like you won't run vista ultimate.

XFCE might be a good choice, but if your ok with getting technical and want more speed something like Fluxbox would fly on that hardware. Literally fly and if you read though the documentation on fluxbox you can make it look really sick.

WITH UBUNTU, try the following commands

apt-get install fluxbox 

to install fluxblox

apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

to install xfce with ubuntu tools

or 

apt-get install xfce4

to install plain jain xfce, (which is pretty nice)

To change X enviroment go to gdm or kdm (the login screen) and change sessions.

Click options, sessions

And select the session you want to run(fluxbox, xfce) and when you log in it will ask make this default and select ok or apply(can't remember which on off the top of my head)

Good luck

(on opensuse it would be zypper install xfce4, and fedora yum install xfce4 though the package name could be wrong but a quick search

apt-cache search xfce
yum search xfce
zypper search xfce

respectively)