OS Choice for a Old Computer

I recently received a Dell OptiPlex GX1 running Windows 98 with 128Mb of Ram (Pentium 2 ~350MHz) I was wondering if anyone has any ideas what OS I should put on it. It has Windows 98 SE but that got messed up and I don't like windows anyway. I am thinking Linux but am not sure what Distro to get (I have tried Damn Small Linux but it feels to rough around the edges and won't work with my HP Deskjet 3322) I really want to put it to use because it is my only "personal" computer (the rest in my house are shared) Mainly I want to do Web browsing (Firefox) Email (IMAP with Gmail) Play Music (MP4 and MP3 files) and use Word, PowerPoint, and Excel Equivalents (not just a text editor like DSL). I know it won't be like my Core 2 Duo iMac but I need something for it (I don't really want to fix windows) I am new to linux but Learn fast. Please Help.

Tags: 3322, chris, computer, damn, dell, geeks, hp, linux, old, os

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Permalink Reply by Branhower on December 17, 2008 at 6:01pm: Certainly there are some user-made Linux drivers for the Deskjet 3322?

Anyway, I heard Slackware wasn't too taxing on system resources, but that's a text-based OS.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Greg De Santis on December 17, 2008 at 6:03pm: At work we had several of the same model that we had to upgrade, P2 350MHz to P3 600MHz. What we ended up doing to all of them was to upgrade the memory to the max and put on Windows XP Pro SP2 at the time and they all remained in service. On some of the models we had to upgrade the BIOS to see all of the RAM. I have loaded Windows XP Pro on systems as slow as P2 266MHz with 256MB of ram and that system is still in service even though it does not get used as much today.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by MooseStuff on December 17, 2008 at 6:06pm: i know thats what xubuntu is "made" for but just do a google search and see what comes up; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ian Walker on December 17, 2008 at 6:14pm: Another vote for Ubuntu :)

Take care.

Ian; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by medinamatt on July 13, 2009 at 4:52pm: ubuntu needs 256 MB of RAM.

trust me.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Mateus Augusto Lopes on December 17, 2008 at 6:35pm: Windows XP; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ian Walker on December 17, 2008 at 7:11pm: I think XP might struggle a bit although it would work. Why not try Windows ME or Windows 2000?

Take care.

Ian; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Mateus Augusto Lopes on December 17, 2008 at 7:24pm: Puppy Linux, the OS is only 94MB, so it's light and will run well, even on a old machine.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Shtanto on December 23, 2008 at 7:01pm: Yeah, I ran 2k on a similar machine (Dell, 300mhz, 3 sticks of 128MB RAM). Response times were really good.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by pimpsahoy on December 17, 2008 at 7:42pm: I have a more powerful machine then that (1.00GHZ and 1GB of RAM) and it struggles to run Xubuntu and Ubuntu. Don't use either of those, it will be even slower.; ▶ Reply to This