

Ask HN: What OS should I use to to revive an 8yr old PC (1GB RAM) - wesleyzhao

I want to just be able to connect it to my TV and watch Youtube and Hulu.<p>Already tried (and didn't like):
Ubuntu 11.10 (open to other version)
Chromium
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johnny22
I have fedora 16 running on a similiar laptop (dell inspiron 8600). On a
laptop like that, i think the graphics card is what will make the most
noticable difference. Hopefully you have an intel or ati card with supported
drivers. Nvidia let their drivers for that era go "legacy" and nouveau (the
open nvidia driver) might be lacking even basic hardware acceleration.

Sadly, Windows XP might actually be your best bet if have an nvidia card and
you want to do things with flash and expect it to be somewhat performant.

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senko
I like running Linux Mint LXDE edition on my Atom/ION machine with a 1G of
memory. It's based on Ubuntu (I think the latest version is based on 11.04),
but uses LXDE, which is the lightest "full" UI that I could find. I put Chrome
on it and it works fairly well - not exactly snappy, but sufficient for Web
browsing.

The plus side is that all the software that's in Ubuntu is still available
(from the repositories), which might not be the case with some other
minimalistic distros.

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DanBC
TinyCore if you want minimal and hard work
(<http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/welcome.html>) {Damn Small Linux is
dead. TinyCore is sort of the result.}

Puppy if you want, well, I dunno, but it has a loyal userbase
([http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview%20and%20Getting%20Starte...](http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview%20and%20Getting%20Started.htm))

or there are a gajillion "minimal" versions of Ubuntu. CrunchBang is one, but
there are many more.

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wesleyzhao
thanks!

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Typhon
Some lighter weight Linux, I'd say. See : [http://tuxradar.com/content/whats-
best-lightweight-linux-dis...](http://tuxradar.com/content/whats-best-
lightweight-linux-distro)

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willpower101
To be honest a minimal version of windows 7 will run better than xp on a
system that old. I mean, if you just want to setup something with the least
amount of hassle.

Get a good video card though.

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pdenya
I have windows xp running on a 7 year old PC that was low end at the time.
Hulu and Youtube do pretty well on it but netflix chokes. If I were going to
set it up again I'd probably go with Ubuntu.

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wesleyzhao
I actually had the exact same scenario! Then I tried installing Ubuntu w/ Wubi
and it corrupted my Windows partition. So I wiped it clean and wanted to do
something else. Ended up going with Xubuntu. No netflix :(

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jwmollman
I used Debian testing with openbox/tint2 on my Toshiba NB505 for a while. It
has a 1.66GHz Atom with 1GB of RAM. It ran pretty snappy.

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octopus
You could try Ubuntu 10.04LTS, depending on your taste (habits) I think
Windows XP will do just fine on your 1GB PC.

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LarryMade
An older Ubuntu could be more pleasurable, like 10.10, then you can use the
classic gnome UI.

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0x12
I use Ubuntu NBR on machines like this and it seems to work ok.

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wesleyzhao
hows ubuntu nbr vs jolicloud does anyone know?

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Random_Person
ZenWalk has always been my choice for older hardware.

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ra
Arch linux with a lightweight WM or framebuffer.

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chsonnu
lubuntu

