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[gregor]

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (supported until 2013) takes 130 MB on boot. can go down to 110 with some tweaks
Lubuntu is the lightweight in the familly. takes about 80-90 MB ram on boot.

Kubuntu 11.10 (the new one comming out in October) will have low fat version for odler maschines.
Ubuntu 11.04 (in repositories) Ubuntu 10.10 and higher -- will have Unity 2D for older systems (i.e. unity with no compiz - looks the same).

Of lighter and user friendly distributions you have Linux Mint Lxde (uses LE same as Lubuntu).

The realyl good, stable, light distribution is Chrunchbang. Don't be averted becase of their strange humor (making maschine go crunch, bang!). It's actually a solid distribution based on Debian Stable. But with some tweaks to make it easier for users to install and use (it comes with XFCE and Openbox). Xfce is like in Xubuntu only uses a bit less resources here. Takes about 80-90MB on boot i think. Openbox is even lighter on resources but also a bit strange/minimalistic.

If you have 512 MB you can easilly go with Xubuntu and that should leave you plenty to spare.

[Tracker]

A bit late with the reply, I can't resist to mention I have an Nvidia GeForce MX 440 (SE, maybe?), which has 64 MB RAM. I don't believe that would be the problem though, as that amount must be enough. Still, it's kinda odd that my PC that was quite good if not high-end in 2003 can't run Battlefield 1942 without crashes. But what bothers me now is to find a suitable laptop that would last for a few years...

[B-Wolf]

If the graphics card is built into the motherboard, it's using 64 MB of memory from your running memory, but I'm not sure if that's the problem anymore. 68 MB isn't really enough to slow down your computer to much, and 512 MB of memory should run Windows XP just fine, unless you've got several programs running at once.

On my old computer, I had Windows XP SP2 and after I upgraded to SP3 a few of my games preformed poorly. At first I didn't think it was SP3 that was causing my games to be slow, but after I uninstalled it, my games were running smoothly again. I also read on several other forums that people who install SP3 often noticed slowdowns in their games. Once again it's just a theory and I don't advise uninstalling SP3 unless you know what you're doing.

The Specs of my old computer were:

Processor – AMD Athlon 2x 2.21 ghz.
Memory – 2 gigabytes of DDR memory
Graphics – ATI HD 4670 series graphics card with 1 gigabyte of memory

I've never bought a laptop, but someone told me that Asus brand laptops are good for gaming (the batteries supposedly didn't last to long on them) and Alienware is also a good brand for gaming (If you can afford it that is).

[florianix]

Hello there,

sorry for joining this discussion very late.
I am looking for a Linux distribution that will run with minimum RAM (<=256MB).
My systema are (dual) PII-400 that only have 256MB of Rambus :-( RAM. Therefore a memory uprgade would be somehow expensive.

XUbuntu doesn't even install and does not seem to be too lightweight compared to Ubuntu...

Does anybody have experience which distributions need how much RAM?
Preferably something with XFCE.


Have a nice evening.

[KrazeeXXL]

256 MB isn't much to work with. For me personally 512 MB is the absolute minimum. But according to this site it should be possible:

XFCE Wiki - Minimum Requirements

[florianix]

Originally Posted by KrazeeXXL

256 MB isn't much to work with. For me personally 512 MB is the absolute minimum. But according to this site it should be possible:

XFCE Wiki - Minimum Requirements

Right you are. But because of the RAMBUS RAM, an upgrade wouldn't make sense. I don't understand who pays those incredibly high prices for it still.
Upgrading the whole PC seems to be cheaper.
Really a pitty that there seem to be a lot of distributions which are after all not as leightweight as the used components promise to be.

Thank you very much for the link. )
I'll try some of those distributions.

[gregor]

Originally Posted by Tracker

A bit late with the reply, I can't resist to mention I have an Nvidia GeForce MX 440 (SE, maybe?), which has 64 MB RAM. I don't believe that would be the problem though, as that amount must be enough. Still, it's kinda odd that my PC that was quite good if not high-end in 2003 can't run Battlefield 1942 without crashes. But what bothers me now is to find a suitable laptop that would last for a few years...

i ran older Ubuntu on 16MB Ati rage and it worked just fine. only i didn't get any special effects.

[gregor]

Originally Posted by florianix

Hello there,

sorry for joining this discussion very late.
I am looking for a Linux distribution that will run with minimum RAM (<=256MB).
My systema are (dual) PII-400 that only have 256MB of Rambus :-( RAM. Therefore a memory uprgade would be somehow expensive.

XUbuntu doesn't even install and does not seem to be too lightweight compared to Ubuntu...

Does anybody have experience which distributions need how much RAM?
Preferably something with XFCE.


Have a nice evening.

XFCE might be a stretch due to processor. You can give old chrunchbang a try (new image has only openbox and XFCE needs to be installed manually). you can also give puppy linux or Slitaz a try. porblem could be support for old processor like yours in kernel. latest ubuntu etc dropped the support (only works with i686 and above) so you can forget about those (you have i586).

[florianix]

Originally Posted by gregor

... latest ubuntu etc dropped the support (only works with i686 and above) so you can forget about those (you have i586).

I am a little bit confused...
thought i586 was the Pentium 1, i686 was Pentium Pro.
The Pentium 2 came later...
Thought it was more or less using the same architecture/core.