a lightweight, user friendly linux?

J

Julia Ivvv

New Member
Hello, I'm hoping someone can give me some advice here.

My brother has an older PC that he just uses for the internet and email, that's it. I believe it's a pentium 2 333 with 256mb ram, but I don't remember exactly. It's old anyway, but it works. Currently he has windows 2000 installed on it, but it's having some annoying problems that probably aren't worth the time to troubleshoot. Since I don't have a win2k install disc, I thought maybe linux would be a good option.

Now, my brother isn't a computer expert by any means, but he knows what he's doing and doesn't have much trouble learning new things. Is there a linux distro suitable for this purpose? Something light on resources and straightforward to use, and a web browser that's actually going to run on that system (which may be faster than I stated, I don't recall).

Thanks!
 
ubuntu is known to be friendly, and it doesn't require a killer machine.

though if your bro is not so computer savy I suggest that he run a KDE version of Linux, like kubuntu since it is very similar to windows.

Once, and if, he get comfortable he can go to the more advanced distros of linux.
 
I recommend Freespire. I haven't tried it yet but I am planning to. I have seen some pictures of it and it looks VERY user friendly. And apparently there is no commands needed.

Hope this helps
 
soccerdude said:
I recommend Freespire. I haven't tried it yet but I am planning to. I have seen some pictures of it and it looks VERY user friendly. And apparently there is no commands needed.

Hope this helps
Click to expand...

yeah they removed the use of command line so installing software is done via CNR. so no need for apt-get this or apt-get that..lol
 
Try Xubuntu. As far as Puppy goes, I used it once and I liked it, but that was the first Linux distro I installed on my PC. There are a lot of errors in Puppy. Freespire will be much to slow on your brother's system (I tried it on mine and it was slow). I like Xubuntu a lot, I have an old Dell (in the sig) and it runs very well on that. Mine has a Pentium 3 processor, but there seems to be no reason why it wouldn't work on your brother's rig. Xubuntu is extremely easy to use and I highly recommend it.

~Jordan
 
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Simon@Linux
i have run it on better specs(amd k6 333~400 256mb) and it was still two slow to enjoy. might have been the hard drive.
 
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you may want to see if you can find a legacy version of Linux, I think I may have a CD set of SuSe 6.5 lying around somewhere, that would be about 8 years old probably. Or you can check this out

http://www.oldlinux.org/

Damn small linux is also a very minimal system, and are so of some of the knoppix based distros. The problem is with those is driver support may be nil to none depending on the older hardware.
 
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