Longhorn?

[Aloone_Jonez]

I managed to get suse 9.1 Free edition to run on my brothers old PC with 96 MB of SIMM ram, K-6 233 MHz, and a Hercules 3D Prophet 4000 XT PCI. For some reason win XP is running faster on his machine that Suse did.

KDE can be a bit slow, try using GNOME and if that's slow go for XFCE failing that use FluxBox.

[piratePenguin]

Lot's of old machines are fine after a RAM upgrade, what processor was it?

P1 233MHZ IIRC.
It's a pity I blew up the power suply (changed the voltage setting thing.. It was fun while it lasted (not long))

[toadlife]

Like the only new feature is the new improved file veiwing stuff. Will this mean i won't be able to run lobghorn on my main gaming machine w/ a 1.466 GHz AMD Athlon XP

From what I've read Longhorn will scale down easily machines much slower than that.

[Aloone_Jonez]

So is this bullshit then?

[toadlife]

So is this bullshit then?

Yep. The minimum requirements for all of the nice pretty animated graphics might be up there, but Microsoft has said that if you have a weak computer Longhorn will automatically turn off all of the eye candy in order to scale down. Bascially it longhorn will look just like XP/2000 if your computer is weak.

[WMD]

I've heard an MS developer quoted as saying, "Longhorn will run fine on a 1GHz computer with 256MB RAM."  I'm guessing that's with the stuff turned off.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Perhapps they've done their market reasearch properly this time. I bet the visit Linux forums and places like this and see what people bitch about most and try to improve it.

They've looked at the normal mimimum requirements for an average graphical Linux distro and monitored the resource usage and adjusted their new operating system to do as best as they can to match it. Don't for get Microsoft are very interested in Linux and the want to and probaly do understand it inside out.

[Jenda]

Of course they do - they have a whole department for it. LongBorn will be BIG, as we all heard here before...

[WMD]

They've looked at the normal mimimum requirements for an average graphical Linux distro and monitored the resource usage and adjusted their new operating system to do as best as they can to match it.

You don't need 1GHz and 256MB RAM to run Linux.  Really.  I ran Ubuntu at school on some 400MHz/128MB machines, and it was fine.  The same for SuSE 9.2 on an XP 2000+ with 128MB (the CPU is much, but that RAM amount sticks out a lot).

[RaZoR1394]

Gentoo can run with as low as P1's without any big problems. Just throw fluxbox on it and you're go. Installation compilation shouldn't be a problem as the Jackass project provides a pre compiled high optimized tar ball, which could save you days or weeks of installation on such a machine.

[bedouin]

'Usable' is highly subjective.  A few months ago I installed Debian on an old p100 with 32mb of ram.  It wasn't the fastest experience on earth (Firefox was a dog, Konqueror was acceptable), but if I was forced to, I don't think I'd have a huge problem accomplishing every day tasks on it.

[piratePenguin]

Try using XFCE or fluxbox?
KDE is just... Can't believe it even runs it :/

[RaZoR1394]

Haha, KDE on a P1 100mhz, lol. Except fluxbox and other BB modifications, WMII is also a good lightweight choice. It's a pretty new project and the screens show a look better than BB clones. HERE are some shots.

[Aloone_Jonez]

You don't need 1GHz and 256MB RAM to run Linux.  Really.  I ran Ubuntu at school on some 400MHz/128MB machines, and it was fine.  The same for SuSE 9.2 on an XP 2000+ with 128MB (the CPU is much, but that RAM amount sticks out a lot).

That's not average, look at the default configurations for Linspire, Mandrake, Fedora etc. I know Linux will run with way under 128MB of RAM even with KDE and no a swap space if you use Knoppix Gentoo or Slackware, but forget about it with the default installs of the aforementioned distros.

[WMD]

Ubuntu and SuSE are the same kind of thing: an easy-to-use Linux.  Yet they're somehow mystically faster?  Fair enough.  Let's see the system requirements as published for these distros.

Linspire:

PC with 800 MHz or higher processor**
128 MB of RAM (256 MB or higher recommended for best performance)**
Hard drive with 4 GB free space**
SVGA or higher resolution and monitor** (3-D graphics accelerator card for some games, screen savers, etc.)
CD-ROM or DVD drive, Keyboard & Mouse
Linspire-compatible sound card and speakers or headphones**
Linspire-compatible 56 Kbps hardware modem, cable modem, or DSL modem**
Ethernet card for Internet/LAN connectivity**

(Off topic, but the Linspire website is an utter ripoff of Apple's.  Pathetic.)

Mandrake:

Processor: an x586-class or above processor is required. This includes Intel Pentium I/II/III/IV/Celeron, AMD K6/II/III, AMD Duron, AMD Athlon/XP/MP. Hyper-Threading is supported. SMP multi-processor machines are supported. (*)
  Memory: at least 64 MB is required (32 MB for text-install); 128 MB or more is recommended.
  Hard disks: IDE, SCSI and S-ATA hard disks are supported.
  Hard disk size: At least 500MB is required, 1GB is recommended. Large capacity drives are supported (up to 250GB).

Fedora:

CPU Requirements
Minimum: Pentium-class
Recommended for text-mode: 200 MHz Pentium-class or better
Recommended for graphical: 400 MHz Pentium II or better
Hard Disk Space Requirements
Custom Installation (Minimal): 620MB
Server: 1.1GB
Personal Desktop: 2.3GB
Workstation: 3.0GB
Custom Installation (Everything): 6.9GB
Memory Requirements
Minimum for text-mode: 64MB
Minimum for graphical: 192MB
Recommended for graphical: 256MB

Those three aren't so good.  Mandrake perhaps the best of them.  But what about what I listed?  Ubuntu lists no requirements, but I know it ran fine on a P2/400 with 128MB RAM.
SuSE:

Processor: Intel: Pentium 1-4; AMD: Duron, Athlon, Athlon XP, Athlon MP, Athlon 64 and Sempron
Main memory: At least 128 MB; 256 MB recommended
Hard disk: At least 500 MB (for minimal system); 2.5 GB recommended for standard system
Sound and graphics cards: Supports most modern sound and graphics cards

Now...nothing listed is a "hard" distro that supports old machines.  Those are all the easy, "bloated" ones.  I'll give you Fedora; it's slow.  But I've never had performance problems with Mandrake, SuSE, or Ubuntu, on said P2/400s with 128MB RAM.  (My school has a lot of those.)  It's actually kinda gotten better: Ubuntu Warty had a laggy Gnome 2.8, where opening the Run Application box took upwards of 10 seconds.  But Hoary changed this to about 2, and is more responsive overall.  I've only worked with Mandrake/SuSE 9.2, so I can't say if Mdk 10.1 would be faster on such machines.

You're not limited to harder stuff for old machines.  That is, provided you can get 128MB RAM for them.  Which you likely can.