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Best OS for 10 year old desktop?

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  • 17-09-2014 8:33pm
    #1
    grimm2005
    Registered Users Posts: 2,892 ✭✭✭


    Hey,

    So I have an old Dell Dimension 8400 desktop that doesn't see much action these days. It's currently running Windows 7 and is achingly slow, and Windows XP doesn't perform much better. I'd like to turn it into a web browsing/Netflix machine for the spare bedroom so looking for a nice lightweight OS. It's running on a 3ghz P4 processor with 1gb RAM. I'm guessing I should be looking at a Linux distro but most of the articles I've seen online about this subject are really outdated. Also I know there might be issues with Netflix because of Silverlight and that's primarily what I'll be using it for.

    So does anyone have any suggestions?

    Cheers!


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    #2
    dmc17
    Registered Users Posts: 3,746 ✭✭✭dmc17


    I recently installed Linux Mint (think it was Cinnamon) on an eleven year old Dell Dimension that had XP on it. It seems to be running fine though I haven't used it a whole lot yet.


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    #3
    yoyo
    Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 11,016 Mod ✭✭✭✭yoyo


    Lubuntu is a fairly lightweight distro. I know there was some progress made to emulate the Silverlight browser plugin under Linux, this may work although not something I have experience with

    Nick

    My Beer Glass collection site 🍺

    My Irish Callcards site



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    #4
    PropJoe10
    Registered Users Posts: 5,305 ✭✭✭PropJoe10


    My suggestion would be either Lubuntu or Zorin OS Lite, both of which are very simplistic distros that run the LXDE desktop environment. 1GB of RAM is perfectly fine, and I run Lubuntu on a P4 machine I have and its fine. You can actually run Netflix in Linux natively now, by installing a beta version of Chrome and a few other things, plus setting your Netflix account to prefer HTML5 rather than Silverlight.

    http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2014/08/netflix-linux-html5-support-plugins


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    #5
    leeroybrown
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,563 ✭✭✭leeroybrown


    Any Linux distribution with a reasonable light desktop environment will run fine on a 3GHz P4 but I suspect you'll run into trouble with your web browser. A modern web browser is very heavyweight for a computer that age especially when you include plugins like Flash or Sliverlight.

    Honestly, I reckon you're far better off seeing if you can pick up a much newer PC for almost nothing. It'll be a lot more usable.


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    #6
    PropJoe10
    Registered Users Posts: 5,305 ✭✭✭PropJoe10


    leeroybrown wrote: »
    Any Linux distribution with a reasonable light desktop environment will run fine on a 3GHz P4 but I suspect you'll run into trouble with your web browser. A modern web browser is very heavyweight for a computer that age especially when you include plugins like Flash or Sliverlight.

    Honestly, I reckon you're far better off seeing if you can pick up a much newer PC for almost nothing. It'll be a lot more usable.

    I run Lubuntu dual booting with XP on a Pentium 4 machine and it works grand. Obviously not too speedy but easily usable. Firefox runs better than Chrome in my experience. You can always go for a lightweight browser like Midori if you prefer extra speed.


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    #7
    grimm2005
    Registered Users Posts: 2,892 ✭✭✭grimm2005


    Thanks for the suggestions guys, plenty to work off there.
    leeroybrown wrote: »
    Honestly, I reckon you're far better off seeing if you can pick up a much newer PC for almost nothing. It'll be a lot more usable.

    A fair point, but tbh this is more a side hobby then anything else. Have a great primary PC and a decent laptop that I use mostly so not looking to spend any actual money, just trying to revive an old machine and make it somewhat useful.


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    #8
    leeroybrown
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,563 ✭✭✭leeroybrown


    grimm2005 wrote: »
    A fair point, but tbh this is more a side hobby then anything else. Have a great primary PC and a decent laptop that I use mostly so not looking to spend any actual money, just trying to revive an old machine and make it somewhat useful.
    Ah. Cool. In that case have fun with it. I've just seen how frustrating a machine that's too slow to run modern software can be if people rely on it.


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    #9
    Snowbat
    Registered Users Posts: 1,064 ✭✭✭Snowbat


    yoyo wrote: »
    I know there was some progress made to emulate the Silverlight browser plugin under Linux

    Native HTML 5 playback just arrived:

    It's Now Possible To Play Netflix Natively On Linux Without Wine Plug-Ins
    http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTc1ODY


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    #10
    jca
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,585 ✭✭✭jca


    grimm2005 wrote: »
    Hey,

    So I have an old Dell Dimension 8400 desktop that doesn't see much action these days. It's currently running Windows 7 and is achingly slow, and Windows XP doesn't perform much better. I'd like to turn it into a web browsing/Netflix machine for the spare bedroom so looking for a nice lightweight OS. It's running on a 3ghz P4 processor with 1gb RAM. I'm guessing I should be looking at a Linux distro but most of the articles I've seen online about this subject are really outdated. Also I know there might be issues with Netflix because of Silverlight and that's primarily what I'll be using it for.

    So does anyone have any suggestions?

    Cheers!

    I'm running W7 on my 9 year old Dimension 3000 and its flying along. I have 2gig of ram which is the max the MB can support supplemented by a 1 gig sony phone card in a usb adaptor. When I plugged in the usb I selected it to provide power boost permanently. To get aero graphics I got a cheap pci Radeon graphics card. I find Diskeeper very good at keeping the HDD in good shape. I need the Desktop as it acts as a type of server for the usb printer.


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