advice for ubuntu on a small machine

[NoOp]

On 05/21/2009 09:55 AM, Kjetil Halvorsen wrote:
...
>>> How small are we talking, here?
>> 
>> Xubuntu is not really any slimmer than Gnome/KDE, despite what some
>> here will tell you.
> 
> 
> 
> About 200 MB ram. Windows XP are running on those machines now, very
> slowly.
> 
> We hope for something slim enough to be faster.
> 
> Kjetil

Do yourself a favor and invest in memory. Even if you scrap 1-2 machines
to use the memory for the others you will be better served overall.

Yes, Ubuntu will work on a slow machine with limited cpu & memory; I
have two users that do pretty well on slow machines. Example of one:

*-cpu
          description: CPU
          product: Pentium III (Katmai)
          vendor: Intel Corp.
          physical id: 4
          bus info: cpu at 0
          version: 6.7.3
          slot: Slot-1
          size: 600MHz
-memory
          description: System memory
          physical id: 1
          size: 255MiB

That user is running a MAC Leopard emulated desktop w/Ubuntu 8.04 & uses
OpenOffice.org extensively. It's served her through the pasy 1 1/2 years
of college, but I'm giving her one of my test machines this week
(1.6Ghz/640Mb - maybe more if I can find some old chips in the garage).
I use the machine as a test machine and it zips right along.

Memory is expensive for older machines, but if you check the recycle
places, garage sales, etc., you should be able to find some without
breaking the bank. In all honesty, I recommend that you upgrade the
machines to at least a minimum of 512Mb and be done with it. With that
you'll be able to keep WinXP & dualboot Ubuntu/linux of most any flavor.