I would like to change from Windows XP 32-bit to a Linux product on my laptop. Do you have any suggestions?

katrina2222,

Welcome to LQ.

Before you are inundated with suggestions for various Linux distributions, please let us have details of your laptop.

Make/model, amount of memory, which CPU etc are required in order to give you a more focused answer.

Also, look at (free) products like "VirtualBox," which allow you to run Linux (or anything else) in a virtual machine on your existing laptop ... without changing that laptop's base operating system in any way.

You don't have to "partition," don't have to "dual boot," don't have to do anything to put your existing Windows installation at risk. You can experiment with Linux ... safely. (Or even, "run it in production." Most of the world's web servers actually run on virtual machines.)

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi,

Welcome to LQ!

Look at; Newbie alert: 50 Open Source Replacements for Windows XP is a sticky with a list of Gnu/Linux recommendation(s) and description of each.

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

Personally I cannot see the point of keeping XP. YMMV.

The OP's CPU may, or may not, support virtualization:

http://www.technorms.com/8208/check-...virtualization

Compaq Presario V2750NR Notebook PC
Windows XP Home Edition Version 2002 Sp3
HP AMD Turion 64 Mobile Tech. ML-32
ACPI UniProcessor, Speed 1800MHz
System Memory 512MB, Video 128MB
Bios Version F-27

Hope this was helpful. Thank you.

1 members found this post helpful.

A system memory of 512 MB is not much. You cannot run a virtual machine then, and for the distro you need something with a lean desktop. Perhaps elementary OS will work - it is light but still very functional and attractive.

katrina2222,

Thanks for the details. This is a very old machine.

You are definitely going to need a very lightweight distro, such as antiX.

http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Download the 32 bit version:

http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Other suitable distros are listed on the link given by onebuck above:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...xp-4175502495/

Look at numbers 23 to 40, but antiX would be a good starting point.

Distrowatch antiX:
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=antix

Looking at my notes on the distros I've tested, there are about a dozen that you could use, but AntiX is probably the best choice. They suggest a minimum of a Pentium II processor, and your Turion is similar to a good Pentium III. It will also run in 128 MB, so 512 MB will be fine.

This tells you how to install and use AntiX:
http://download.tuxfamily.org/antix/...FAQ/index.html
You can find out about available programs here (including alternatives to Windows ones):
http://linuxappfinder.com
The user interface for AntiX is the Ice window manager (the first GUI I ever used!) and there's guidance available on how to use and customise it:
http://www.icewm.org/manual/

that is going to be a problem

your telephone has MORE RAM

i know that CentOS 5.11 will run well with 512 meg

but Cent is a crappy os for a old LAPTOP

look at Antix
but do not expect firefox to load any webpage in less than 30 seconds

i have a old pentium4 with 1 gig ram and my Gmail takes 20 seconds to load JUST my inbox ( 100% CPU for that 20 seconds )

As much as I dislike mickeysoft, I never thought I would say this, but with the equipment available staying with XP-sp3 might be your best option. I run it, on a rare occasion, in another partition and it runs very well.

There has to be some local computer guy with drawer full of old RAM, upgrading to 1 GiB would be more than sufficient. I'm writing this on my laptop, 64-bit. The OS and GUI take about 90 MiB, opening chromium and loading this web page resulted in total 273 MiB used. So even 512 MiB is not that bad.

As i understand it, if you have any intentions of going on the internet XP is not the way to go, I've heard that it will most definitely be infected within hours... that being said, I still have an old desktop around with XP on it (and Debian Lenny), but I have a network attached printer that has drivers written for only XP and Vista and all the other machines I have with windoze are win 7 so I have no choice. When it's running, my DSL is powered off. If you're intending to use it on the www you're definitely going to need to put something on there besides XP.

You might be able to test out a few live cd's. Slitaz and DSL or Puppy may suite you. Antix has been mentioned on these systems.

With all due respect, that doesn't have to be the case. People have been using Xp for years without getting infected. A decent firewall, some anti-virus sotware, and a bit of commonsense, and infections shouldn't be a problem.

OTOH, XP or anything from mickeysoft, would not be my first choice, but it does work well and it does run most hardware peripherals without having to jump through hoops as is sometimes the case with Linux.