What Can I Do With This Computer??
 

Hello All,
I want to upgrade what I have on this computer (Mint 10 Julia) to something better, (perhaps cinnamon?), but when researching how to do this, I have found myself farther dow the rabbit hole trying to find out what this computer can actually do. I think it has only one partition, and I'm not really sure about how much memory it has. Here's the details from a site that explained what I should put in the command line to find out what I have:
MemTotal: 1024732 kB
MemFree: 37632 kB
Buffers: 50940 kB
Cached: 364728 kB
SwapCached: 1936 kB
Active: 434000 kB
Inactive: 507532 kB
Active(anon): 255000 kB
Inactive(anon): 279508 kB
Active(file): 179000 kB
Inactive(file): 228024 kB
Unevictable: 16 kB
Mlocked: 16 kB
HighTotal: 138224 kB
HighFree: 1420 kB
LowTotal: 886508 kB
LowFree: 36212 kB
SwapTotal: 1690620 kB
SwapFree: 1678184 kB
Dirty: 0 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 524816 kB
Mapped: 73480 kB
Shmem: 8644 kB
Slab: 27972 kB
SReclaimable: 20052 kB
SUnreclaim: 7920 kB
KernelStack: 2080 kB
PageTables: 5528 kB
NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
Bounce: 0 kB
WritebackTmp: 0 kB
CommitLimit: 2202984 kB
Committed_AS: 1360840 kB
VmallocTotal: 122880 kB
VmallocUsed: 13128 kB
VmallocChunk: 103908 kB
HardwareCorrupted: 0 kB
HugePages_Total: 0
HugePages_Free: 0
HugePages_Rsvd: 0
HugePages_Surp: 0
Hugepagesize: 4096 kB
DirectMap4k: 16376 kB
DirectMap4M: 892928 kB

Disk /dev/sda: 41.1 GB, 41110142976 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4998 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0000426d

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 4788 38453248 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 4788 4998 1690625 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 4788 4998 1690624 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 2005 MB, 2005925888 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x02213118

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 245 1959904+ e W95 FAT16 (LBA)
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(243, 254, 63) logical=(244, 0, 12)
Maxtor 6E040L0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 41.1GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 39.4GB 39.4GB primary ext4 boot
2 39.4GB 41.1GB 1731MB extended
5 39.4GB 41.1GB 1731MB logical linux-swap(v1)


Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!

Does this computer have any guts? I backed up all the files I wanted to USB in preparation of upgrading(back when I thought it would be easy)and I only have about 17GB of personal files. How big is this computer, and can I make partitions to hold other operating systems, or my backup files? Thanks for the help!!

Well, you've got
1GB of RAM: not enough to give good performance with Gnome or KDE, but fine for Mate and Xfce.

Your hard drive (/dev/sda) is 40GB. It currently has two partitions. The ordinary one (sda1) has Mint. The second one (sda2) is an extended partition which can have logical partitions inside it: it has one (sda5) used as swap.

Personally, I'd have a partition for /home, which makes it possible to reinstall Linux without wiping /home. Perhaps
sda1 for / — say 10GB
sda2 for /home
sda3 for swap — say 1GB
You could use gparted to shrink sda1, remove the extended sda2, and create normal sda2 and sda3.

So I Can Upgrade?
 

So I have 1 GB RAM - can I upgrade to Cinnamon??
Also - is there a reason why the SDA3 and 4 are blank until SDA5? Was this just a personal choice by the person who built this computer for me?
ALSO- is there a tutorial for "shrinking" and removing SDA2, and using gparted for a total newbie??

OpenBox distros:

Arch, ArchBang, CrunchBang

That thing will be fine with one of those.

Here is how you will do it

Go to http://linuxmint.com/ and download Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon edition iso file. Once it is done downloading burn it on to a blank DVD and use that DVD to start your computer. Once you boot to the session with the DVD start Gparted and make the partitions you need
1 partition for root "/" about 15 GB
1 partition for "/home" about 23 GB or whatever is available
1 partition for "swap" about 2 GB

Here is a how to use gparted step by step, Read from step 6 and up

http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Gparted

Take note what the system is calling those partitions so you can point the installer to the right partition during installation

Once you have done that start the installation of linux mint 17 cinnamon edition

What I would research first, is to see if you can upgrade the memory in your computer. You can try Cinnamon. But it may be slow or even not start.
I agree with szboardstretcher, try a distro with Openbox. You could also try something with Xfce, MATE, LXDE, Enlightenment or Fluxbox.

Cinnamon would be a bit slow, as it's based on Gnome, but you certainly don't need anything as bare as Openbox. This computer has 1GB and both Mate and Xfce are fine.

As for partition numbers, the addresses of the partitions are stored in the master boot record at the beginning of the disk and BIOS only allows 4. People get round that by making one partition that's called extended: that can contain as many partitions as you like, indexed at the beginning. These are always numbered from 5, so that numbers 2, 3, and 4 are reserved. It's a bit like Windows starting partitions with c: just in case you want to add one or two floppies!

This is probably the best thing on gparted
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gparted.html

Wouldn't say openbox is 'bare'...

http://goo.gl/KWvmDM