Which Linux???????
 

Hello,

I'm a new Linux user (Mint 17.1 Rebecca Mate) going through the learning curve. It's a challenege. Dual boot with Windows 8.1, which provides the motivation!

I have an older Dell Dimension PC with XP. It's old and cranky, but I do love my XP. I want to wipe the hard drive and install a user friendly simple version of Linux that I can reinstall XP into as VM.
I am clueless where to even begin to figure out which version of Linux is best for this aside from the two mentioned below. The PC operatest 2.17 GHz, has 1.25 GB RAM, and a 156 GB Hard Drive.

I tried installing Zorin, both by DVD and USB, but could not get it to install or even work live. Just kept getting the F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup ingfinte loop. Spent a week trying every which way, short of a format, to install Zorin but I just refused to work, despite their excellent suopport.

Also tried every which way to install Robolinux ( all three versions), and again could not get it to install, although I was able to do the Xfce and KLDE versions live. Just went to them for support and it requires a $5 donation per case. Knowing how much supoport I could need, that could really add up.

Any advise is greatly appreciated.
TIA.
Cheers!

Honestly, given the fact you've got an older PC, I'd spring the $30 or so for a second hard-drive, shove it in, and NOT dual-boot or run a virtual machine. Dual-booting can be daunting, since Windows doesn't make it easy, and running a VM on older hardware won't let you enjoy the speed (both Windows AND Linux will be slow). A second hard drive is cheap, and lets you keep your Windows installation untouched. Just change the boot order in your BIOS, and the system boots normally to either. As a bonus, your Windows drive will show up under Linux, and let you read/write files between the two. Windows won't, however, read Linux, without other utilities installed.

Since you asked for suggestions, I'd stick with Mint since it's what you know (and is by far one of the easier for new Linux users), grab a second hard drive, and enjoy.

Hello TBOne,
Now that's an interesting idea I had not thought of, especially since I have a new 80GB hard drive on an old PC clone that I never wound up using.
Thanks for thinking outside the box!
Cheers!!!

You're welcome, and 80 GB should let you get everything installed. I've done that before, and it saved me a bunch of headaches...I don't dual-boot unless I NEED to. But, since I've not used Windows (for anything other than gaming) in more than a decade, it's not an issue. I have a rig that is ONLY for gaming, an doesn't even get turned on unless I'm playing. :)

Use the KNOWN ! forget about PSEUDOdistros as Robolinux, Zorin, etc...

http://www.linuxmint.com/ [ :twocents: of course]

http://www.pclinuxos.com/

http://www.kubuntu.org/

https://www.opensuse.org/en/

:hattip:

Hello gorO,
Since I have Mint, the other three look like interesting options, especially the pclinus.
Thank you!
Cheers

Hi gedoko,
why not ElementaryOS :)!? Is super clean, fast on older PCs (a complete from scratch programmed Desktop Environment) and beautiful. I would recomment the newest Beta 2 http://beta.elementaryos.org (released yesterday) to get Version Freya 0.3 , which is based on Ubuntu 14.04.

Hi Schroeffu, I'm afraid Beta anything is out of my league. I'm not a PC pioneer by any stretch of the imagination. I just want to get a distro up that I can handle and get on with the things I enjoy doing in cyberspace, including keeping my XP alive and well. Thank you for the suggestion. I will follow this releases progress.
Cheers!

I always give the non tech savvy PCLinuxOS, so far it's just worked out of the box and they've picked up on it the fastest.

dude... β on Penguin is like 'final' on win$UCK$ !!!

Distro Watch is another good website to compare different version of Linux

http://distrowatch.com/

Lubuntu, look no further.

I myself am a debian user. I can say that with the specs you listed that I would run debian with, the xfce desktop on taht machine. Even debian with gnome will do better than linuxmint. Linuxmint ubuntu editions will be quite resource hungry.

Over the years I've tried (or occasionally failed with) 114 distros! Currently the ones I give the highest rating to are AntiX MX, Mint, PCLinuxOS, Sparky, and Ubuntu Gnome: best in breed for the Xfce, Mate, KDE, LXDE, and Gnome desktops.

Either buy a USB stick (8gb) or burn several dvd's and boot the distro's to a live version to try out to help you choose one. Distrohopping is fairly common, especially when starting out, trying to figure out what you initially like. Once you get something your happy with installed on the box, then you start playing with the software itself (from adding a different windowmanager, to several similar programs to compare, etc), then you will end up with a what I want, knowledgebase, IMHE.