Tuxdev, I've done this already about four times, and it's very informative as to what a major is really about.

I'm going to first try to improve the Puppy Linux computer with more RAM. Because really only browsing the web slows down the computer, can you guys recommend any lightweight browsers? Firefox is way too heavy, and Midori, which I've recently been using, isn't that great.

Also, snowpine, that website has some great ideas. Not all of them would be helpful to me, but some of them are very appealing.

Opera is quite handy; I prefer it to Firefox and Midori. Of course, there's always Dillo, if you don't demand too many facilities.

Seamonkey (iceape in Debian) is relative lightweight, using it on an old laptop with 550 MHz-CPU and 256MB you can surf the Internet without problems, of course without Flashplayer and with a lightweight environment (LXDE).

Hi...

Even for your weakest specs computers

You could use just console TTYs with multitabbing...

http://winterdom.com/2009/01/somelin...overedrecently, or dvtm

http://www.terminally-incoherent.com...ing-without-x/

In this setting you could use centerim as an instant messenger, mc as a file manager, nfte as an editor with source code highlighting, ipython as a python shell, sc, oleo, or teapot as spreadsheets, vim, vi, nano, pico as editors, w3m, or elinks as browsers...

And with this settings and applications ( think of a minimal arch install ) they would be fast like hell...



Man you can even watch movies in a dvtm tab in a tty...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1-gl...eature=related

But I would suggest a huge text framebuffer, if you want to play tabbed windowing in tty...

You might be able to get fedora with Fluxbox running on that. You might still need a large amount of swap space, however, and as we all know, swap is slow.

Distrowatch.com has a database feature that you can select the criteria for a linux distro. I selected Old Computers. The link below resulted in 6 active distros for old computers.

http://distrowatch.com/search.php?ca...&status=Active

As for web browsers, I heard that google chrome is fast. You can give that a try.

PS: When dealing with very old computers with low resources there are really not that much options that has already been mentioned.

PPS: Another new distro for old PCs is Legacy OS based on Teenpub
http://pupweb.org/wikka/TeenPup

- Cheers

the best 8bit computer emulators run on dos
even that 20year old puter old would be blindly fast running freedos

the medium spec puter would make a great you aint getten in hardware fire wall

My old machine got turned into a headless, X-less, keyboard/mouseless file and print server for the other 3 machines in the house. If you can add more memory I would. I wouldn't pay for it, but I work in people's attics all the time and I can assure you that there is plenty of old memory lying around in peoples attics. There is someone near you, that would probably really appreciate a machine that can get them on the web either as their only machine or for a family that has to share a machine. If you don't want it, someone else very well might.

Indeed. An old computer is a terrible thing to waste.

Unless it's almost a paper weight. hehehe

Even then they tend to sit in my garage for at least a year. It just makes me sad when I can't find a use or a home for a machine. :(