[SOLVED] Linux with openoffice for P3, 800MHz
 

Hello, I want to install Linux on an old computer with P3, 800MHz processor, 128Mb ram (I can increase this to 256Mb), 40Gb HDD. This is to be used a part of a network of WinXP computers and should be able to share the data. The only application I need is Openoffice 3.1. Should be fast enough.

You can look into DSL, Puppy. These are small enough everyday distributions. Xubuntu is good and will not eat as much memory as well. Another distribution that I insist people should into is Dream Linux.

slack based distro's run on light specs, such as zenwalk.

Puppy would run excellent on that machine. You can get some puplets with openoffice, although I am not sure on the version. They are definately worth a look.

You can use almost any distribution. The trick is that you have to avoid the major window managers like Gnome and KDE because their recent versions will eat up your resources. Rather go for fluxbox, WindowMaker or XFCE as window managers. The exact choice depends on your needs. They all will be able to run OpenOffice. Fluxbox and XFCE have a very minimalistic interface, while WindowMaker uses the "historical" Next-Step metaphor for it's desktop experience - all of them needs a bit of rethinking in the first few days.

Linux Archive

Hello all. I have installed DreamLinux 3.5 and the memory is 128+64MB as of now. It runs just fine and seems to be a very good Distro. Openoffice is also running.

I have installed many different distros on my P3 (733MHz, 320G RAM). Even 320 is a bit marginal---if this were my main box, I would install the maximimum the board can handle.

Try go-oo (fork of openoffice) instead of regular openoffice, it's a lot faster, especially on older machines, at least that's what I've found. It can also open more types of files:
http://go-oo.org/