Yep. Linux is great on the old machines. As I say, I have a nice desktop box here that is just a P188MMX with 64meg ram. Runs quite okay... The swapping slows it down at times, but 128 would be a big help.

as others have said, I agree.. It will run.

But, I wouldn't put mandy on there. I have a 2.8 ghz system and Mandrake ran a bit slower than windows while loading programs (Open Office took about twenty seconds to load!!!!!!! As opposed to word at about 3 in Windows).

I switched to simplyMepis, which is a Debian based wonder, good for newbs (or people who don't want to configure everything all the time). It comes with good support for most hardware. If you like Gnome, you might also want to take a look at Ubuntu, it's rock solid, and pretty quick.

Vector is designed for older computers, so you could def. want to take a look into that.

Ultimately, I would recommend Debian, or Gentoo (although Gentoo's installer is quite a pain, it optimizes the system for YOU, gives you an infinate amount of choice, bit is a pain to install....and it would take quite a few hours for you to complile the needed programs, like X and whatever windowmanager you decided to use ..... XFCE...... )

Yeah I forgot to mention...don't expect to run Tux Racer on that machine. My friend ran it on his which was almost the same specs as yours and it was choppy as hell. I run Fedora on a 1.5GHz AMD Athlon w/ 256MB RAM with a 32MB Video card....it handles Tux Racer fine but I think my CPU usages stays 100% all the time if I play it. But for basic word processing, net surfing you should be fine.

I preffer abiword over oo or koffice. Much lighter, and simple.

Actually I've put Mandrak/KDEe on boxes right down to P150's and it runs fine with some gui tweaks to reduce load. Up til a few years ago my main desktop was a P120

But you are comparing apples and artichokes here. OOo is known to be slow to load, so how can you possibly compare loading OOo in linux to loading MSO in windows??? How about comparing loading OOo in both...

Also, as I have said many times, It is likely the linux desktop is doing a LOT more - services, gui enhancements, virtual desktops etc. And also likely that the linux desktop you are using is a CURRENT OS while the windows desktop is 4 YEARS OLD.

Comparisons like this are meaningless.

So how about this one:
Same machine
Linux, same kernel version (with a few mods here and there)
Same version of Open Office
Different distro
12 seconds for Mepis, 20 for Mandrake.

yes, I am aware that there a lot of serivces and whatnot running in Mandy, and that you really can't compare one OS to another, but when using a comparable program, it's nice to know the loadtimes.

That's fine, as long as you are comparing apples to apples... Even if they are different varieties of apples... ie which is better. Granny smith or pink lady?

It comes down to what you want and need. With PC's as huge as they are now, more resources can be and are used for extra features, which is fine by me. The beauty of linux is you can use those resources as you wish. If you have limitted resources you can trim down the features or even use a totally different distro.

I have a 2.8 ghz system and Mandrake ran a bit slower than windows while loading programs (Open Office took about twenty seconds to load!!!!!!! As opposed to word at about 3 in Windows).

Yeah Mandrake is definetely not a fast distro for sure. However, Comparing Open Office loading to Word is completely unfair. You see microsoft cheats. When windows boots it preloads a lot of the dll's and .exe in memory, along with word. Which is why it takes so long to boot and why it chews up your memory, that could be better used for things that you are actually doing.

For instance, it loads explorer and all it's dll into memory at boot. If you use opera or firefox, windows still will load explorer and all it's dll's at every boot weather you like it or not. That memory is basically just lost because windows will never give it back. Then eventually when you run out of memory, which doesn't take long in windows it starts to cache out that stuff to disk( which is why you hear the disk chugging all the time in windows). Then when you close that big app you were using windows caches it back in. All in the name of getting explorer, which one may never use to load fast. Linux on the other hand does not do that shi*&. If you wanted too, you could tell. Then you can compare the two.

When comparing any distro it is also worth remembering that they both probably use the same kernel, the same libs and the same software. The only way for a distro to be slower than another, or use more ram or whatever, is for it to be doing more, running more stuff or have extra eyecandy or features... They are otherwise too much alike...

How does one cache a program in Linux? wasn't aware one could do that.. sounds pretty cool.

And also, amosf, you are 100% correct. it isn't fair to compare the two. Didn't mean to come across as a jerk or anything. I also didn't mean to come across as saying that Mandy sucks, beleive me, it doesn't. It's a great distro, with wonderful support. Utimately, I felt I like a Debian (based) system better, but, that's me. Linux is all about choice, why else would there be enough distro's where you could try one everyday for the next 2 years and never try the same one twice.

When it comes down to it, I use Linux because of A. The community (which is great), and B. The choices!!!. The stability is great, adn the security is a good thing too, but I really enjoy tinkering with my system, and streamlining it to the best of my ability (always reading and looking up new things).

So, once again, sorry if I came across as short.

I don't mind the comparison. The good thing is that we have the various distros and some are heavily loaded with features and slower while others are leaner and faster. I was just clarifying. I don't deny mandrake is on the slow side, but I use it as it has a lot of features and nice easy gui tools - even tho I don't mind CLI. I also compile generic kernels with mandrake as the mdk ones can be unstable on some hardware. Each distro has it's good and bad side and I only stick with mandrake due to being used to it after many years...

As you say, it's the CHOICE that's the important thing!