I have a bunch of old dell OptiPlex pc Pentium 4 with 512 megs of memory. I need s version of Linux to run on them with web browsing and a good office package like Open office. these are in a church school and upgrading in not an option.

Robert

Lubuntu and AntiX come to mind. Take a look at the site link below for other options.

http://distrowatch.com/search.php?ca...=Old+Computers

1 members found this post helpful.

A swap file or partition is almost a must.

You may need to watch out for pae. Will have to use 32 bit distro's most likely. Must use limited gui. KDE and Gnome will be too much.

Can consider some BSD's maybe too.

Some might consider puppy or the puppy clones.

It's possible to run some thin client and remote type if you have a good server and lan.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi.

A netinst or Slackware with I'll say (also randomly) JWM, free to try many.

I run Linux Mint on A Dell 4600. It has 1 Gig of memory. Perhaps you could buy the correct RAM chips to boost the memory to 1 Gig on Ebay.
Linux Mint correctly detected all the hardware. Something Ubunto had many problems on this same tower.

1 members found this post helpful.

Upgrades can be cheep on old stuff...

If you can find memory modules cheap to boost the RAM to 1 gb that should allow for a much nicer experience. Linux Mint with XFCE for example is listed as 512 mb minimum but it's recommended 1 gb for comfortable use. The Mate desktop has similar requirements. KDE and Cinnamon I wouldn't suggest, because they require more RAM.

System requirements:

x86 processor (Linux Mint 64-bit requires a 64-bit processor. Linux Mint 32-bit works on both 32-bit and 64-bit processors).
512 MB RAM (1GB recommended for a comfortable usage).
10 GB of disk space
DVD drive or USB port

Copy & paste from the Mint website

Mint comes by default with the Firefox webbrowser and the LibreOffice suite. Which I believe is an offshoot of OpenOffice.

This computer is an AMD Sempron, much the same as a P4. Any 32-bit system will be fine. The limit is the 512MB and the fact that some distros get picky about supporting older video chips. The best options for 512MB are AntiX MX (not the standard AntiX) and Salix. Both would run in 256MB at a pinch, so they'd be fine. My own preference would be Salix, as it has a longer support period and good documentation. See the startup guide:
http://www.salixos.org/guide.html

I had CentOS 5 on a P4 machine with 512 meg ( from 2000-2001) , it had NO problems

i did bump it to 1 gig and put ScientificLinux6.5 on it
and that has no real issues except for my antique nvidia gforce 2 mx 400 card

CentOS 5 still has a few more YEARS of support left
but 5.11 will be the last minor upgrade

As the OP said, this is a situation where there's not going to be an upgrade. CentOS 5 dies in 2017, if I remember rightly.

Have you considered Gentoo Linux?

I installed Lubuntu on a couple of them recently. One had 512mb of RAM and it ran just fine. If you want something a little more stylish, you could try Zorin Lite. It is based on Lubuntu.