What version of Ubuntu would work best on an
old desktop with only 1 Gig of memory ?
I hope to use it to run a program called Rakarrack.
( audio program for guitar )
The old computer has the following:
AMD Athelon XP 2500
ASUS A7N8X motherboard
1 Gig of DDR 400 Dual Channel memory
I was considering Mint but I've never used that
before and I can't find Rakarrack in it's file
depository.

1 gig should be fine for any version of Ubuntu, though i might skip on the latest and greatest desktop and go with something like xfce of the gnome shell 'fallback' mode.

really it depends on what you plan on doing with the unit above and beyond running ubuntu that you will start running into memory problems. i have a machine with only 512MB ram with a version of fedora only 2 releases out of date and it works fine, just can't do anything really fancy with it, but for what it does it's adequate.

as for rakarrack, i would look into it's memory requirements and figure out how to configure ubuntu into a memory footprint that allows you to run it in rakarrack. push comes to shove, configure a decent sized swap partition, it will run slowly but it will run.

Definitely nothing above Maverick (10.10). Depending on your video card, Maverick should work OK. It was my last version of Ubuntu before switching to Debian. Natty was painfully slow even in fallback mode. My video card is an nVidia FX5200. If you find it's slow though, try Lucid (10.04LTS).

Or preferably Debian Squeeze. Thd guitar app is in the Squeeze repos.

Ubuntu's hardware requirements are described here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...emRequirements

Maverick (10.10) is a bad advice, it is not supported anymore. 12.04 should run fine, if you go with XFCE or better LXDE instead of Unity/Gnome 3/KDE.
But towheedm is right, debian should be a better choice, it is in general not as resource-hungry as Ubuntu. Debian with XFCE or LXDE should fly on that machine.

I have an Athlon 2800+ / 1GB system running 12.04 LTS without too much trouble so I'd recommend that.

If you feel constricted by the amount of memory, I wouldn't be tempted to try a 64 bit version. Now, I don't know how much of a problem this is with this particular program or your use case, but it wouldn't be where I started from.

And you are probably considerably better off with something like XFCE or LXDE, rather than KDE or Gnome (something as complex as KDE for audio purposes seems like all pain and no gain, but possibly you could make it work by turning off all of the extravagant facilities).

Well, there are plenty of search engine hits for that program and Mint, and not many of these people are complaining about how hard it is, or giving 'build it yourself' kind of install procedures, so it must be possible.

However, if I was looking at any kind of Audio Visual program like this, I would want a specialist AV distro (or, if I felt like doing it the hard way, build the entire thing myself) because AV distros tend to be built with low latency in mind, and latency is important for sound quality.

Ubuntu studio perhaps? http://ubuntustudio.org/
I think it uses XFCE as a desktop now.

With the Athlon XP CPU this is not an option anyways, simply not 64 bit capable.

I would suggest something with less demands than Ubuntu.

Linux Mint Debian Edition Xfce (LMDE Xfce search should get it. This is based on Debian testing like Ubuntu 12.04 but with the instabilities of testing actually tamed.

Debian with Xfce would be good too. Debian stable is an older kernel (think Ubuntu 10.04).

Ubuntu studio may be a choice. It has a near real time option that may help.

It is not Ubuntu that is the issue but the choice of window manager.

Peek at this distro while you have a minute. I never tried it. http://www.musix.org.ar/en/download.html

You have four easy options. I'll put them in the order that I'd recommend:

1. Xubuntu 12.04 -- XFCE desktop lightens the load. XFCE 4.8 is great as Thunar and Panel are very Gnome 2 like in terms of their functionality. All the goodies of Ubuntu but on a diet so to speak. I use this on my old eeepc which only has 1gb of ram and it works just fine.

2. Linux Mint Debian Edition XFCE or Gnome 2 -- Debian base lightens things up even further. Compared to Xubuntu, the pro would be that LMDE is even lighter and snappier. Con would be that sometimes it doesn't work as well with peripherals and you have to hunt a little harder to find solutions to esoteric problems. I've used this on my netbook too and its great except it didn't work so hot with my printer at work.

3. Lubuntu -- Ubuntu with super light LXDE desktop. This distro is really light on resources. The pro again is speed. The con is lost functionality although you can install components of xfce and/or tweak LXDE to get a lot of it back. Yes, I've installed this on my netbook too.

4. Bodhi Linux -- Ubuntu with enlightenment desktop. I've not used this as there is not yet a 12.04 based LTS release yet (it's coming) but folks swear by this little distro. Its based on a stripped down base install of Ubuntu and light on resources again. The con is that some folks object to the aesthetics although you can customize e17 to your liking.

There are other light distros out there and you can sort through them on distrowatch.com but these are the four I'd point you to right off the bat.

You could just install regular 32 bit Ubuntu and then install something lighter if Unity slows things down a bit. Something like Fluxbox should be pretty quick.

Bodhi seems to be pretty popular lately. I haven't tried it but you might want to give it a go.

I have run ubuntu 12.04 on a 1.8gig sempron with 1gig ram and a mx4000. I was just not able to use the unity interface and has to use the classic interface.

In my opinion ubuntu will most likey fail to install or run on the older video cards such as my mx4000 and the builtin itel 800 series.

Getting a newer video card will pretty much allow ubuntu 12.04 to work. I suggest that you have 1 gig ram also. I have tested ubuntu 12.04 on the above machine with a geforce 6200 and it worked just fine. Unity interface was working and all the bits and pieces were working.

Hope this gives you some idea of what is needed. Basicly i would say the video card will be the major problem.

1 members found this post helpful.

Lubuntu ( http://lubuntu.net/ )
I use it on all my laptops and netbooks. Its _way_ better than that unity nonsense in the main Ubuntu.

The core of the system is based on Linux and Ubuntu . Lubuntu uses the minimal desktop LXDE, and a selection of light applications. We focus on speed and energy-efficiency. Because of this, Lubuntu has very low hardware requirements.

The objective of the Lubuntu project is to create a variant of Ubuntu that is lighter, less resource hungry and more energy-efficient by using lightweight applications and LXDE, The Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment, as its default GUI.

Lubuntu is targeted at "normal" PC and laptop users running on low-spec hardware. Such users may not know how to use command line tools, and in most cases they just don't have enough resources for all the bells and whistles of the "full-featured" mainstream distributions. Members of the team take care of LXDE and other packages that are part of the Lubuntu install.

Note!!!
** Lubuntu received official recognition as a formal member of the Ubuntu family, commencing with Lubuntu 11.10. **

..
Enjoy!