I have a friend who has been using Windows all his life and has an 'old' PC currently running Windows 98 which he wants me to install Linux on so he can get used to it and see if he likes it. The specs, according to him, are something like an early Pentium 4 with 256mb ram (although he isn't sure). The two distros which I am most impressed with at the moment when it comes to ease of use are PCLinuxOS and Linux Mint but i'm not sure what the performance would be like with 256mb of ram as all my systems have at least 512mb. I prefer Linux Mint because it's debian based and used GNOME which is the setup I use and would be most comfortable with supporting but I have some experience with KDE.

What do you think? Any other distros you think might be suitable? Does anyone know what performance would be like with either of these distros?

Either should be fine. Both Gnome and KDE might feel a bit heavy, but should still feel faster than Windows 98.

Personally, I always give people Debian just because that's what I use and can support them with. Once it's setup properly (packages, codecs and stuff), they seem to have no problem with it...

I don't want to give him debian because I want him to learn to manage his system on his own and although I personally love debian there are a bit too many text files to edit for a newbie. Mint and PLOS both have the advantage of Windows Control Panel like configuration utilities and so are ideal for someone who is new to linux.

Vector Linux runs well on lower specs. Nice distribution with usual web and office stuff available.

Xubuntu possibly, or he could use ubuntu, I have used Ubuntu on my pentuim 3 with very little problems

My wife chose PCLinuxOS.


She's not a power user by any means but likes to listen to music, surf the web, and check out her camera pics (she loves her S2-IS).

PCLinuxOS affords her the opportunity to not have to drop to a shell every time she needs to do something.

See if it works for your friend

If I am not mistaken, PCLinuxOS just hit #2 on the Distrowatch "hit list". It is indeed a very good choice. It is currently in my "bull pen"--waiting to see if it might be promoted to default. Still sticking with Mepis 6.5......

its actually number 1 in the last 3 months

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Linux Distributions and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Linux Mint is ok, I personally don't like its DE. It is technically Gnome because it uses Gnome libraries, but its a fairly customized GUI, and certainly not like the traditional Gnome environment. When I had Mint on my laptop(768mb of Ram), it ran OK.

I would run one of the *buntus on that machine. Most problems w/ Ubuntu can be quickly tackled if someone is willing to use Google, or log in to some of the IRC help channels. That machine will probably run Ubuntu, but if you have misgivings of that, I'd go with Xubuntu. Xfce is quite functional and easy to use, and will not tax older systems the way Gnome/KDE will.

I personally believe that Ubuntu will run on that machine however. If my laptop can run Ubuntu Gnome with Beryl(1ghz, 768mb Ram, 64 of of which is integrated w/ video) w/o a problem, surely that machine can run a normal Gnome environment. If you go w/ Ubuntu, go with the current version(7.04), and don't worry about the LTS version, unless you plan to pay for support.

I don't like PCLinuxOS at all, so I won't comment on it. Maybe would have been different if I could have gotten all my hardware to work.

http://www.xubuntu.org/

IGF

Go with PCLinuxOS, the forum and irc are both full of very helpful people. It is definitely an up and coming distro. PCLinuxOS ran just fine on my Dell laptop with only 256mb ram, and a PIII 750 so you shouldn't have any problems,

Thanks for all the replies. I may well try PCLinuxOS because from the replies here it looks like it'll run better than Mint/Ubuntu with that PC. Mint is still very much a contender though.

edit: I've just setup two identical machines in VMware (with 256mb ram) and PCLinuxOS is not only much faster (and shinier) but also used an insanely small amount of ram. Here are my findings, all with htop:
Linux Mint: 144mb RAM, 30mb Swap
PCLinuxOS : 51mb RAM, 0mb Swap