Hi you all. New to the forum and Linux as well. Have an ancient Toshiba 105CS laptop; MS Win 95 OS; 40MB RAM; maxxed hard drive (1G I think); 3.5 floppy only; portable CD for loading programs; 75MHz Intel Pentium.

Would like to erase laptop hard drive & install Linux OS to learn how to use. If I become proficient enough, eventually would like to switch from WinXP Home Edition OS to Linux on my Dell Dimension 2400, X86-based PC, Intel Pentium 4CPU, 2.80GHz; currently with 512 MB RAM but can upgrade to 2G.

Computer use is personal only, i.e. word processing, database management, spreadsheets, photo management, etc. Prefer open source, free software that works well with as little footprint as possible. I do not own an MP3 player, don't download videos & tunes nor play games. Would like to migrate from Microsoft before I am required to upgrade to an OS my desktop can't handle.

All help appreciated in advance --

1) Are laptop specifications capable of handling Linux, Open Office, Mozilla Firefox, so I can learn how the OS functions?

2) Have CD burner on desktop. Have DSL service. What would be best route? Download appropriate OS from i'net, burn CD to load onto laptop? Or because of ancient laptop processor, order disks from a vendor?

3) Or should I just bite the bullet, partition the Dell hard drive, run dual OS until such time as I can remove XP?

4) Another possible option is to purchase a Knoppix USB drive to learn on. Would this avenue be worthwhile?

5) What distro would be best for basic use & learning Linux OS? Research indicates that Knoppix, Linuxinstall.org, or Arch may be best options. Suggestions?

Again - thanks for helping out a newbie,
Georgi

While you could install Linux on that machine, you certainly won't be running Open Office or Firefox on it. Linux itself (the kernel) and it's support programs will run on almost anything, but the applications are another story entirely.

Programs like Firefox and Open Office are very resource-intensive. The slowest machine I have ever run Firefox on was 266 MHz, and it was absolutely miserable, on 75 MHz it would probably take 5 minutes to render an average web page.

Personally I would just use a live CD on your main machine to get the idea of how things work, and perhaps do a test install in a virtual install. If you like what you see, then dual boot with XP on the desktop or just blow it out and go all Linux.

You could get linux running and use text browsers for the internet and such if you are just wanting to play around. I agree with the previous post that firefox and office packages will be a bit much. Instead of wiping your main system could check into dual booting.

Thanks for your help. Appreciate the suggestions. You can close this thread now but I'm sure I'll be back after I decide what to do.
Georgi