OS for old Win 95 computer?

[BladeofCorellia]

I have this old computer that used to boot off of Windows 95. It has about 32mb of RAM and about 2gb of hd space. A friend gave it to me, and I wiped the hd of Win 95 because it had a ton of spyware. Does anyone know of anything I can do with it? Should I just get Windows 95, or is there some old but worthwhile Linux dist I can put on there?

 

[Harvey]

The best use for machines like that are for small, dedicated tasks, such as NC machine controllers (lathes, routers, etc.), alarm systems, etc. that will run DR-DOS or MS-DOS. It's not worth investing any serious money unless you have a productive use for it.

Testing such apps are the reason I still have my old 486-DX4. 🙂

 

[Philippine Mango]

I don't think he really cares about that. How fast is the processor? By the sounds of things, it's a late pentium era computer so 150mhz+, either put Windows 98SE or windows 2000, but if you put 2000, you have to upgrade the ram, 2000 will run slow btw. Your best bet is Windows 98SE as it runs great with 32MB of ram, optimal would be 64 or 128MB ram for that machine which is more than likely it's maximum anyways.

 

[ForumMaster]

look for some linuc distro. those usually know how to run on older hardware better. but unless you have some use for it, don't waste money on it.

 

[nweaver]

good use for a machine like that? Paperwight or doorstop are the best 2 uses.

 

[Atheus]

Could be a little router or server, wouldn't be very powerful though. For an OS I would definately recommend a Linux or BSD varient. Most of these will run on that machine in some configuration, you just have to be careful about what windowing system to install, if you install one at all.

 

[Slowlearner]

Please throw it away. You can get a pretty powerful pc for 150$ or less on craigslist or newspaper classifieds.

 

[Brazen]

I have an old 486 laptop. CentOS with no GUI, command line only, flies on that thing. I plan to eventually use it to test vlan and q-trunking on linux.