Windows-centric choice of *Nix plus GUI

[imported_Kiwi]

I'm considering either Kubuntu or Xubuntu, for a relatively old 384 MBs (max) PC I've built from the discard pile/ shelf / cabinet where old parts go.

Which of those GUIs will a long-time W98 / W2K user (shorter time with XP -- kept resisting that one until fairly recently) find easier to get set up and will that one also be the easier one to become familiar with?

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Originally posted by: Kiwi
I'm considering either Kubuntu or Xubuntu, for a relatively old 384 MBs (max) PC I've built from the discard pile/ shelf / cabinet where old parts go.

Which of those GUIs will a long-time W98 / W2K user (shorter time with XP -- kept resisting that one until fairly recently) find easier to get set up and will that one also be the easier one to become familiar with?

What kind of stuff are you going to be doing with this machine?

I've run Ubuntu and Xubuntu, and I did a brief stint with PCLinuxOS 2007 -- which is KDE-based, but I didn't stick with it very long. Lately, I've been very satisfied with LinuxMint 7 (Gloria), but I suspect it may be too much for that older machine of yours to bite off and chew.

In either Kubuntu or Xubuntu (or any other *buntu) you'll get the same command line experience as far as navigation, shell commands, apt-get and/or aptitude, etc.

From a GUI standpoint, Xubuntu is going to be greatly simplified in contrast to Kubuntu.

I'm curious -- why did you restrict your consideration to Xubuntu and Kubuntu and ignore regular old Ubuntu? I feel more at home in Gnome than KDE, but I think that's just a consequence of having spent more time with it.

The reason I ask is that (to the best of my admittedly limited knowledge) Xubuntu is the only *buntu derivation that is especially lightweight for older, underpowered machines. I don't know that there is a significant advantage to running KDE as opposed to Gnome from the standpoint of resource requirements.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Specifically, old games are the proposed subject matter for the *Nixes to chew on, along with WINE. I've been having tons of problems with the Windows98se installs going straight into the super slow motion mode of the candidates tested for the Retro PC Gaming Platform (one breadbiarded rig with a Micronics mainboard featuring Intel's 430TX chipset and running a 200 MHz P-I MMX CPU wouldn't run much better than what a 20 MHz 386 could have run, literally. It wouldn't recognize any PC-66 or PC-100 DIMMs as anything larger than 32 MBs, and only has two DIMM slots, so a max of 64 MBs.

Then there was an Abit BT-6 with the i440BX chipset and a 266 MHz P-II processor that ran better with Win2000 (that isn't very good for old games) in 384 or 512 MBs (that one could recognize 256 MB DIMMs, but seemed to get no benefit between 384 MBs and 512). It should have run Win98 faster than it did W2K, and there shouldn't have been anything wrong with Windows Explorer. I was getting a little frustrated before an Asus P2L97 managed to run Win98se just the way it ought to, and the way I recall the hardware of the period being able to do.

But I wondered whether I could salvage the system with the Abit board in it (I took it from breadboard into a case too soon) with some *Nix like Puppy Linux. Then, researching the Linuxes, it seemed that most of those derived from Debian would run in 384 MBs at 266 MHz, and Gnome just didn't look as Windows-similar as KDE. Xubuntu was a late entrant in the running when I saw it offered on eBay, but so far, I haven't seen the same kind of illustrations of that particular GUI.

I would start all over again, but eliminate the Win98se install, and instead of a dual-boot of Win98 plus W2K, do it with Win2000 and Linux (version still undecided).

For anyone curious, when I would try loading Windows Explorer in Win98se on that Abit, I would get an error message about User32 and AppHung, and when I "OK'd" that dialog box, another followed it about a missing something (that wasn't really missing). I found a ton of stuff on Google, none of which applied properly to what I had gotten, or how to fix it.

 

[her209]

Have you considered running it as a virtual machine? It works better than dual booting since you can have multiple instances and operating systems running concurrently. I dunno what hardware you're running though.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Someone educate me on the Virtual stuff; isn't it like DOSbox in a way, chewing up a great many CPU cycles from a modern system to emulate a 386, and not even a fast 386? I have several potential "period" hardware systems matching the games I think I want to play.

I was working overtime in the 1999/2001 period, and bought games I never played, quite a few of them. I'm retired, and "somewhat" (actually hugely) less well off, so while I have time now for trips, golf, cruises, etc, I can't afford the greens fees they charge at the clubs, so tinkering with PC hardware is a cheap entertainment.

 

[Jodell88]

My first suggestion on distros would be puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux since this is right up their alley.

If you want to use KDE I will suggest Mandriva over Kubuntu. I found Kubuntu with KDE4 to suck when I tried it (Kubuntu 8.10). I don't know if that has changed though.

If you want to use XFCE I'll suggest Debian over Xubuntu since distrowatch found Xubuntu to be bloated over Debian with XFCE installed.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

I've come across illustrated user guides to Gnome and KDE, although not to XFCE. It was from those that I got the impression that KDE would be a lesser dimension of paradigm shift than Gnome, and all of the Debians seemed to claim to run on relatively old hardware in relatively small amounts of RAM. Thirty years ago, plus or minus as much as five years, I already had my turn at the command line for Unix, and of course, MS-DOS from 1982 or so to 1995. I'm spoiled by Windows now. That's part of why Puppy Linux is a sideliner / also-ran.

That's something else about these 'Buntus, the installs don't require a string of command line parameters a block long. I have heard that some newer versions may be incompatible with the older hardware after all, having potentially shed the oldest drivers . .

 

[Colt45]

gnome and KDE are going to be a whore on a slow PII and low RAM. Sure it will run, but pretty painful.

XFCE at the most (it is quite usable though, i like it...), But if you want any performance I'd use (open | black | flux)box. They are very minimalistic though, might give your noobs a headfuck for a while.


Then again, for $20 you should be able to get a >1GHz CPU and >512MB RAM and end up with something that doesn't crawl with a full featured WM

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Why does an American get that username? Life isn't fair.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

I suppose you mean the fact that I use the nickname of NZ residents, which I can because I was born down under to U.S. parents there on a job that there weren't enough experienced Aussies / New Zealanders available to handle (Geophysical Search Teams).

Meanwhile, I have found the Xfce user guide references.

Everyone should take into consideration the fact that the P-Is / P-IIs are practically free, although it does seem that the motherboards for them are reaching the practical end of their electronic lives now, and the failure rate is extremely poor as a result (has been for me). Tinkering with hardware the same age as the games I've never played is my entertainment / hobby / timesink. Newer hardware more or less defeats the principle, as well as potentially costing enough that I must establish strict budget limitations on my purchases.

My income isn't at all generous. I would still be working if anyone had offered me continued employment at the end when every job interview was a dead end, and they would never say it was because they considered me too old for the jobs.

Enough of the off topic drivel, though. If Windows2000 runs quite well enough, and it's probably driver conflicts on the old hardware making Windows98 run badly on two out of three working old Retro PCs, Linux supposedly is better about its footprint (Debian- based Linux, anyway), and reduced conflicts of that nature compared to Microsoft's Win9X stuff in particular, there should be a combination of GUI, WINE, and *Nix distribution that can equal Windows2000's efficiency on hardware that old and slow.

 

[Colt45]

Gotcha, well, a 1GHz or 600MHz PIII (some PII boards will take coppermine, ones that don't will top at 600MHz) are pretty close to free now too. I've got one or two PIII's if you want.

I still have a couple PIII machines doing menial tasks.. 440BX is reliable as hell IME, and PII/I is pretty light on power, and half decent capable for lots of things still.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Funny you should mention 440BXes. I had an SE440BX when it was new, and I have another one available now, but I chose the Abit BX-6 (same chipset) over Intel's because of the superior setup in the BIOS. The one I had in 1998 was unreliable, uncooperative, bad acting all around. I swore off anything Intel for five years after that, and anything ATI, and if there had been enough selection of audio besides their products, I'd have sworn off of Creative.

Only more recently have I built a P-III, and even a (Yuck!) P4 system, for special situations. Anyway, that BX-6 is the one I plan now to wipe off the Win98se / Win2000 dual boot installs in favor of Win2K / (? unk ?) *Nix dual-boot. The Win98 setup on it is slower than the W2K setup, too slow for the initial test game. I've swapped components, reformatted and reinstalled OSes, gone through a lot of testing, and every time, somehow, Win98se isn't running as well as it should on that system. I can get good speed in Win 98 from both an ALi Aladdin5 board (Asus P5A), and a Via MVP4 board (Tekram), at the same processor core speeds, and will use that little Tekram, in spite of its being a miniATX without enough add-on slots, but I can't use the P5-A.

My keyboard and joystick require USB, and the Aladdin5 chipset has a bad implementation of both AGP, USB, and something else is wonky as well, because Creative's hardware is very flaky when running on that chipset in Win98se OR in Win2000.

P. S. In the past hour and something, reading up on Damn Small Linux, that's looking like candidate number one. Any pros / cons I can benefit from?

 

[Fox5]

A virtual machine may be a better option.
But for that matter, if you're trying to go the Linux + Wine root, there's really no reason not to install it on a modern PC either.

If you want to stick to 'period' machines, old versions of Windows (complete with all their problems) may be the best option.

BTW, try just standard Ubuntu and see how that works. You can even run it off the livecd. To be honest, Xubuntu wasn't much leaner than Ubuntu (worse sometimes in my experience), and KDE is more Windows like, but that just makes it harder to learn rather than easier. Gnome is basically as simple as possible, whereas KDE is very Windows like without the familiarity of Windows. Plus, the Ubuntu derivatives aren't all that well supported.

DSL and PuppyLinux are good for low end hardware, but you're going to have a harder time getting them set up and installing software. I'd imagine you'll have to do a lot from the command line, or be stuck with outdated packages.

 

[iGas]

As said DSL & Puppy Linux are some of the better support small footprint distro that you can try.

My default window manager is XFCE on my main machine Athlon II X2 245 & 4GB ram (x64 kernel), because I like the speed & the look. LXDE is another option is you want to have a blend of speed on a relatively small & stable footprint.

 

[sgtwiltan]

I had as one of my favorite systems, a P3 tualatin on an MSI board which still exist since the wattage for the CPU is around 30 and I have a lot of old PC133 Dimms available. It was once overclocked for 2 years to 1.4 with a 1.2 Ghz Tualatin (512K version) and 384 Mb of PC150 Ram. It just runs stock now with a 1.4 and 512 MB of PC133.

I have used mostly Mandriva and PCLinux on that system as well as W2K in dual boot. You could try PCLinuxOS LXDE which is amazingly snappy but I also have 512Mb of ram in it and a dedicated video card so it runs smoothly.

I have 3 older P3 systems (compaq Ipaqs) which used the i815 and i810 dc133. Those all run with PCLinuxOS Minime and LXDE. the 2 i810 systems run with 256 megs of PC100 while the i815 is at 512 of PC133. Runs great as surfing machines with the onboard graphics( which also eats up memory and is slower than dedicated memory on an agp card) I will warn you that flash videos run choppy in those Ipaqs due to less memory and and 10/100 network cards.

My Tualatin system is running a GF4 4200 and at 1.4 while the best Ipaq is at 833/133. I'm into KDE so Mandriva and PCLinux were my choices since I prefer the similarities to W2K with which I dual boot into with the tualatin system. It runs much better than the Ipaqs but I still use the Ipaqs just because I can and they are tiny. ( I can even watch DVDs on them with out a hardware decoder)

Puppy or DSL are even better choices for older systems but you don't get the flexibility that more established Distros have.

Puppy less than a 100 Mb ISO more usable than DSL and w98ish in looks

DSL less than 50Mb runs but is more useful as a kiosk type system. Also less secure

PClinuxOS (minime LXDE) 300Mb ISO. Needs some tweaking but very lean and you get to chose which apps you want to install instead of having many different ones already installed and then having to remove the ones you don't want. Easiest to setup with tools in one place generally and still with KDE 3.5.

Mandriva installs way too much stuff and needs a good cleaning to maximise HDD space and in my opinion slower than PCLinuxOS due to KDE 4 series.

The Ipaqs generally have 2 to 2.5 GB of HDD space used with PCLOS and can be pared down to less than 2 GB but have the whole PCLOS repositories to chose apps from for more functionality. I generally remove Printing,wireless,Compiz and scanner bits since they are purely surfing and e-mail systems.

Good luck