Choosing a Linux Distro for Old Computers

A wonderful thing about Linux is it provides the opportunity to install a new up-to-date operating system on older hardware. Bellow I will list a few Linux distributions available. These are by no means the only ones available.

486 to Pentium 1:

Desktop Light (DeLi Linux):

Slackware is a good distro to choose for older machines, but if you don't want to do all the heavy-lifting and configuring, consider DeLi. DeLi was designed to run on machines using 486 processors to Pentium III's. DeLi uses IceVM (or Fluxbox) as light-weight window managers and come with a variety of programs including Konq-E for web browsing, GTK-See for file management, and Abiword for composition. DeLi also contains a variety of extra software that can be installed (such are Firefox), including repositories.

DeLi is great because it's lightweight and fairly easy to install. If you have drive problems you'll have to resort to installing those manually however. Editing the icons, menus, and interfaces in IceVM and Fluxbox requires manually editing configuration files as well.

Pentium 2 to Pentium 3:

KateOS

KateOS is another distribution that originated from Slackware and was founded and is maintained by Damian Rakowski. KateOS is lightweight, although it uses the xFce Window Manager. Like many distros, a webbrowser and office software are included. KateOS is available on a LiveCD as well as a DVD with more preinstalled software.

KateOS delivers a more modern desktop fell while still maintaining to run more smoothly than other distributions similar to it such as Xubuntu.

Pentium 3 and above:

Xubuntu

If you have a computer with a decent amount of power or simply want a distribution that's lightweight but doesn't sacrifice on ease of setup and convenience then Xubuntu may work best for you. Like KateOS it uses Xfce. While it isn't as fast on older hardware as KateOS in my experience, the included Network Manager, APT install tools, and ability to use Debian packages make it a compelling alternative. Ultimately it comes down to convenience versus KateOS's speed, but if you can handle Xubuntu just fine, it may be a better choice.

Window Managers:

Many other distributions that are more heavy weight such as Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, and Fedora can be adapted to run on older hardware by using a more lightweight Window Manager. A few include xFce, IceVM, Blackbox/Openbox/Fluxbox, Window Maker, and Afterstep. Each window manager is different in its own way, some are more lightweight than others and some are easier to configure than others. In some cases you can combine window managers. If you have both openbox and GNOME installed, you can change your session or configure GNOME to use Openbox instead of Metacity for a boost in performance. There are ways of improving the performance of GNOME and KDE as well. Turning off services and special effects such as Compiz will improve performance on most machines.