Hi everyone -old hardware specialist here (cheap guy!)

[Spalding]

I have been running Linux for a few years now. I've always looked to it to breathe new life into old machines, so when my computers get old and Windows eventually gets corrupted, on goes the Linux! I think I started with Red Hat Linux and an old 486SX or maybe with the Cyrix 686.

I jumped on to the Ubuntu bandwagon about two or so years ago, and now I am looking to jump on this one! One thing I do like so far is the forums, which seem a little more manageable than the Ubuntu ones due mainly to size. The Ubuntu ones just seem pretty hectic with not many answers. I loved Ubuntu up until I upgraded to Version 9, and when I heard a recommendation to try out Mint, I was ready.

I am looking to start with the Mint 9 Fluxbox edition, but I need to do some hard disk work before I get that installed. One thing that's a little depressing is that I am running this from an Ubuntu 8 Live CD because both the Mint 9 Fluxbox and the Ubuntu 10.04 run horribly slow with only 512 MB of memory (man, I remember when that used to be an awesome amount). So it seems they are leaving the memory-limited people behind, although maybe they will run a lot better from a disc drive. But I can't say enough good about how well this Ubuntu 8 Live CD runs on my system - awesome!

I remember being amazed a few years ago when I got that old 686 running mainly with the help of the Blackbox window manager and Dillo, a very lightweight web browser. Both the Gnome desktop and Firefox are resource hogs by comparison, so I have high hopes for this Fluxbox edition. I might also have to try that LXDE editition, I think it is, with the lightweight X windows.

[MALsPa]

Welcome! Another cheap guy here! Can't call myself an "old hardware specialist," but I've managed to get Linux going on a few different used, discarded PCs. It does seem like what you said is true lately -- distros "are leaving the memory-limited people behind."

[Spalding]

Yeah, my latest travails prove I'm not a GOOD specialist, just a hack. I learned that newer (read huge) hard drives don't go well with old BIOSes. Scratched my head all last week before I learned here that there are several BIOS limits related to huge drives that I forgot haven't been gone all that long. Heck, to me a 2000 PC is still fairly new!

[tdockery97]

Hi Spalding, and welcome to the Mint community. I remember back in 1990 when the computer I used at work had a 20 megabyte hard drive. I thought wow, that is huge . Today you can't find a decent program that is 20MB.

[Oscar799]

Hello Spalding,
Welcome to Mint Forum
There is a lot of useful information for new and not-so-new users here -> viewtopic.php?f=60&p=302358#p302358
We have a Community site http://community.linuxmint.com/
For real-time help there are IRC channels,open MintMenu>Internet>XChat and you will be automatically connected to #linuxmint-help and #linuxmint-chat
Have fun with Mint

[caprus]

I'm betting that you're going to be much happier with your "memory limited" performance once you get off the live CD and on to a Hard Drive. Remember that the read access times on a CD drive are much, much slower than the HDD will be. You may or may not be limited by 512MB of RAM, but it's way too early to tell until you're working from a hard drive.

I'm another old hardware guy myself *, so I can identify with your efforts. I checked out Red Hat many years ago, and didn't stay with it. SUSE 9.3 got a look briefly, then I tried SUSE 10.3 and almost made the switch from MS then. Finally I loaded OpenSUSE 11.0 and found that there were finally enough apps, etc readily available to do what I need to. I set up our PCs to dual boot, but I can't remember the last time we actually booted into Windows. If I ever find the time Windows will come off, and we'll have a heck of a lot more disk space to work with. The only time we ever use Windows is a single copy of XP running on a Linux PC in VirtualBox, running one specialized app, on one single PC. Now I'm transitioning some of the PCs here to Mint, and find that some users prefer that distro.

* on so many levels: I worked on computer hardware my whole career - much of our hardware here is old - and, last but not least, now I'm old too.

[Spalding]

I'm betting that you're going to be much happier with your "memory limited" performance once you get off the live CD and on to a Hard Drive. Remember that the read access times on a CD drive are much, much slower than the HDD will be. You may or may not be limited by 512MB of RAM, but it's way too early to tell until you're working from a hard drive.

I'm another old hardware guy myself *, so I can identify with your efforts. I checked out Red Hat many years ago, and didn't stay with it. SUSE 9.3 got a look briefly, then I tried SUSE 10.3 and almost made the switch from MS then. Finally I loaded OpenSUSE 11.0 and found that there were finally enough apps, etc readily available to do what I need to. I set up our PCs to dual boot, but I can't remember the last time we actually booted into Windows. If I ever find the time Windows will come off, and we'll have a heck of a lot more disk space to work with. The only time we ever use Windows is a single copy of XP running on a Linux PC in VirtualBox, running one specialized app, on one single PC. Now I'm transitioning some of the PCs here to Mint, and find that some users prefer that distro.

* on so many levels: I worked on computer hardware my whole career - much of our hardware here is old - and, last but not least, now I'm old too.

Woohoo! I'm up and running on an honest to goodness decent hard drive (40 GB from the year 2000!) and Mint 9 Fluxbox looks great! But it says I only have 256 MB, and 250 are used! So given that I should be ecstatic that it runs this well, and I am - my first impression is VERY positive. "From freedom came elegance"? I like that.

Wow, a quick look around looks great! Abiword and Gnumeric are actually usable, unlike Open Office was on Ubuntu 9. And The Gimp opens MUCH more quickly.

I guess Tomboy notes is not installed by default, so time to test out the installer.

[jesica]

glad to here you like it

welcome to the forum