Support for older hardware and computer illiterates

[0ddity]

K, kinda funny back story. A friend of the family was at the house today, and I overheard her complaining about her tax software. She was saying "it's a scam, they want me to buy a new computer to make this program work, but I just bought this computer!" So after her conversation, I walked over to her and asked "how old is your computer, if the tax software doesn't run on it?" She replies "oh, I bought it in 98 or 99." I expressed my disbelief that she expected a decade old computer, running Windows 98, to run software made for new computers and modern OS's. She still seemed to think it was a scam, that it should work just fine, because she "paid a lot for the computer." So I told her that the real scam was Windows, and paying for tax software that you could get an equivalent for free, and explained about Linux and open source software. So my question is, if I were to install Mint on her computer, would there be any problems with hardware compatibility? The computer is probably a P3, with an onboard ATI Rage or Intel video. If I installed Mint XFCE or fluxbox (assuming she has at least 256 MB of ram) would it have performance equivalent to Win 98, with all graphical effects turned off? If not, is there another distro similar to Ubuntu or Mint (ie with a graphical package manager) that would work better on old hardware? Or should I just tell her to byte the bullet and get a new computer?

[Elisa]

IMHO Mint 9 is ok, good choice, just try the xfce or fluxbox. I am sure she will get more than she'd get by installing win 98

[grey1960envoy]

Just out of curiosity did this lady bring that dinosaur from a museum?LOL But really I think Mint 9 KDE should fly on that compared to '98 (or BSOD part 2)

[Pierre]

You are probably in the US, but we have had some moderate success

http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibilit ... pp_id=7692

This Gov't tax program, officially only runs under M$,
but it has also worked under parallels for the Mac.

I still kinda like W98, have a soft spot for it ....
you could also try anti-X from Mepis, - that O/S is designed for those older PCs.

[0ddity]

I'm in Canada, so I don't think that would work.

[LarryP]

Lol sounds like my first pc 500 mhz amd k6 with 196 mhz ram. mint 9 with xfce should run at least as fast if she has 256 in ram lxde should run nicely too it uses maybe 10 to 20 megs more in ram. Personal choice here but i would go for lxde for myself I like the gui better

[det4100]

You can go to the community website where there is a list of different types of hardware and motherboards that Mint is running on. I have Mint 8 running on a Dell C600 laptop. Runs pretty good. A slight issue getting the resolution correct, but fixable with a short google search.

det4100