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best OS for an ageing system

Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2013 8:39 am
by guerrillase7en
I just got a copy of mint 14 x64 but it seems a bit sluggish, granted it could be i'm running off an iso mounted on my C: drive... but i guess my question is what's a good benchmarking tool? my computer was running win XP... stats are:

AMD 3300+ 64 bit
1 gig of ram
i forget what the gpu is other then geforce 1400 mhz with a gig of memory

from the 'hardinfo' system info benchmarking tool
cpu blowfish: 19
cryptohash: 63.92
fibonacci: 5.13
n-queens: 15.83
fpu fft: 20.09
fpu raytracking: 14.20

so i'm just wondering if i should try a dif DE(i'm on cinnamon) or maybe a older OS all together? or if it will make that much diferance with the performance when i install it to my hard drive?

thanks for the help you guys

Re: best OS for an ageing system

Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2013 8:41 am
by gibbs1984
Why are you running a 64bit version of mint with only 1GB RAM?

Try the 32bit version.

Re: best OS for an ageing system

Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2013 8:43 am
by Orbmiser
Well there is no true way to test till you actually install on it's own partition.

But with 1gb of ram I would look into mate or xfce edition is even lighter than mate edition.
So with your setup I would probable go with xfce and actual install to it's own partition.
.

Re: best OS for an ageing system

Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2013 2:06 pm
by guerrillase7en
no real reason for running the 64 bit version other then when i do upgrade to a faster cpu and more ram i don't want to reinstall everything...
and as far as trying other DEs is there a way i can install them and try them out without downloading an entire image? i have to keep my download speeds pretty low so i don't get a AP password changed again:-P

Re: best OS for an ageing system

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 8:21 am
by /dev/urandom
Tried FreeBSD?

Re: best OS for an ageing system

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 8:33 am
by guerrillase7en
i haven't looked into BSD in a few years last time i tried one openBSD (i think) there was a suprising small amount of aplications for it where linux has a huge amount more due to it's fan base

Re: best OS for an ageing system

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 8:53 am
by /dev/urandom
FreeBSD has an ELF compatibility layer. Linux binaries work.
Also its repositories are rather huge.

Re: best OS for an ageing system

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 11:42 am
by KBD47
You can install the Xfce4 desktop onto your existing install and log into it. I'm wondering if you have any swap set aside, that will slow things down without it. Make sure you have 2-3 gigs of swap partition on the hard drive.

Re: best OS for an ageing system

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 6:17 pm
by fraxinus_63
I'd have thought MATE editions would run on that setup OK ... would be interested to know if XFCE gives a performance boost.

In Mint 13 MATE I tracked down a slight lagginess with the desktop and file manager to Zeitgeist. If you don't use it then switch it off - for me, it is a small improvement worth having. Instructions for Mint on http://linuxaria.com/howto/how-to-remov ... hy?lang=en.

Re: best OS for an ageing system

Posted: Thu Mar 21, 2013 8:09 am
by rajuvembala
Try this
http://www.lxle.net

read some good opinion about it in ubuntu discussion forums.

Re: best OS for an ageing system

Posted: Thu Mar 21, 2013 8:55 am
by Brahim Salem
I f I were you I would consider the following options respectively:
1- Linux Mint 13 Mate
2- Linux Mint 13 XFCE
3- PClinuxOS openbox
4- Zorin OS core 6. 2 LXDE
5- Lubuntu
6 -Descent|OS
7- Peppermint OS

Re: best OS for an ageing system

Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2013 1:01 am
by ausmuso
If you've only got 1GB RAM, Guerillase7en , you certainly wouldn't want to run a 64-bit distro. You won't get any measurable performance gain and you're just buying yourself problems with applications like Wine, Skype and Acrobat Reader, which are still only available in 32-bit version. On your system you will also want to avoid the bloat of a full KDE or Gnome under the bonnet.

I would recommend a lean and mean system like Crunchbang Waldorf. See http://crunchbang.org.
Like LMDE - it's based on Debian "Wheezy" so it's a rolling release, but it's not Gnome-based. It comes with a simple OpenBox windows manager.
The 32-bit PAE ISO is the image you want, you can run it live before deciding to install it. The raw OpenBox WM may be a bit overly spartan for your taste,
but it's easy enough to install LXDE - which is OpenBox-based - on top of it. Just get the LXDE metapackage with Synaptic. Remove Conky whilst you're at it and you won't have any additional drain on your PC resources.

One of the machines I've installed Craunchbang on is an early EeePC701 and it's running on steroids! Definitely worth a try.