Stay home for Mint?

[cjv8888]

I have a rather low spec machine of 500 MHz and 520 MB RAM which is running Ubuntu 8.04 ok but rather slowly with occasional crashes.
As extra desktop effects cannot be enabled on this machine there are few other special configurations.
I have heard Mint is lighter and somewhat faster. If I just install Mint 6 into the / partition leaving the /home partition and swap untouched would there be any issues ?
I tried the Mint live CD which seemed to run ok but a bit slow.
Anyone had this experience or opinion?

[Ms_Angel_D]

I don't know about mint but you might wish to try Xubuntu, Xfce is a much lighter desktop environment. You could even try it out without doing a full re-install.

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/xfce

[cjv8888]

I don't know about mint but you might wish to try Xubuntu, Xfce is a much lighter desktop environment. You could even try it out without doing a full re-install.

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/xfce

Thanks, although Xface could be a little spartan for my liking but I suppose I could try it out without a full install.

[mikewhatever]

I also think neither Ubuntu nor Mint are the distros for 500Mhz CPU. Xubuntu is an option, but an even lighter one might be better.

[Ben Page]

Mint is a little bit heavier from my experience, it is the same thing as Ubuntu, it only has a fancy menu (witch is resource intensive comparing to classic gnome one), a few themes and icons, and app that is something like add\remove apps but mint exclusive. Other than that, it is Ubuntu. Mine recommendation would be to leave your Ubuntu installed and just install xfce or LXDE desktop enviroments and your OS will be much faster.
If you're looking for a lighter os go Arch (but its a CLI os) or Fedora 10 (but its a RPM package system os).
Hey, try gOS it has preinstalled LXDE and a nice animated menu bar (witch don't require desktop fx to be enabled). Its a Ubuntu based distro, so everything is the same as it is in Ubuntu.

[cjv8888]

Mint is a little bit heavier from my experience, it is the same thing as Ubuntu, it only has a fancy menu (witch is resource intensive comparing to classic gnome one), a few themes and icons, and app that is something like add\remove apps but mint exclusive. Other than that, it is Ubuntu. Mine recommendation would be to leave your Ubuntu installed and just install xfce or LXDE desktop enviroments and your OS will be much faster.
If you're looking for a lighter os go Arch (but its a CLI os) or Fedora 10 (but its a RPM package system os).
Hey, try gOS it has preinstalled LXDE and a nice animated menu bar (witch don't require desktop fx to be enabled). Its a Ubuntu based distro, so everything is the same as it is in Ubuntu.

I have never heard of gOS. Where do you get that?

[ikisham]

I've tried CrunchBang Linux: ubuntu based + openbox. Looks cool, has a nice choice of software and is faster. For your machine I would choose AntixM-8 http://antix.mepis.org from the few ones I've tried, it is complete and made for old pcs. But consider what Ben Page said about gOS, I've not tried it but from what I've seen of LXDE in Knoppix (the best distro for live-cd/flash drive) it is like my favorite desktop environment.

[Ben Page]

You tube preview>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlXyQF7c3nM

gOS homepage and download link>

http://www.thinkgos.com/gos/index.html

Its working on archaic 266MHz 128MBRAM Pentium! But it is "a bit" slow... ;)

[redseventyseven]

I use Linux Mint on a fairly old system, but not as old as that! My processor is faster though I don't have any more memory than your machine. It runs ok.

Linux Mint recently came out with a new release of an Xfce edition, which I would recommend you to try. Xfce is pretty speedy, and not a bad window management system at all.

As for the other question regarding the partitions, it shouldn't cause any problems, though you might want to go through the hidden files and folders in your home folder (your personal configuration files) and be choosy about which ones you want to keep. Always back your data up, though, just in case!

[cjv8888]

Yes, gOS looks very interesting. If it is Ubuntu based, I hope the wifi will work 'out of the box' as in Ubuntu. Suppose I will see if it works on the live CD first.

Is it a good idea to keep home partition as in my first post or to install it like a dual-boot with Ubuntu initially?

[mkvnmtr]

I use Mint on an older machine with the same ram as yours. It seems a little faster than Ubuntu but that could be false. I think you should go through the package manager and uninstall everything you don't use in your Ubuntu before you switch. I have started to do this on all my machines and seem to have a much better experience. Things like compiz, bluetooth and palm related stuff I never use. It has made Ubuntu crash or lock less and run smoother.

[Vorian Grey]

Instead of switching distros, I would probably just download LXDE or something similar and then shut off any unnecessary services.