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View Full Version : [other] Pentium III Coppermine & 250MB ram, which version to choose


Andrea D
May 22nd, 2013, 02:41 PM
Hi, I have this old computer laying around:

MOBO: PcChips M754LMR
CPU: Pentium III Coppermine (733/256/133/1.65V SL3XY)
RAM: SDRAM 128MB PC-133 x2
HDD: IDE 40GB
PSU: 250W

Which version of Ubuntu should I choose?
I tried Ubuntu, Lubuntu and Xubuntu latest versions and it's so slow,
I don't want the fastest PC in the world, but I don't want to get angry for its slowness.
If I upgrade the RAM to 1GB would it be fast? Or is it only a waste of money?
Now it's so slow, so if the difference is small I will not buy anything; but if there's a considerable difference I'll consider to buy it.

Sorry for my English. I hope you understood and thank you for the attention :)
sudodus
May 22nd, 2013, 02:58 PM
Welcome to the Ubuntu Forums :-)

A Pentium III cpu will be slow if you want to use it to browse the internet and visit modern web pages with a lot of eye-candy. It will be much better with 1 GB of RAM, but in many countries an old computer (but newer than yours) is quite cheap, and this is what I would recommend, if you want to do something more than test and play with it.

But there is one exception: If you want to use it as a home server without a graphical desktop (only text) it can be OK. See this link about old hardware

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2130640

The first post is a good write-up about what you can do with old hardware.
JRV
May 22nd, 2013, 03:29 PM
Another option might be to try Puppy Linux, it runs entirely in ram.
It runs fast on old hardware.
Andrea D
May 22nd, 2013, 05:05 PM
I have a good mid-aged PC, I'm only trying to do something with my very old PCs ;)
I also have an AMD Athlon AX1800DMT3C with 1GB RAM and another mobo, I know it is better but I tried ubuntu and it doesn't detect the PCI LAN card.
sudodus
May 22nd, 2013, 05:18 PM
You can get a cheap ethernet card to connect to your LAN and run that mobo, you know is better ... or if there is a separate ethernet card in the Pentium III computer you can grab that.

Anyway, you can certainly play with Puppy or DSL or even Knoppix in the Pentium III computer. Knoppix runs reasonably well for me in an old desktop with a 400 MHz CPU and 192 MB.