minimum specs for good performance?

[chchandler]

I'm ready to try out Linux... it's been years since I dabbled with a Unix shell account, and I'm intrigued by the graphical interfaces and claimed better performance with older hardware.

I'm looking around for an older laptop, 3 to 5 years old, perhaps. What are mimimum specifications for decent performance with Ubuntu GG? I will mostly use it for web browsing, email, photos and such. No gaming, video editing, etc.

Any good sources for fairly recent laptops being sold w/o an OS?

TIA

[hyper_ch]

1 Ghz prozessor, 512 MB ram... that should give good performance for your tasks...

[Bölvaður]

Check if any of your friends are throwing away or have old laptops in storage some where. Free computer is a good computer, doesn't harm the environment if it gets reused.

Im not sure if buying old laptop is the brightest idea. They often seem to have too high value compared to Asus EEE, HP 2133 Mini-Note and others that are new, are small, are cheap, are set up with linux preinstalled.
Those type of laptops might be better in all ways and even cheaper, except if you find one for free.

[sayakb]

@OP
You need atleast a P4 for "GOOD" performance, 512GB of RAM. Though you might have to keep desktop effects disabled. Plus, try to get a 9 series Intel mobo, because old i8xx have a real bad onboard GPU..

[SlappyPappy]

Does it have to be a laptop? A lot of people seem to have older desktops that will run Ubuntu very well. My box is someone's old P4 with a Gig of RAM. It works very well and free is always a great price.

Plus Linux has a few more issues lets say running on a laptop than desktop. Things like hibernation etc aren't quite as well worked out yet.

YMMV of course but come on in, the water is fine! :)

[VoodooLoveDog]

I've loaded 7.10 and 8.04 on a number of machines. It runs surprisingly well on a machine with 900Mhz processor w/512MB. However, for the eye candy you'll need something with a little more processing power and a decent video card. It runs very very well on my Dell D610 (1.6Ghz processor with 1GB of RAM).

[xdibblerx]

I had 7.10 and 8.04 beta running on an old HP 850MHz Celeron with 384Mb RAM and it ran well enough to search the internet and use Openoffice and run the 2d games fine. Anything 3D just killed the frames per second. If it ran fine on this old thing then it should run on just about anything.

My suggestion would be to just head out to some garage sales or look in the classified ads for something reasonable if you don't have anything now.

Just a funny story: Other day I saw someone had a Packard Bell computer with Windows95 for sale with all the extras and they were asking $500 for it. :confused:

[natman]

I have Xubuntu ( better for older specs ) running on an old gateway 1Ghz, 256mb ram works fine, all the same apps as normal ubuntu also

[zaussome]

z

[dokdoom]

Like natman I use xubuntu on my older machines. Even on my new machine which just flys. In my opinion to answer your question, go grab the xubuntu alternate .iso

[Bloch]

900 MHz PIII and 256 MB ram (a friend's machine)

Standard ubuntu ran fine. Slow for programs to start, and always wise to have only two things at most running.

I installed xubuntu, with flashblock on Firefox browser (a must for slow systems).
He is happy with it. Uses it for browsing, writing documents with OpenOffice, playing music, watching DVDs.

[wawadave]

I,m running ubuntu 804 on a 1.2ghz 256 megs of ram. letting tranismision and folding at home run in the back ground 100% of the time. and surf the web no problem. but if firefox is left on long ram gets used up.
but it runs many games. runs gimp etc. not tried open office because of low ram. Have added so many features from synaptic and what ever i see on the forums htop last one still running it. I used to test windoz software and had crash boxes to try things on. like load test app and keep loading other things till conflicts find out which one remove it add more. or start clean. or pre install all else then test apps.

been doing the add till it brakes right through gutsy to 804 beta to now. still going fine.
all i can say is impressive.
yes programs have crashed some don,t work. but not removed any on this box yet.

So like said before if it runs well on these old computers should run on any thing this old and up.

[H.Callahan]

900 MHz PIII and 256 MB ram (a friend's machine)

Standard ubuntu ran fine. Slow for programs to start, and always wise to have only two things at most running.

I actually have 7.10 running on a 667 MHz PIII with 256MB RAM. Yes, it is a bit on the slow side, particularly opening programs and as Bloch said, it is better not to have many things running at the same time.

On the other hand, it is is better than XP would be on the same machine and really not much worse than the Win98 that came on the machine originally. Hopefully a new machine is in the future (my "real" computer fried beyond recognition), but for the time being, it is serving well as a desperate backup when the family has all the other machines tied up.