Ubuntu on older system

[vegan.philosophy]

You can still use Unity 2D on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS if you are not satisfied with the speed of your system and do not give preference to pleasant graphics. Choosing 12.04 is good as it will be supported for a few more years. Newer versions of Ubuntu may still be useful for you but they'll require a bit better configuration for optimum performance. I used Unity 2D on my old Lenovo laptop which was four years old and got heated very fast.

[kromaz]

Install went awesome! (Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS) It did default to 2D, may try the Xfce down the road. For the most part everything running smooth. Only slow down Ive seen is the web browser (Firefox) with flash player. Crazy how a web browser can use so many resources, wish flash would go goodbye and HTML5 take over. Again want to thank the community for all the help during this process. As I learn Linux I will have plenty of questions to post. Talk to you all soon, off to learning Linux!

[Petro Dawg]

You might try other browsers to see if they perform a little more to your liking. I personally use Google Chrome, but there are many alternatives, some lighter than others.

Also, did you check if there are additional drivers available for your on-board graphics?

[kromaz]

You might try other browsers to see if they perform a little more to your liking. I personally use Google Chrome, but there are many alternatives, some lighter than others.

Also, did you check if there are additional drivers available for your on-board graphics?

Ive been a long time fan of Firefox. Tried chrome didn't care for it much, but hey may try chrome again to compare the performance in Linux. The ATI X800 Pro is a AGP card not on-board and didn't have any additional drivers.

[Bucky Ball]

Nice to hear everything went well. You can mark this thread as solved by following the instruction in my signature.

Enjoy the OS, the forums and the learning curve.

[newb85]

No! Why do people always give this advice??? This drags in ALL of Xubuntu, default apps, dependencies, the LOT. You DON'T want that, especially on an older machine that is already struggling for air. You ONLY want the desktop environment, xfce4, as suggested in the first command.

If you are going to install xubuntu-desktop, you may as well do a clean install of Xubuntu because you are basically doing one ON TOP of the existing Ubuntu install. BAD idea. Your menus will contain ALL default apps for both Ubuntu AND Xubuntu. You definitely don't need that clogging up an already struggling system.

Please peoples, if someone wants to try a different desktop environment, DON'T advise them to install *buntu-desktop anything. xfce4, lxde ... just the desktop environment. If they want to try a new DE, advising them to install *buntu-desktop to do it is the WRONG advice.

Rant complete. Thankyou. Carry on.

Um...that was kind of the point. I presented multiple options. One was for only bringing in the DE, and one was for default apps, too. Depending on what is limited in the old hardware, users may need to switch to the lighter applications. Having those extra applications will only burden their system if they run both simultaneously. (Unless, that is, their biggest limit is HDD space.) In many cases, they're best off having different options, trying them, and then removing (if they want) the ones they don't want.

[deadflowr]

The ATI X800 Pro is a AGP card not on-board and didn't have any additional drivers.

And no doubt you wouldn't have seen drivers for the card, as AMD dropped support for cards older then radeonhd5XXX series.
There is a workaround to get the fglrx-legacy drivers installed, but it is probably too much a bother to deal with, as who knows what kind of problems arise by doing so.
If the open-source drivers function well enough, no need to try and install a potentially damaging workaround.