Older laptop, Low Specs, What OS?

Question

I have acquired an ECS (Balance?) 557 notebook.

Specs as follows:
Intel Celeron M (1.5 GHz)
256 megs of RAM
GPU is a vampire card using between 16-64 megs of RAM.

Has a tad of an overheating issue, but it doesn't really effect it.

I have used XP, but the hard drive failed so I have to live disk an OS, or run it off USB. I am familiar with Linux, and I have been running XUbuntu on a USB, but I don't know if that would be the best for functionality and low resources.

Anyone recommend anything else?

Answer 1

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/



Able to boot from a USB drive or live CD



Never used it. Always stuck with Ubuntu when trying to learn Linux. Just a suggestion as far as keeping your resources for uses other than running the operating system.

Answer 2

That laptop is probably new enough where it's hard drive controller can handle a ATA drive larger than 120 GB, and those have come waaaaaaaaaay down in price over the years. If you can afford it, I'd recommend getting a new hard drive and installing Windows XP with Service Pack 3 or any number of Linux distros (Damn Small Linux, Xubuntu, Ubuntu, and so on). You could also go the Windows 2000 route if you're not really worried about wireless connectivity and need something that does the basics, but Win2K is getting really long in the tooth as far as programs that work with it go.

Answer 3

XP is as far as you can go with Windows as later versions need minimum 512MB RAM for SetUp to even start (and 1GB minimum to actually run the os)

Answer 4

DOS, FreeBSD, DamnSmallLinux + Wine