Good linux distro for my old Desktop?

Question

My computer is compaq presario SR1435IL
Pentium 4 (2.9GHz)
I am currently using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS It is supported till April 2013.After that I don't want unity or Gnome 3 or KDE.So some other good linux distro (with some other Desktop environment) with LTS and Stable.No alpha or Beta.I want to use HP printer 1020 plus.Read djvu files.Read comics in zip rar format.Read mobile books ebooks.Use torrent program.Open ppt,doc,xls, want to use libreoffice.Edit subtitles.Use video player.

Answer 1

Use your existing Ubuntu, except install and use the XFCE desktop instead of Gnome. This will make your experience lighter and faster. Your existing apps will work with XFCE, but may be less eye candy than Gnome had. You can choose which to use at any login.

Answer 2

I sympathize with your reluctance to adapt to Unity... I feel the same way. I have been feverishly trying other alternatives and so far Pinguy (which I am running on an old Dell GX520 P4 3.0) has taken my fancy... although Ultimate Edition is a close second or maybe a tie. Linux Mint is a strong runner as well and may well be the winner in my eyes in the long run. Unity runs great on my newer PC (on which I will more than likely upgrade to 12.04) but... on the older hardware is lacking tremendously. There are some nice features in Unity like the Lenses... but I am not sure they out-weigh the limitations. I still question Ubuntu's move to Unity, but as time goes on I am certain that the community will bring forth tweaks that will "glorify" it once more.

Answer 3

My recommendation would depend on the amount of RAM. If you have at least 1 GB RAM I would recommend the MATE version of Linux Mint Maya. Linux Mint Maya is based on ubuntu 12.04 and is thus a LTS version. The MATE version is the Gnome 2 fork. So as an Ubuntu 10.04 user everything will be very familiar.



If you have 512 MB RAM I would recommend Xubuntu 12.04 for you. The new XFCE 4.8 interface has nearly all the functionality of Gnome 2, is less of a resource hog and looks awesome. Xubtuntu 12.04 is an LTS version, but is only supported for 3 years. It hasn't got Libreoffice installed, but it is available in the software centre.



I don't know for your particular printer, but as of the 12.04 versions you would not need to install HPLIP anymore. The printers, which before required the installation of HPLIP are supported out of the box.





There is also Lubuntu, it is very light, but darn ugly. I would not recommended because your processor should be quite capable for xubuntu or linux mint.



My configurations:



Xubuntu 12.04 on an eee pc 1005 HA (main)

Ubuntu 12.04 on a Dell dimension 4800 ; PIV 2.66 Mhz, 1.5 GBRAM

Xubuntu 10.04 on hand build AMD Athlon 1500+ 1.33 Mhz, 0.75 GB RAM

Answer 4

The distro (Linux flavour) and the DTE (desktop) are separate. You can mix and match.



You to do not want Unity nor KDE, just install one or more of the others. Experiment with several until you find one you like the most. You do not need to change the OS though.



I use Fedora and KDE. Sometimes I switch to Xfce or Gnome.

Answer 5

Some options:



An LXDE distro: Lubuntu, Mint LXDE, and Zorin Lite will all be familiar to you.



An XFCE distro: Xubuntu, PCLinuxOS XFCE-spin, Debian 6



Gnome 2: CentOS, support til 2017, based on Fedora/RHEL; Debian 6



Some less mainstream choices: Crunchbang (Debian w/Openbox), Puppy, Slitaz, Anti-X

Answer 6

distrowatch is a good place to go for Linux distro information.



http://distrowatch.com/search.php?category=Old+Computers

With one of these distros on a p4 you should have a pretty fast computer again.