Non-Technical Summary: (Nerds can skip to Details Below)
If you have an old PC around collecting dust that is too slow with Windows, you could bring it back to life using a Free, community-developed Operating system - And it will be 99+% immune to viruses without computer-slowing anti-virus software!
There a several online communities working to put your PC back to work with a Free Operating System and Free software packages for Web browsers, Office Suites, Media Player, etc.
If you have tech-savvy friends, they could point you in the right direction and set you up with few to try out - you'll know who to ask. No changes need to be made to your computer to try a new Operating System - you can wait to install it when you decide which one you like best - you can even keep windows installed for old times sake.
You would be amazed at how well that old PC, laptop or netbook will run with a new, more efficient Operation System. I'm writing this post on an old Pentium 4 PC that work was throwing away. It runs great for 80% of my computing tasks!
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| Linux Mint xfce looks and works great |
Recommended Operation Systems for Older PCs:
- Peppermint OS 4
- Linux Mint 15 xfce -
- Android
Nerdy Details:
About a year and a half ago, my wife wanted to go legitimate and purge our PCs of all unlicensed software. I thought I'd give Linux and other Unix-based Operating systems a try.
I searched out the major distributions, set up my list of requirements, downloaded .iso files and burned about 20 Live CDs to try out. Most of them didn't seem production-ready for serveral different reasons, but there were a few I liked and even tried for a few weeks.
In the end, I bought Windows 7 for the main PC because two major software packages we relied on were only supported by windows. But, the other 4 PCs in the house are sporting Lightweight Linux and BCD distributions (some dual-booting along side Android!)
I recently started re-evaulting new releases of those previous operation systems. A few of them have come a very long way in 18 months. This time, though, I didn't want to buy 25 CDs/DVDs to try them all out. I've found a few better way to test them.
1) Virtual Machine
There are several virtual machine software packages out there. Most of these can be set up to boot from a .iso image- acting as the virtual CD drive. You can then install your OS on the virtual machine inside your primary operating system without having to partition, or mess with CDs or DVDs at all. If you don't like it just delete the virtual machine.
2) USB Flash Drive
While, there are several software packages that will convert an .iso to a flash drive, most linux distributions already have something to accomplish this. Using a terminal emulator, navigate to the directory containing the .iso and type:
sudo dd if=<insert .iso name here> of=/dev/sd<x> (where x is the linux drive letter of the flash drive).
This command will copy the .iso directly to the flash drive. You can then boot from the flash drive, which is MUCH faster than a CD and you get to try it on your real hardware to check compatibility.
3) Directly from .iso using Grub2
This is my new favorite way to try out new distributions. If you Linux OS boots from Grub2, you can customize your Grub menu to add a line to boot from an .iso. Obviously, you wouldn't want to do this every time you find a new distro to try out. Here is my solution. Set up a generic .iso boot line in Grub2 and simply rename the .iso of interest to match the boot line. I like to call mine tempboot.iso
modify your 40_custom file in /etc/grub.d as root and add something like this:
menuentry "Temporary ISO (named tempboot.iso in Downloads folder)" {
set isofile="/home/<username>/Downloads/tempboot.iso"
# or set isofile="<username>/Downloads/tempboot.iso"
# if you use a single partition for your $HOME
loopback loop (hd0,1)$isofile
linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=$isofile noprompt noeject
initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
then run update-grub from a terminal to create the boot line.
If your grub menu isn't visible at boot, hold down the spacebar during boot to activate it. Then select "Temporary ISO" from the menu. This doesn't work 100% of the time, but it does save time when it does.
have fun!
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