What would you (or other experienced users) recommend for an old P4 (3GHz) with 2GB RAM on a P4i65GV mobo? Preferably to dual boot with Win XP?

I've bookmarked adamhm's thread as I'd like to get into Linux. I've been thinking about it for quite some time, but always get the feeling that the system I'd like to use to get into it and learn may not be powerful enough to run any distro.
I have a better laptop, but I'd rather not mess with it, as it's my work tool, plus I often lend it to my brother.

Perhaps I should have posted this in adamhm's thread?

I'd still recommend Mint... a while ago I had an old AMD Athlon64 system I was getting rid of that I put the Cinnamon edition of Mint on & it seemed to run ok on that. If the system can't handle Cinnamon, then try MATE or Xfce instead

Thank you, will keep that in mind. May also bother you when I get around to it and get stuck or am uncertain (pretty certain it will happen).

Oh that's cool! But I don't recall a file commander back in DOS, maybe it's just because I never used one and that's why I couldn't imagine how would you move the files around easily without a GUI. So that's good to know! Did DOS have a file commander?

And yep, I can write the normal way, full ten, I'm actually one of the fastest typers, my average typing speed is 70-100 WPM depending on how I'm feeling and I can crank it up to 130-150. Using just the normal, QWERTY keyboard, not Dvorak or anything.

I never tried MATE so can’t really recommand it, but I second XFCE suggestion. It’s what I usually put on (relatively) low-end machines.

More than 5 years ago I had a system identical to yours (only difference - 1GB RAM) and Mint ran flawlessly with KDE. Not sure how the minimum requirements changed through the years though as I haven't followed it closely because the motherboard fried and I built a new, more powerful system that suited my needs better.

Of course, as you already know, i'm still using Linux (Peppermint with LXDE) on a tiny Asus 900mhz netbook ever since. Not the best hardware but it does it's job and for basic usage and some light gaming (old point & clicks) it's very nice.

From the experience I had with the underpowered netbook, I can say that the desktop environment plays a major role in the responsiveness of the OS. So, if you see that your PC doesn't cut through, make sure you' ll try a lighter environment.

I recall the BSD folks replying to that with "Unused RAM is wasted RAM. It is all fine as long as the OS makes it available to you when you need it." Meaning that aggressive disk cashing was not a bad idea.

However, I confess I never really missed Akonadi. Great idea, but it gave me a lot of trouble. I would prefer seeing it fixed, but gone is fine too.
Norton did THE file commander for DOS, called Norton Commander. Personally, I never used it, nor do I remember ever seeing it. However, it seems to have caused quite an impact, as it still inspires this kind of programs.

It does seem to work very well. I don't use it much, but I like it, and comes in handy from time to time.

As a side note, I did use the Norton Shell. It was very convenient, and I learned a bit about pipes and output redirection. Not much, as DOS stuff made little use of this stuff compared with Unix. However, the DOS command.exe consumed less memory that I could use for games...

EDIT:
Enlightenment has always been the darling of desktop screenshots. They usually look amazing.
I have little experience with it. Seems to run fast and with little resources. It is very customizable, and comes with several tools (terminal emulator, file manager and so on — but not Reversi, you'll have to get it on the side ;-).
Look at the pretty pictures. [url=http://step.polymtl.ca/~coyote/picturesd/linux/enlightenment_aliens.jpg]This old theme in particular must be seen[/url].

Cheers.


I also know that you do practically not much else than browsing the web and emails with that system. I'd like to be able to do more than that, ideally all the things I can do using Win XP.

Thank you all for the advice on the desktop environment.

Maybe these are dumb questions, but...
So I have an old Vista system (64 bit capable but have 32-bit Vista installed) which I sometimes use for games with problems on more modern systems. For example, videos failing to play. Has an early Quad-Core and a 9800 GT.

1) Is it possible to create a dual-boot Linux system without creating a new partition (aka reformatting the drive)?
2) Linux is supposed to be lightweight. Does this ever make some games run smoother than on Windows?
3) If so, which games run better on Linux?

I have interest in the following:
Satellite Reign
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind GOTY Edition
Hard West Collector's Edition
Transistor
Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power
Victor Vran
Retro City Rampage DX
Star Trek: Judgment Rites (only)

There definitely is, I tried that with my first Arch installation.
Which to be fair probably wasn't the smartest idea I've ever had.
I don't remember exactly what went wrong.. but one thing I remember was that my USB keyboard & mouse just stopped functioning whenever I started i3.
And of course I didn't document what I did to correct that situation :P

1) I read about efforts regarding "storing" Linux in a Windows filesystem. I would not rely on that.
Still, it may be possible to resize your Windows partition without reformatting it, or you could reuse some older hard drive you may have around.

2) You will probably not notice anything like that because of video drivers. That is a business issue of AMD and NVidea, not a technical shortcoming of GNU/Linux.

3) Games that run natively, for sure. In particular games with source code available.
I really like i3. I tried wmi, wmii, awessome, but I sicked with i3. It is great for keyboard-centric users.

Now I need to "deratify" my web browser... I need to find time to look at vimperator.

Major kudos for new giveaway, Adam!
Not in, but you are awesome!

Current KDE5 plasma moves to Wayland. I think the use of RAM skyrocketed due to inefficient texture use. Last time I checked it was 1.5 GiB. On Debian Stable, KDE4 uses mere 500MiB. Its just another bug, it will be solved. I have 8GiB of RAM on this machine and have no problem with extra functionality.

Thank you. I'm generally open to learning new things, will see how it goes when I try it.

I'm saving the post links in a text file for if/when I need to bother you guys, cheers.


That's what I'm thinking of doing, cheers.

Oh yeah, Enlightement does look good, is it some kind of Linux distro? When I was looking for the most famous or beginner recommend Linux distros I never came across it, is it one of th "obscure" or not very well-known ones?

And that ad is so much funny! I didn't know that game was called in Reversi, so that's good to know. I heard about Othello and Go, but Reversi was new to me - although it does seem to be just a rehash/different ruleset of Go/Othello.