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Gumby said:
My mother wants me to set her up an older laptop that we have so that she can use for the internet and email and looking at pictures. Basically a netbook from an old piece of shit laptop.

Thing is, when it comes to computers, she uh... sucks at them. She knows how to use them good enough but doesn't have a clue how to avoid viruses or spyware and everytime I come back to GA to visit I have to fix her desktop computer which is running XP home.

The laptop I'd be putting her on has something like 512MB RAM and 1.4GHz processor (could be less than that, it was made in 2001). Old and craptastic.

Basically what I'm looking for is an OS that will run on a older computer with minimal resources and isn't likely to get viruses.

Am I dreaming or is there some sort of OS that would work for this?

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IMO linux or any UNIX OS is the way to go, they have less viruses.

I recently reinstalled windows vista and was so surprized, how slow it is 'right out of the box'

If you want to go with linux, I would go with either (ubuntu, openSUSE, or fedora)

those are pretty much the top 3 that are easy to install and set up.

You will have to update graphic drivers and what not, but it's not that hard.


With linux, I can run 12 different desktops, with 2 or 3 video files playing, music, and 30 different tabs of firefox, while watching a vid on youtube, and coding in command line. WITH NO LAG whatsoever.

I only lag when I torrent


Pretty much, linux is a multi-tasking beast. If you choose to go a different route, I would go with a mac OS, just because of it's similarity and simplicity.

The thing about linux is, it's customizable as fuck, and I think that is pretty awesome.

oh yeah, and it's free and open source