Mandrake vs Win XP Pro for older computers

[Pandamonium]

I've got an older laptop, and am wondering how much added "juice" I might be able to get out of it if I were to use Mandrake instead of Win XP. The only other reasons I have for wanting to try Mandrake are

1) to force myself to learn the damn OS, since I've failed on all previous (albeit half hearted) attempts.
2) hopefully make 800x600 on a 12.1" LCD look bearable. (I'm one of those people who run 1600x1200 on a 19" CRT and like it)

Any idea as to the performance benefit? I've heard estimates on the order of 25% to negligible performance gains with regard to the OS's in general, but nothing specific to laptops around this spec...

edit: topic typo

 

[CaptnKirk]

XP takes up quite a chunk of install space.

Man-Duck doesn't use half as much.
The Linux base is practically immune to malware.

 

[drag]

Almost immune but it's critically important to keep everything up to date. Open software means that bugs get fixed quicker, but it's pointless unless you keep stuff up to date. There might as well be no fix otherwise.

Linux can be made to run well on slower machines, but it's going to require a degree of tweaking. Not big, shutoff services and make sure that you have nice drivers for your video card installed.

Anyways, it's free. So give it a shot and if you don't like it then WinXP will waiting for you. I suggest Fedora because of the yum utility makes installing programs and keeping up to date over the internet very easy, but others have better results usability-wise with Mandrake and Suse.

Also keep in mind that all of it will be new, and you'll have to relearn muich of what you learned from using Windows for a long time. Stuff that seems easy in Windows will be hard in Linux, but visa versa is true for linux people using Windows....

 

[burnedout]

At work, I've ran XP Pro on boxes with 500 MHz/256 MB and 667 MHz/128 MB. without much problem except for responsiveness. Heh, I even installed XP Pro on a Comcrap box with a Slot A 550 MHz and 256 MB. All these boxes run without MS Office and are used primarly for data entry through a web-based portal, by the way.

But yeah, opt for the Linux install, if you can. Mandrake is a great alternative for beginners. Once you become accustomed to the OS, you'll be alright.

 

[silverpig]

Yeah, just make sure to tweak it a bit. You can get enough things running under linux to make XP seem as light as dos without much trouble so be careful what you install.

 

[tr1kstanc3]

i have mandrake 10 running on a p2 366 laptop with 192mb of ram. it runs fairly well, use it mostly for AIM, mp3s, and irc. by comparison winxp ran terribly when i had it briefly installed.

 

[gobeavs]

I installed Mandrake 10 on an old p3 733 laptop, 128 mb RAM, some HD (probably 5400 RPM), and it runs fine for e-mail and internet. Haven't tried much else at the moment.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: gobeavs
I installed Mandrake 10 on an old p3 733 laptop, 128 mb RAM, some HD (probably 5400 RPM), and it runs fine for e-mail and internet. Haven't tried much else at the moment.

He says that as if a P3/733 is so old and horrible.

I'm on a P3/600 laptop (albeit with 192MB of RAM) running XP SP1 here - works great, but a bit slow if I run more than a program or two at a time. More RAM would really, really help; 512MB and this baby would be great.