2009/9/22 Samuel Douglas <sam.douglas32(a)gmail.com>:
That was kind of my point. My Mum's laptop is an old Celeron 733 laptop with 320MB of RAM. It has been running Ubuntu since 5.10 and used to be quite usable. Now it is a slug. Websites -- even common ones that everyday people go to -- are getting more and more bloated in terms of Javascript, Flash and images; web browsers are getting more bloated. Things that people wanted to do 3 years ago worked fine on that hardware, nowadays not so much. Even webmail services like Gmail are noticeably taxing on old systems like that.
OK. I would guess Ubuntu would be struggling with 320MB RAM now. With that configuration, you are now in "restricted" territory. You'll have to do some experimentation to get something that's a good fit - and compromise on what can and can't be done. There's many possibilities ... Xubuntu, Crunchbang, Mepis Lite, Linpus Lite, Antix, Puppy, to name a few. I've just been asked to set up an older laptop, running Windows XP, for a novice user "for email". Problem is, only 192MB of system memory. My guess is that once it has been updated, XP will run very slowly. One solution may be to use Puppy. In the past I have set up older systems with 384MB+ RAM and running Ubuntu for novice and technophobic users who couldn't afford to buy a new(er) computer. I regard the outcome as successful because this is the sort of user who can very easily "get into trouble" when using an MS system - seen too much of that! With regard to Gmail, I'd agree it does appear to generate a lot of traffic. The "basic html" version is one way around that problem, but you do lose some functionality. Michael