This week I've given Puppy Linux a go. Its a small but powerful Linux operating system that puts little demand on low spec hardware and older PCs.
With the support for Windows XP ending, I was wondering how an XP based machine could still manage to run modern up to date applications and continue to interact with the Web. This is where Linux comes in...
Puppy Linux can be booted directly from a live USB pendrive or CD. You can take your pendrive with you and run it on any PC or Laptop that boots from USB. This gets loaded into the computer's ram. Your files and setting intact. Having your desktop saved to a dongle on your keychain sure beats carting around a computer under your arm.
Anyhow, I ran Puppy Linux on Three systems. One was a 1.6ghz Atom based netbook with 2gb ram. The other was a Dual Core Intel 2.4 ghz laptop with 4gb ram. Lastly via CD Rom instead of USB, I ran it on a 2002 Celeron 1.3ghz Desktop with only 384mb of ram.
The netbook performance was incredible. Battery use was reduced since it wasn't running off the harddrive but using system ram and the usb instead. You Tube videos could run in full screen without stutter. Load times were swift and navigation was snappy compared to Windows 7.
The Dual Core Laptop had quicker load times compared to Windows 7 and Ubuntu, likely due to the entire OS loading into ram and having low demands on the system. But otherwise ran as you'd expect.
The big surprise was the old 2002 desktop pc. Even though it had only a small 384mb ram and a budget celeron 1.3ghz processor it performed like the netbook which was 8 years newer with heaps more ram. It would stream You Tube videos but couldnt handle full screen playback. The onboard graphics chip and sound were not designed for media or graphics which is the limiting factor here.
Try it for yourself:
www.puppylinux.org
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