19-07-2018, 01:42 PM
I've been thinking about moving to Linux for a while. There's a lot of stuff out there about which version to choose. Here's a sensible looking site: https://www.techradar.com/news/best-linux-distro
My choice would probably be Mint, a derivative of Ubuntu. For my own system I'd need to check that it can run some specialist software (Xilinx FPGA stuff) as that's only specified for a few Linux versions. Otherwise you'll be using Libreoffice for word processing, spreadsheets etc, Firefox for web browsing and plenty of choice for picture and PDF viewing.
For a low spec system like yours you certainly want a lightweight version. I think that Mint is fairly light on resources. But you don't need one of the ultra light versions such as Puppy.
I hope Trevor comes along soon and helps you from a position of lots of practical experience.
Don't forget you can run a lot of Windows software using WINE which is bundled witn many Linux versions. Or you can using a virtual machine such as Virtualbox to instal Windows as a guest OS.
My choice would probably be Mint, a derivative of Ubuntu. For my own system I'd need to check that it can run some specialist software (Xilinx FPGA stuff) as that's only specified for a few Linux versions. Otherwise you'll be using Libreoffice for word processing, spreadsheets etc, Firefox for web browsing and plenty of choice for picture and PDF viewing.
For a low spec system like yours you certainly want a lightweight version. I think that Mint is fairly light on resources. But you don't need one of the ultra light versions such as Puppy.
I hope Trevor comes along soon and helps you from a position of lots of practical experience.
Don't forget you can run a lot of Windows software using WINE which is bundled witn many Linux versions. Or you can using a virtual machine such as Virtualbox to instal Windows as a guest OS.
www.borinsky.co.uk Jeffrey Borinsky www.becg.tv
