Advice fo an old laptop
 

Hi I just received an old laptop
with 256 mb of ram, pentium 4 inside...

It is running with windows xp service pack 1. I cleaned it up and left only
office 2003, newest version of firefox, boclean, ccleaner, avira antivirus latest version, vlc media player. IT is running ok, but kind of slow at the start (I was not expecting anything else anyway)

It will be a computer mainly for internet browsing, and entertainment: movies and music mainly (for the children).

Do you think I can enhance its performance if I switch to the latest version of ubuntu? With this OS is it true that I should not worry about antiviruses and antispywares or firewalls? So this means I can get rid of the antivirus and antispyware stuff?
I have read about it and seems an interesting option but I would like to receive some feedback from real users (and mainly if someone has the same situation using ubuntu on an old laptop)

Any other suggestion most than welcome
:OK:

I already answered this part of the question on this forum site
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Antivirus
And I am retty sure I won't need any anitvirus, antispyware or other firewall than the one by default.

I am still waiting for some feedback from anyone using ubuntu or xubuntu. which one is better for my system? what do you recommend? please post your ideas :)

Xubuntu I would say.
It's a bit low on RAM to run Ubuntu.

It all depends on what you want to get out of it, I guess. That laptop seems ideal for installing Windows 98 (which may have been the original OS judging by the amount of RAM) and playing DOS games on.

the original os is still the windows xp service pack 1.
Xubuntu seems to be the option.
now is it going to really enhance the performance or not much?
:swordfight:

Why don't you simply try it?
If your HD is big enough you could dual-boot.
http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/

BTW, also what Red says, W98SE on such system is extremely fast.

If your soundcard has Windows 98 drivers, I'd say go for Windows 98. It's indeed very fast - faster than Windows XP in any case - and Windows XP will be pretty useless for running games post 2001 anyway with a weak setup like that and most games prior to that run fine in Windows 98 and a great deal better there than in Windows XP.

But, like I said, you need to be lucky with the drivers. Windows 98 only takes up 2GB anyway.

Thank you both for the advice, but how do i get a copy of a windows 98se for free?
I think I will try the dual boot that says dosraider...but what do you mean about a big HD...the laptop one is 20 gb...big enough?

What do you think about a live cd
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD

Will it give me an idea of the performance? or this is only useful to start seeing how it works and the features it has but cannot show me how fast or slow can that laptop become?

Already got my answer :hysterical:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOMwcEDqig8