Upgrade it to 4GB and install modern Linux. I recommend MX-Linux https://mxlinux.org/
It will run all modern browsers.

1GB ram is not sufficient for web browsing today 🙁

Hello zyga64, and thanks for your reply.
I've got plenty of RAM, always. I'm not on youtube, facebook etc., so i never ever have low memory when surfing. FreeRAMXP tells me: When idle = 750 MB, when on a "heavy" page (ebay-kleinanzeigen.de) = 500 MB RAM (not swap) left, but CPU often at 100%. What is slowing me down, is the CPU, too much java-script (and probably a dozend of things, they want to show me, but my browser can't handle) ...

Linux is always an option. Modern is better than legacy, I think.

In the Windows world, a 2009 Dual-core laptop should handle Win7 just fine, which is leaps and bounds more compatible than XP (basically still ~100% compatible with the modern web), but would require 2GB+ RAM to feel snappy (and I recommend 4GB+ for the 64-bit version).

Even light Linuxes tend to be somewhat heavier on RAM than XP. You'll want to upgrade, and you will definitely not want to run Mint 12. For your use case you'll probably be best off with Mint 20.2 XFCE, which is to say the most recent version of Mint, with the XFCE desktop. XFCE is quite light and I've had okay web browsing experiences on a Raspberry Pi 2 (very slow ARM quadcore, 1GB RAM) using it. Without question you could run modern Firefox. 1GB will be a tight squeeze but I imagine 2/3GB could be fine. It sounds like your system might have 1x1GB stick, in which case you should opt for a 2GB stick to install in the second slot, rather than a 1GB stick.

https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=290

It seems 20.2 dropped 32 bit support but your CPU does support 64-bit mode. The installer should give you the options necessary to split the drive between XP and Mint. It's not just going to wipe your drive without telling you. Mint is quite user friendly, and XFCE is very customizable and fast, and tends to default to a windowsy looking setup.

Edit: In virtual machine testing, Firefox on Mint 20.2 XFCE can just about play youtube 1440p60 in 1GB of RAM. It starts swapping to disk and freezes intermittently. 1080p60 seems to play back perfectly but is also swapping. I really would recommend more than 1GB. Even just going to eBay, it's at 75% memory and 40% swap.

Lubuntu is light and functional enough for 1GB RAM.
But it is not only about RAM quantity, CPU instructions set also count for modern browsers.

Recently tried Lubuntu over a PIV 2.8 (socket 478) which features only SSE2, you can navigate regular web pages, but forget about Youtube, for instance.

There is also Raspberry OS for X86 desktops, comes with Midori web browser which seems lighter (maybe "less functional" though) than Firefox.

Lubuntu is also a good choice, yeah. It's also a bit windowsy, so if that's the interface you're used to it's a good choice. Midori is a lot lighter than Firefox for sure, but it definitely is missing a lot of features other browsers have, and can cause serious problems with some websites. The CPU is a C2D architecture pentium dualcore so it has enough instruction sets to run browsers decently.

null

XFCE will be fine with 1G of ram. It works on my AMD K6-2 with256megs of ram just fine. Boots to the desktop in under a minute using Devuan Jessie.

null

Isn't iridium chromium? I wouldn't expect that to behave well in low memory conditions...

I wouldn't recommend a plain windowmanager to someone who has admitted they "don't know anything about Linux", a DE would be preferable to lessen the learning curve. Also I'm not sure where you got the idea XFCE is heavy like KDE and GNOME, it's barely any heavier than LXDE/LXQT.

Error 0x7CF wrote on 2021-10-22, 22:09:

Isn't iridium chromium? I wouldn't expect that to behave well in low memory conditions...

I wouldn't recommend a plain windowmanager to someone who has admitted they "don't know anything about Linux", a DE would be preferable to lessen the learning curve. Also I'm not sure where you got the idea XFCE is heavy like KDE and GNOME, it's barely any heavier than LXDE/LXQT.

Exactly. MATE isn't that much heavier than xfcf4 with a few more goodies.

null

Not rocket science for those that have use them for a while. If you are use to the win style ui light DEs make perfect sence when first using Linux. I've done it in the `15 years of Linux u sage, went to using just a WM and am back to using a desktop encviroment. You have a choice, Obviously just a WM or booting directly to a cli makes some Linux lusers think they are leeter/superior than other Linux users. 😉 Of course you can have both and select the one you prefer when you log in. And just ctl-alt-function key to log in to a separate cli only session.

Edit: Hell you can even run a separate GUI session in that separate cli session using startx, Isn't that cool or what ? man startx to find out how if you don,t know how to achieve this.

Maybe this is redundant for you, as you mentioned you're using New Moon and Serpent...

Do you always have the latest builds of them?

The latest builds can be downloaded from roytam1's blog or most of them from my official mirror (-> https://soggi.org/misc/tools.htm).

For better compatibility with the modern WWW, I would recommend NM28. Personally I use NM27 on POSReady "hacked" XP SP3.

For any support you can directly speak to roytam1 at MSFN. Once I had issues with heise.de and watching YT videos - this has been solved in the next version after I posted the issue there.

kind regards
soggi

Hello everybody and thanks for the comments! My line of reasoning re. Linux was: Old OS (XP) = shtty old browser - new OS (Linux) = gd modern browser. ("a man can dream") All in all there are 3 options - i think:

a) Upgrade to Win 7 plus 2 or 3 GB --- No, i'll stick to XP, it's fast - and 7 is not (at least on my single core Celeron 900). Btw: On ebay i've just bought a beautiful (case is silk black army-hd-dur-aluminum) Dell E5400 2GB Laptop with Win10Pro(!) on it. It performs like Win95 on a 386SX20 with 2MB and "doublespace".

b) Try a "light" Linux --- To start with something, i've set up my old Mint v12, 32bit. The accompanying text says, it's fine for old machines. Grub is a little tricky, but at last (after 3h and several fixmbr) i had it working besides my XP. I even managed to play a movie! However, XP is still 2-3 times faster than Mint, and - i guess - a to-date version (also of other linuxes) would perform even worse. In the end i fdisked it.

c) Do nothing, stay with XP and frequently update Serpent and/or NM28 --- Yep. Chromium crashes out of nothing all the time, FF is dead, MyPal is just dying. As mentioned in a previous posting, i prefere MyPal, but ebay kicks me out and it would not stream live TV on zdf.de (if somebody wants to try: they use a geo blocker for - resp. against - non-germans). Serpent streams this (fckng) zdf-tv with framedrops, sound works. So, if i don't find any sore points, Serpent will be my browser for the 21st century!
@soggi: I've saved the link, thank you.

Thanks once more to all vogons and have a good time!

P.S.: Just thinking: Are Vogons posters also vogons? They are ugly (i've heard)!

Congratulation, you trolled us beautifully 😀

It's good to see someone still sticking with XP. It was the last MS Windows variant I used on a daily basis;)

@zyga64: Thank you for the flowers, but no, not trolling at all. I've spent *entire* saturday with serious Linux-tinkering, shrinking a partition, setting up Mint, finding out why grub was complaining, how to rebuild my windows mbr, doing this in a loop several times. Plus the cleanup. Not to say of the dozend downloads and experiments i made with XP-browsers. You live in techie-land, whereas i have to strech for looking over the fence. I was happy as can be that i could do what i did without data-loss and/or having to reinstall XP. So, plz., call me a lamer, dabbler or ignorant - but not a troll.

@Caluser2000: Someone has to be the last, but i'm sure one could still find millions of XPists in countries we use as electronic waste dump.

@All: I've learned more than expected, thanks once more and kind regards!

Computing is SO COMPLICATED...

Ok, perhaps I jumped to a conclusion too hastily. But it seems unlikely to me why you wouldn't want to expand the memory on your computer.
You can bought DDR2 memory very cheap these days. Here in Poland you can buy 2x2GB DDR2 SO-DIMM for the equivalent of ~15 euros.
I didn't mean to offend you.

With 4GB and Core2 class CPU - modern linux with XFCE desktop is working just fine (Windows 7 x86 as well). Of course I understand playing with old hardware - it is fun for all of us here !
But for daily driver ? Why ?

Edit reason: typos