Old Laptop for Chess

[terminator]

I've got an old laptop that I want to use as backup for chess. Do I go :-

1.) Windows and install Windows 2000 to use as little of the 256 RAM available. Free chess apps like ICC Client, Arena, Playchess, SCID etc

2.) Linux - Ubuntu or Open Suse. Install wine and then possibly install windows apps above.

Any suggestions which route I should go?

[menniepals]

Use windows. Linux with wine will slow it down.

[Aleks Peshkov]

1) Windows XP is not much resource hungrier then Windows 2000.
2) Modern Linux is not designed for weak machines. Sure Linux is more tunable. But Linux tuning is different (more complex) then Windows tuning with XPlite and similar utilities.
3) Wine is not Windows on Linux, but virtual OS does.

[AdminX]

2) Modern Linux is not designed for weak machines. Sure Linux is more tunable. But Linux tuning is different (more complex) then Windows tuning with XPlite and similar utilities.

This is so not true, there are a lot of Modern Linux Distros designed just for older systems.

Check out: www.distrowatch.com

[meschle]

I would use windows xp

disable services not required
delete startups not required
disable prefetch

this should give you a fair bit of free ram

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

I would use windows xp

disable services not required
delete startups not required
disable prefetch

this should give you a fair bit of free ram

Agreed,Vista is the most annoying operation system ever runned on a hardware....even with enough ram it's slow,annoying and gives much more headache than satisfaction....
The only credit I can give is the beautiful animation,but that's not enough for me....

[gerold]

I would use windows xp

disable services not required
delete startups not required
disable prefetch

this should give you a fair bit of free ram

Agreed,Vista is the most annoying operation system ever runned on a hardware....even with enough ram it's slow,annoying and gives much more headache than satisfaction....
The only credit I can give is the beautiful animation,but that's not enough for me....

I sure don't like Vista. I plan to upgrade to a hp quad with xp pro.

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

I would use windows xp

disable services not required
delete startups not required
disable prefetch

this should give you a fair bit of free ram

Agreed,Vista is the most annoying operation system ever runned on a hardware....even with enough ram it's slow,annoying and gives much more headache than satisfaction....
The only credit I can give is the beautiful animation,but that's not enough for me....

I sure don't like Vista. I plan to upgrade to a hp quad with xp pro.

I fully agree with your choice....

[fern]

Old something with 256 Kram?
Man, that's not a knife...this a knife.....my old 98 Kram Armada....running w95.
It was top in 1998...

Fern

[Zach Wegner]

Install NetBSD. Get Xfce and it will fly on 256. Compile your own kernel and you can trim it down more. Use linux emulation and use linux programs without the bloat. This is the same OS that can be used natively on pocket PCs, etc.