Xubuntu 9.10 on 256 MB Ram

I have a Dell Lattitude C810 that 512 in RAM and about a 1.2 GHz Pentium 4 CPU. I had it upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala and it was doing a pretty fine job. Since the laptop was so heavy, I primarily had it laying on a desk and used it to check the web. Otherwise this laptop would be a brick.

One of the memory chips went bad some time ago, and I was forced to remove one of the 256 MB modules. Therefore, I was left with just 256 MB of RAM. Not surprisingly, the Dell C810 became quite slow running Ubuntu and the GNOME Desktop. I three choices on what to do with this computer:

1. Throw it away

2. Go out and spend $30 for a new memory modules

3. Try Xubuntu

I did not want to toss the machine quite yet (although I probably should) and I was not interested in investing any money into this laptop, so I decided to try Xubuntu on it.

Xubuntu is advertised as having a small memory footprint and great for older systems. To install it, I simply opened up a terminal and typed:

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

And hit 'Y' to a couple or prompts. All of the needed themes, artwork, and start-up programs were downloaded and installed without a hitch in about 20 minutes.

For a web browser, I switched to Google Chrome for Linux. Now the laptop is usable once again. It is still a little slower than before. But at least for casual web browsing it is still working. So maybe I will get another year or two of service out of this Dell C810 Lattitude.