Best linux os for ancient computer

Matthew Renna

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Jan 24, 2017
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Hi everyone,

I'm trying to get this old computer as fast as possible.
It's some socket 370 celeron trash with 256mb of ram and it's running windows 98.
I installed KernelEx and got firefox 10 running on the computer. It's been able to render every website I've gone to but it's beyond slow, it just runs out of memory.

Would a lightweight version of linux help at all or can I expect no more out of this computer?

I don't need to be browsing the web on this computer but I'm just curious.
 
If you browse the sites as they were in '98, it will be the perfect computer... Having in mind that by that time Internet Explorer was the king, most web was optimized for it.

On your particular question - I would not expect any difference.
 
All modern web browsers require sse2 to run, so only an old version of FF will be able to run on your computer.

If low ram is an issue, you can always make a swap partition at the beginning of your hdd, but it will still be terrible slow compared to having enough memory.