Which is the best OS for old hardware? Chromebook or windows, or linux based system?

[Andress Constantinides]

Which is the best OS for old hardware? Chromebook or windows, or linux based system?
Need to know.

 

[skittle]

Linux with a lightweight desktop environment like LXDE or XFCE is probably best

 

[Guest]

how old is the hardware. agree with skittle there. if however that does not offer the speed you were looking for, check into puppy linux. smallest fastest linux distro with a GUI I know of.

 

[jacobian]

In my view, if you need to use the desktop, Windows is quite efficient when it comes to RAM/CPU usage. I always viewed Linux desktops as more of a resource hog. However, if you want to use the device as a server of some kind (DNS, http, mail, ftp, routing, NATting, CIFS [that's windows file server], NFS, etc), then Linux will shine there because you don't need to even load the Linux GUIs to run those. Those are perfectly configurable with command line tools and a simple text editor. Your memory can be in the low double digit figures to be able to run a fast and responsive server on a lan with Linux (or FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc).