I don't see why that can't be tweaked to suit your chipsets. Only recently (around 2013) did the Linux kernel drop support for the 386 processor. Also IMO the 865G is not terribly "ancient". I would change to a different Linux. If you must have Ubuntu, I would try one of Ubuntu's side projects. I use Ubuntu Studio (14.10 LTS I believe) and it didn't install Unity (nor was it offered to me, iirc). It's using XFCE, which is probably closer to what you want. Ubuntu Studio may not suit your needs but I am under the impression that the other side projects of Ubuntu may have avoided Unity in some cases. You might want to look into that. If old hardware is a priority (sounds like it), I would just go with Debian, and avoid Ubuntu totally. Or Slackware, but only as a last resort. I mention Slackware since they are touted to have the best support for old hardware. Paul King On 30 Dec 2015 at 13:42, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote: Date sent: Wed, 30 Dec 2015 13:42:45 -0500 (EST) From: "D. Hugh Redelmeier" <hugh@mimosa.com> To: Toronto Linux Users Group <talk@gtalug.org> Subject: [GTALUG] distro for old machine and non-expert users Send reply to: "D. Hugh Redelmeier" <hugh@mimosa.com>, GTALUG Talk <talk@gtalug.org>
Machine: old P4 with 1G of RAM an 80G HDD. Was running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.
I'm trying to install Ubuntu 14.04 LTS but Unity is a real pig with the ancient Intel 865G graphics. Any desktop that tries to use 3D acceleration will be awful. I strongly suspect Fedora's Gnome would be bad.
Is there an easy choice? Would Mint work?
The system should be self-explanatory to casual former Windows users. --- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org http://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk