Linux questions from a newb

[Kneel B4 Zod]

I have an old-ish laptop that is really crawling with a (fresh install of) XP home. 512 RAM, maybe a 1.2ghc celeron chip? I bought it about 5 years ago, and I don't want to put any more money into it (ie more RAM). I've already bought 2 new harddrives for it, and it wouldn't shock me id something major died soon.

that said, the thing crawls & is sluggish, and I am looking for faster web browsing/email/basic Office apps.

so, my questions are:

how much faster will my computer be with Linux?

are there any versions of Linux that are particularly easy to use for a newb to install/use?

should I anticipate lots of driver issues? IE with my wifi PCI card?

I would want to be able to duel boot. what's the best way to set this up?

tx

[Rhett]

Try damnsmall linux. It's a specially made distro for older computers. Other popular distros with more stuff are OpenSuse 10.3 and Ubuntu.

Your computer might not be that much faster in linux. You're trying to run firefox in linux, and you know it is slow in windows, right? Anyway, you might want to give it a shot. Yes, you may have a hard time configuring your graphic card and wireless driver, but hey, maybe not.

Try google searching for "Tiny XP Beast" and look for some tips to optimize XP. Also, install fasterfox firefox extention to speed up firefox.

[Freakin]

Install Ubuntu on it. It should be usably fast for sure.

[funkyworms]

Ubuntu should be plenty fast but Xubuntu will be faster. Fwiw, Xubuntu is kind of ugly.

[Witzo]

download and try Knoppix first. It's Linux on a CD and you can see if you like it before trashing your system.
Completely free, all you need to do is download a ISO, burn it to a CD and it'll boot right up.

[Freakin]

[ QUOTE ]
download and try Knoppix first. It's Linux on a CD and you can see if you like it before trashing your system.
Completely free, all you need to do is download a ISO, burn it to a CD and it'll boot right up.

[/ QUOTE ]

a lot of linux distros, including Ubuntu, now have Live CDs

[psionic storm]

[ QUOTE ]
how much faster will my computer be with Linux?

[/ QUOTE ]

a lot faster if you dont run kde/gnome with it

[CORed]

I'm running SuSE 10.0 with KDE on an old desktop with a 1.4GHz Pentium 4 and 640mb memory. It runs fairly well -- not blazingly fast, but very usable. I initially had just 128Mb of memory, and it was very slow with KDE or Gnome (worse witg Gnome). Adding the memory made a considerable difference. If you want a Windows-like GUI, you want either Gnome or KDE, but they come with almost Windows-like hardware requirements. If you can settle for a lighter-weight GUI, which won't be quite as user-friendly, you can get by with quite a bit less hardware.

[Kneel B4 Zod]

can I make a live cd on a DVD? or do I need a CD?

[Bremen]

Not sure if a CD image will work on a dvd... however I just downloaded Ubuntu Gutsy dvd image so that is an option.