I recall in 2009, I had only a desktop for all my computing needs – a desktop bought in 2003 and post SP3 update, struggled to run Windows XP, plagued with virus problems, slowness and often crashing. Every 2 months, I had to re-install Windows XP! I still persisted with XP, thinking Linux was for the geeks and not my cup of tea. Finally, in 2010 I gathered courage to try out Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and I was amazed by the speed and stability it rendered to my old computer. After that there was no looking back! I installed Ubuntu 11.04 “Natty” thereafter which performed amazingly well on it. Now all the four systems that I have, run on Linux only!
Essentially what attracted me to Linux is its ability to run on low specs. Linux desktop used to be attractive in 2009 and 2010 (specially Ubuntu) but never close to a Windows 7 or a Mac OS X. However, 2011-12 are, I feel, landmark years for Linux. The best looking Linux desktops came out of Ubuntu and Fedora/OpenSUSE stable during this phase and almost all Linux distros now look as good as any Windows or a Mac!
This week I experimented to find out if these acclaimed Linux distros still retain their ability to perform on moderate to low hardware. The idea came up while searching for a distro to replace my Ubuntu 11.04 (whose support end in Oct’12) in my desktop and netbook. I thought why not document my experiments and results.
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