Windows 7

[White Stripes]

after 10 years windows 7 is finally reaching the end of extended support in a mere 30 days from this post.. you may get one last set of updates but after that, thats it... it will still function but an external firewall would be a really good idea if you wish to continue using it...

if you can upgrade to 10 (older hardware can run 7 but not 10 usually due to the compositor) your old windows 7 key has a very good chance of activating an install of windows 10..

for those of you running windows 8.1 you have till 2013 before you have to worry

and lets not forget our good friend linux for that old hardware

[GhostShip]

Some versions of Linux are bot so welcoming to the older hardware operator, what would you recommend for the Linux beginner Stripes ?

[GhostShip]

I spotted this list

https://fossbytes.com/best-lightweight-linux-distros/

Any thoughts ?

[White Stripes]

i use 'linux mint mate'.. full featured but light enough to run on a system with about 1gig of ram... i have much more than that which makes it even nicer but 2gig is the minimum i recommend if you want to surf the web with a modern browser..

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3787

    1GB RAM (2GB recommended for a comfortable usage).
    15GB of disk space (20GB recommended).
    1024×768 resolution (on lower resolutions, press ALT to drag windows with the mouse if they don’t fit in the screen).

it uses so little (i found a p4 w/ 1gig of ram for 10$ at a thrift store that runs it just fine) but is fully featured...

if you are talking about p3 or older athlon machines then you'll need something that uses an older kernel and has been cut down but modern browsers do not run on those cpus... 32bit, 2gigs, and support for sse2, and you'll have a useable machine with linux mint..

'mint xfce' is lighter ui wise but you'll still want at least a gig of ram... 'mint cinnamon' is the heaviest if you like eye candy...

[White Stripes]

I spotted this list

https://fossbytes.com/best-lightweight-linux-distros/

Any thoughts ?

these are good, it covers the ones for really old machines well....

[GhostShip]

I must admit I have used Mint linux previously, the main deal-breaker for me in shifting my operations over was always the loss of existing functionality as some of the "Dark-Arts" programs I use will not work on Linux systems and  they are pretty much irreplacable, I guess the way ahead is to run Linux and a vm for the windows legacy stuff thats so important to me.