change of OS from windowsxp to ubuntu

Question

I am using samsung cpu with Intel Pentium P4 processor and 512MB RAM. Can I run ubuntu with these specifications smoothly?

Answer 1

Yes, AND No. I have run late-ish variants of Ubuntu, 12.04 and higher on computers with less than 1g of RAM, but if I recall correctly, I had difficulty performing the installation due to the low memory. In the end, I installed the OS on a separate computer with more RAM and then moved the drive to the computer with the lesser quantity of RAM and it worked. I would not go so far as to say it worked terribly well, but it worked.

In my experience Pentium 4's actually run pretty well with Ubuntu, provided they have enough RAM. My definition of enough might not be someone else's. In my experience, the cutoff is about 1.25gb, below which the system is annoyingly slow and prefers to have only one application loaded at a time. My advice to you would be to see if you can add 1gb of RAM to your machine.

I would guess that your 512 is made up of two 256 modules. I would advise you to take one of them out and replace it with a 1gb, thus upgrading to the minimum I outlined and spending a minimum of money. If you can afford to purchase two such modules and expand your memory to 2gb, I would advise doing so.

Had you listed the brand and model of your machine, I probably would have looked up a favorable price for you on Amazon.com

Answer 2

I won't use the word smoothly at all, but it's surely doable. I would head towards less resources-hungry versions anyway, like xubuntu or lubuntu as said. If you could get your hands on an old ram bank (say another 512 for example) you would get a better experience with Ubuntu