It would probably be good to emphasize: “Linux 2009 software on a 1995 machine is much better than 1993 software on a 1995 machine.”

Windows software actually follow an inverse trend (e.g., Vista is reported to copy files more slowly than XP on old computers).

@ animeBSD: Also sir, no sane person without specific need still use 9x line of Windows. My Celeron 300 MHz does…. And it can run Red Alert 2 and Office 2000.

It was once recommended to me to use Windows 98 instead of Linux on an old machine; it is common knowledge that, despite its problems, Windows 98 performs better than XP on old hardware. Besides, a Celeron 300MHz is not old enough: we’re talking old as in a Pentium 75MHz — or even a 486. Contrary to modern belief, these can still be useful in a variety of situations.

@AP:
> Let’s not be manichean here. Modern Linux distributions tend to be nearly as resource hungry as their proprietary counterparts.

Sure, but what is modern? XP is still fairly modern to me: I bought a XP PC last year and at work my XP PC is slated to be replaced in 1 year (when it will still be somewhat ok) to 3 years (when Windows 7 will make XP obsolete, I guess). Now, comparing XP to its Linux equivalent (e.g., a contemporary Mandrake/Mandriva), I state — from my experience — that Linux is leaner, faster, easier to use _and_ maintain. Why do I use XP at work? Because the admins are Windows-centric and don’t want Linux — and possibly don’t trust recent M$ products like Vista… like most, I suppose.

> Will those oldies be as comfortable to use as the very recent PC with lots of memory, CPU power and a big KDE/Gnome on top ? Probably not. It’s just a matter of expectations.

That depends on planned usage (that’s what you probably mean by “expectations”). A power user would probably have intensive demands like audio or video editing, maybe gaming — so a 2-year old PC is needed. A day chores office worker would probably be satisfied with text-editing, email and basic web browsing… a 5-year machine would do for this.
A salesperson could even be satisfied with a 9-year old machine used as thin client. Other specialized uses would even get by with even older hardware.
Now, modern Linuxes can be made to be “damn small” and they compare favorably (IMHO) to Windows 98.
Again IMHO, for such purpose, Vista won’t do.
Nor 7.

I recently got a machine from my 70+ year old mother, who told me that I probably wouldn’t like it, because it was so slow. I took Winblows off of it, put Mandriva on, and it’s one of the fastest machines I run, currently. I could also put Suse on it without any problems, I am sure.

There are many ways to do Linux, don’t try one and say that the whole OS doesn’t work. That is not fair.

I have an old Cyrix CPU machine (800 MHz CPU and some strange board) which didn’t want to work with Windows XP at all for some reason.

Works fine with Linux.