What OS can run on a Intel Pentium 3 / 500Mhz Processor , 128MB of RAM ?

Answer 1

u can try LINUX, like Slackware family or Debian family

Answer 2

500 Mhz Processor

Answer 3

Windows XP crawls on the account of too squeezy amount of RAM, anything less would go well or boost RAM amount for XP, so at current the only mainstream OS that you can't put on there is Vista.

Answer 4

Actually a few will run on a machine with that architecture.

Windows 95, Windows 98SE will.

Several versions of Linux will run on a machine with those resources.

But, none of them will run fast. If you can add memory that will help significantly.

Answer 5

Windows 98SE, and most of the LINUX versions.

XP should be run on 512 MB of RAM and Vista Requires 1GB of RAM and a P4 or better processor.

Answer 6

Ubuntu 7.10 needs 500mhz cpu and 198meg ram at a bare minimum. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(Linux_distribution)

In fact, with that sort of hardware its probably wise not to try to use Gnome or KDE at all.

Desktop Required RAM Required CPU
fluxbox/idesk 48 100 MHz
XFCE4 128 200 MHz
Gnome 1.x 256 500 MHz
Gnome 2.x 384 800 MHz
KDE 3.x 512 1 GHz
http://linuxreviews.org/software/desktops/#toc4

Puppy Linux has been run in a PC-100 Mhz 32 MB RAM machine with hard disk. Memory requirement is at least 64 MB, which can be aided by a swap partition in hard disk if RAM is lacking. With 128 MBor more RAM, Puppy can be booted from a CD, DVD or USBkey drive, hard disk is optional
http://www.puppylinux.org/user/articles.php?cat_id=1

Linux may be do-able comfortably but you would need to do your homework on the distro/desktop combination you will be using. Puppy is an obvious good choice because its set up as a minimal but fully functional distro.


XP:
PC with 300 megahertz or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233 MHz minimum required (single or dual processor system);* Intel Pentium/Celeron family, or AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended
128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)
1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available hard disk space*
Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution video adapter and monitor
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/upgrading/sysreqs.mspx

Win98
a 486DX 66 megahertz (MHz) or faster processor (Pentium central processing unit recommended).
16 megabytes (MB) of memory (24 MB recommended).
A typical upgrade from Windows 95 requires approximately 195 MB of free hard disk space, but the hard disk space may range from between 120 MB and 295 MB, depending on your computer configuration and the options that you choose to install.
A full install of Windows 98 on a FAT16 drive requires 225 MB of free hard disk space, but may range from between 165 MB and 355 MB, depending on your computer configuration and that options that you choose to install.
A full install of Windows 98 on a FAT32 drive requires 175 MB of free hard disk space, but may range from between 140 MB and 255 MB, depending on your computer configuration and the options that you choose to install.
VGA or higher resolution (16-bit or 24-bit color SVGA recommended).
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/182751

If it was me I would go for win98 or Linux. Likely that XP will run very poorly on 128meg ram. Thats not necessarily because of the OS, but most software these days that you would be running on it is designed for much higher hardware specs and that would be very hard work on 128 meg ram.

Good luck with it.

Answer 7

run or run well?
You can put XP on it:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/286463/
but it would run like a dog. Why not spend $10-20 on some memory? Otherwise put 98SE or Me in but with 128MB of ram it still wouldn't run worth a damn.

Answer 8

The latest OS that you can run is windows xp professional. You can run previous versions of windows, and Linux distributions will run on just about anything.

Answer 9

Practically you can run all OS, up to Windows XP but if you would like to run Microsoft lastest (Windows Vista Operating System) then you will have to upgrade your system's memory to at least 512MB or better 1GB.

Answer 10

Windows 2000 will run on less than this, and is still capable of almost anything XP can do.

Answer 11

I recommend a nice light Linux like xubuntu.