At Phoronix we have tested out Ubuntu 9.04 quite extensively with a variety of different hardware and have delivered numerous benchmarks, but we had not looked closely at running the Jaunty Jackalope with older hardware. In this article though we have done just that and carried out a number of Ubuntu 9.04 tests using an older VIA-based PC.

ONE OF MY INTERESTS is in recycling and reusing older computers. With the right choice of software, even a five-year-old computer can be a fast, responsive machine with bags of life left in it.

Since I built my new PC roughly two months ago, I have been running Linux (Ubuntu 8.04 64 bit) as my primary operating system, and I have not looked back.

Over the past few months, we’ve looked at the installation and configuration of Feisty Fawn, the latest release of Ubuntu Linux, which is perhaps the most popular free Linux distribution available.

Our computer science department also has a number of computer labs with Linux machines, accessbile remotely and for physical access. There are also a few Windows machines for those who prefer Visual Studio, although these machines are generally inferior when it comes to speed and stability. So why do students still flock to them?

A computer running Linux can outperform the same computer running Windows XP or Vista. Even so, you may be able to make your Linux system even faster. Here are three optimizations, at different levels, that can make your Linux system perform better.

"System Tray" icons were a great idea in Windows 95, but over the years the concept has been abused. It's not uncommon to get a new Windows PC with a dozen system tray icons, usually serving no purpose other than to advertise the existance of the application to which the icon belongs.

Computers started making their way into homes, en masse, 15 years ago. After 15 years, computer users should not be afraid of using their computer.

This week, I tried Vector Linux, a slackware based distro, known to be fast and stable, ideal for older machines like mine and yet never compromising on the features. Read on, to see if it delivered what it promised.