Xubuntu Linux

A light weight Ubuntu that works well on older machines.

I was recently given an old Gateway 9100 laptop and I figured that I'd experiment with a new operating system. Pentium II 266Mhz, 192MB Ram, CD, floppy, 6GB HD.

Completely wipe your old drive with (OS X from Apple zeros data too): killdisk
Running killdisk will delete all data on your drive once you run it so make sure you have important info saved before using it.

Download Xubuntu .iso CD (available for your Apple PPC architecture too): Xubuntu home page

Burn .iso (disk image) to a CD with disk burning software like Nero for Windows.

Boot your computer to CD and wait a long time then install to your drive.

This is an OS that I'm very happy with so far and it comes with a ton of software. I would say that it runs pretty even in speed to Windows 98SE but it actually found and installed all of my hardware! Once you are online try the Synaptics package manager for a huge amount of applications for download. If you are on a tight budget and have some free time this is the way to go.