There is an operating system that though in its alpha one release, in my opinion I think it is appropriate for old machines. This is Haiku [ http://www.haiku-os.org/ ] and the minimum requirements are a x86 processor with at least 128 Mb of RAM and 400 Mhz+ PII system, 600 Mb+ hard disk space (The release notes are here [ http://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/release-notes ] ). I have used it and found it to be quite decent for ordinary desktop use (surfing, listening to MP3 and other audio formats, watching videos - MPEG, avi & MP4s). It is also POSIX compliant.
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There is an operating system that though in its alpha one release, in my opinion I think it is appropriate for old machines. This is Haiku [ http://www.haiku-os.org/ ] and the minimum requirements are a x86 processor with at least 128 Mb of RAM and 400 Mhz+ PII system, 600 Mb+ hard disk space (The release notes are here [ http://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/release-notes ] ). I have used it and found it to be quite decent for ordinary desktop use (surfing, listening to MP3 and other audio formats, watching videos - MPEG, avi & MP4s). It is also POSIX compliant.