How to add a free operating system to your PC
OK, so you’ve got hold of a free PC from a local business or the classified ads, but the hard drive is completely blank so you can’t even boot it up. What now? Given that this website is all about free technology, it’s a safe bet that you don’t want to splash out on a copy of Windows. In any case, the latest versions of Windows won’t run very well on a PC that is a few years old so that probably wouldn’t be the best idea in any case.
The good news is that there are high quality, free alternatives to Windows, and most of them work a lot better on older computers than Windows does. There are hundreds of free operating systems, so we’ll just list the best and most popular below. In order to install any of them on your PC, you will need to download a copy and burn it onto a CD, so if you don’t have a working PC with CD burner at home you’ll need to find a friend who can help with this.
Ubuntu
Ubuntu is without a doubt the most popular free operating system for desktop/laptop computers. Hundreds of skilled and enthusiastic computer programmers contribute to making Ubuntu a secure, powerful and stable system, so much so that many people prefer it over Windows. You can install Ubuntu in under half an hour and it will usually recognise all of your hardware automatically, so you should be up and running quickly and smoothly.
Ubuntu comes with office applications, a media player, web browser, chat client and pretty much everything else you might need for day-to-day computing
It’s a little different to Windows, but most people should have no problems figuring out how to use Ubuntu since it’s designed to be very user friendly. If you run into difficulties, there’s a wealth of documentation online and a huge user community where you can find lots of knowledgeable people to help with your questions.
Ubuntu should work well on even quite old and low powered PCs – as a minimum we would recommend a 700Mz processor, 256Mb of memory and 8Gb of free hard disk space. If you have lower specifications than this, we recommend trying Xubuntu instead, which is a version of Ubuntu designed to work better on even older PCs.
ReactOS
Ubuntu is a great system, but it might be a bit too much of a leap for some people who can’t wrench themselves away from Windows. So, how do you get Windows without paying for it? ReactOS is the answer, it’s a completely free operating system which is designed to be a clone of Windows XP.
This means that anybody who knows how to use Windows will have no problems understanding how ReactOS works, and more importantly the system is compatible with a lot of Windows software, including some popular games such as Quake III, Unreal Tournament and Diablo 2. The website has a compatibility database, listing 572 Windows games, applications and device drivers.
An important point to remember is that ReactOS is still not finished. While it’s relatively stable and usable, the system is still very much in its early days so you will most likely encounter a few glitches that haven’t been fixed. That said, it’s still the closest thing you can get to Windows without paying.
Puppy Linux
Puppy Linux is well known as a lightweight operating system, meaning that it has very low system requirements so that it runs quickly even on quite old computers. The minimum system requirements for Puppy Linux are a 166Mhz Pentium processor and 128Mb of memory, so a PC manufactured as long ago as 1995 should run the system fairly well.
Puppy Linux uses an easy to understand point and click graphical interface, and comes with all of the basic applications you will need for day-to-day computing activities. The whole system occupies less than 100Mb and you don’t even need to install it to a hard drive since it can be started from CD or a memory stick.
The only potential issue is that Puppy Linux might struggle to automatically recognise some wireless internet adaptors, but there’s a helpful discussion forum with a section just for beginners where you’ll be able to get assistance if this is the case.
Damn Small Linux
If you’ve got a really old PC, from about 1990 onwards, Damn Small Linux is a good option since it is even more lightweight than Puppy Linux, but still manages to offer an easy to use point-and-click graphical interface, not too dissimilar to Windows. Damn Small Linux should run reasonably well on a 486DX2 processor and 16Mb of memory.
Again, there may be some issues with automatically recognising and configuring some types of WiFi adaptor, but there’s plenty of help and information on the website if you run into problems.
Honourable mention: FreeDOS
Once we go back in time beyond the nineties, PC hardware from that era isn’t really capable of running the kind of graphical operating systems like Windows that everybody is used to these days, so things start to get a bit more technical and less user-friendly. If you’ve got a pre-1990 PC your best bet for an operating system that will be able to run any kind of useful software is FreeDOS – a clone of the most popular operating system of the time.
You will need to learn how to use a PC by entering text commands instead of clicking on things with a mouse, but the basics are easy enough to master. The important point is that there is a massive library of software available to run on FreeDOS
