Linux box ... still chugging along after all these days....

Yup, the last two posts are brought to you by linux, the operating system so good it would be a crime to charge for it. I'm gonna learn this damn OS if it kills me. But in the mean time I'm finding some of the limits, not of linux, but of the box I've got it on. As I've said, I'm running this on a system that is, well, venerable. Ancestral, perhaps. Worthy of respect. Yes, I'm running this on your grandmother's computer. The good news is the Ubuntu Linux is NOT a system hog - it boots up faster on this Flintstone's engine than XP on my rocket powered monster (well, not really, but by comparison). And it is stable. And all that.

But.

Modern applications still push the limits of a 1.0GB system with 512K SDRAM. Watching video on Hulu (Dr. Horrible of course- did you even need to ask?) can work as long as you don't try full size - full size ends up looking like stop motion claymation. Dosbox can run games from the 1980s but when you hit the 1990s they're pushing the system resources. Neither of these is what is considered a high end application these days, so I'm not even going to try anything really demanding. Again, this isn't linux's fault. Linux is like a life jacket keeping an 800 pound gorilla afloat in a sea of pudding - it can keep it up but just barely, and if I add too much weight she's going under. Windows, on the other hand, would be like a 75 pound weight tied to the same gorilla in the same sea. It would be very hard to get the gorilla to do anything in that situation other than gasp for air between pudding choked gurgles. No, I don't know why I said sea of pudding, it just fits, damnit.

So the question is, do I drop a bit more money to make my linux box more usable when I've got, well, a few other pc's in the house that can already do the job? ? My brain says one thing, and my heart says shut the hell up. But I should probably go now anyway - the gorilla is getting tired.