I've an old Pc with 256 Ram, 40 GB HDD, 500 mhz pentium 3 processor, 32 MB VGA, and need a fast and reliable operating system to be installed on it, I want to use it as a server for my downloads, so any suggestions ?
You can use XP also.Try it. And then expanding RAM is easy,by attached a external pen drive or hard disk or other expandable media.Which can be you use as a RAM.
Thanks all guys for suggestions, thinking of linux I went to LinuxMint, any recommendations about it?
Never used LinuxMint before so can't comment. I am using Ubuntu because it has a gui and the community support is good.
Mint is basically Ubuntu, made better. It's probably going to push the limits of your P3 though. Have you considered a lighter distro, like Puppy? It's not as pretty as Mint, but it's tiny http://www.puppylinux.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppy_Linux
Mint will be good option You can use it . And if you want to use winodws version Try Window Millennium version it's has low requirement and good graphics .
98lite, XPlite, and 2000lite are also worth looking at. http://www.litepc.com/ I ran a stripped down digital audio workstation on a P3 + 98lite for a few years. It was surprisingly quick. One of the best Windows systems I've ever used.
windows 95 ;D my brother uses Ubuntu on his laptop server of around the same specs. i'm not a Linux guy,but you got to go with a Linux flavor that is popular.
I went with windows xp, I tried almost all linux, but when they go to startx screen it goes blank?!!, so I headed to windows xp
Win xp can be used with your spec but I prefer Linux since it is free open source OS although it's a little hard to use than Windows.