Extremely slow computer (Dell Optiplex 270)

I need help identifying what is making my spare computer so slow. It is an old Dell Optiplex 270 that used to work in Windows but I am trying to bring back to life for my wife to use. Unfortunately it is so slow that one cannot type more than a couple of characters per second! This means it is essentially useless. The boot is not too slow but logging in is and then working with it is painful. This was not the case when the Windows drive was installed.

These are the system specifications: Pentium 4 at 3 GHz [32 bit], 2 GB RAM, 250 GB SSD [newly installed, Toshiba THNSN256GBST], nVidia P118 FX 5200 w/ 128 MB, Rosewill Wireless NIC (no physical connection possible in that part of the house). According to this it beats the minimum requirement by a landslide except for the graphics as it seems 256 MB is recommended.

After I upgraded the basic configuration (replaced hard drive and installed the wireless NIC), I installed 16.04 (Partition in SSD: 2 GB Swap, 80 GB for root and 174 GB for home). During the installation process the computer seems to behave reasonably well but upon booting from hard drive it all went down the hill.

After experiencing such slow performance I started thinking it may be the graphics card (nVidia P118, FX 5200). I then proceeded to take out the graphics card and only use the on-board graphics. There was no significant change in performance. I installed the graphics card again and looked for nVidia drivers to install. A pain and never was able to install legacy drivers properly. Currently shows it is using Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 3.8, 128 bits).

I then decided to start from scratch again but this time with 14.04 thinking this would help installing legacy drivers. Again did not succeed and the system was just as slow. Did not try with anything older than 14.04 as then I would have an obsolete OS.

The question is, what sort of log files are needed to help figure what is going on. Of course, once I have those log files I will need help deciphering the information within.

Solution 1:

Thank you for the comments and suggestions. I have now installed Lubuntu (did so from scratch) and the computer is now quite usable. Indeed, the hardware is very old but I am impressed that I am able to work with the latest version of Ubuntu and make it a decently running computer.

On the other hand, I had never worked with Lubuntu and, after being an Ubuntu user (exclusively) for over 10 years now, I feel I am going backwards in time as the user interface is lacking so much of Ubuntu's usability. Mainstream Ubuntu developers have done a tremendous job and I guess I have grown to take things for granted. As for Lubuntu, it will just take a bit to get used to, it comforts me to know that under the hood it is still the same great OS.