I think I remember using USB drives on Windows 98, had to download & install a software driver from the usb drive manufacturer first but it might work. Most Linux also use Libre Office (Open Office) that can read/write old MS Office formats (new formats too) but they're free & great for Linux. Other Linux versions might work better on that old computer, but they may be harder to try out Live or install, Ubuntu seems to be a good one for just putting in the disk and it just works. When you run/try it out 'Live' it does not write to the hard drive so you don't have to worry about losing old documents, and if it does run ok you could then use USB drives to copy off any data you wanted, or take your old data & email it to yourself, or upload to a site like dropbox, etc.Īlso, Ubutnu (& some other Linuxes) can install to a hard drive and keep all the old data on the drive, they don't have to delete everything. Just checked the installation guide for Ubuntu 11 and it says the minimal RAM requirement is 64 MB (but it may be very slow performance), so it would be worth it to try running Ubuntu from a Live CD/DVD and see if it will work with the old computer.

With not being able to copy those documents to a USB Flash device ''(Win98 doesn't support Flash drives)'' and no networks card, you really have no way of saving that data. You would lose all your old documents when installing Linux. You can ask about which distro would be best suited to that old PC here. Even with those upgrades I eventually had to park them for daily use because they just weren't strong enough to run modern programs. At one time all those older PC's were part of my local area network, so I could transfer files and print to printers connected to my main PC. I have 3 old PC's similar to that myself, but over the years that I actively used them I upgraded the RAM to the max the mainboard would use and installed larger hard drives as I ran out of space on the drives. With not being able to copy those documents to a USB Flash device (Win98 doesn't support Flash drives) and no networks card, you really have no way of saving that data.

It is a good place to start looking for a Linux distro suitable to your hardware and your needs.

The 100's of Linux distros which are available are tracked here.

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