I want to do a dual boot of Windows XP and Ubuntu 14.04 on a very old Acer Aspire 3690 laptop. Are there any peculiarities of installing Ubuntu with dual boot on Acer Aspire laptops?
To be specific, I don't want to mess partition that contains recovery copy of Windows XP. Laptop HDD is divided into 2 partitions, one for OS, another for data. I've already formatted and cleared the data partition and want to install Ubuntu there. Is it safe to do, will Ubuntu install not mess with the rest of the hard drive? On laptop it says that it was designed for Windows XP, it worries me too.
I also want to install a 64-bit version of Ubuntu. I'm aware that on such laptop it's generally useless, I just need to develop applications for my 64 bit Ubuntu desktop. But I don't know if hardware can support this. This are hardware parameters:
CPU: Intel Celeron M 420 1.60 GHz
Chipset: Intel 940GML Express
Video: Intel GMA 950
RAM: 512 mb
Also I guess I need to install a "lighter" version of OS on such laptop. What would be the best solution in such case? Lubuntu?