I have a 9 year old computer packing the hardware listed below.

My question is, can I run 12.04 ( Ubuntu, Kubuntu, MINT or Xubuntu ) WELL?

I was running Ubuntu 10.10 and I upgraded to 12.04 by going through each release via the update manager: 11.04 -> 11.10 ->12.04

During the installation process for 12.04 I saw an error message that there was an error installing and setting up part of the kernel. Later, when I tried installing a package in synaptic, I got another error message mentioning the kernel. When I rebooted, I got told somehting about my video and graphics was not configured properly and that I would have to do it manually ( like I know ). It gave me the option to enter the system in low graphics mode, but it just hanged.

I had an old livecd of Xubuntu 10.10 around so I used that to get into my computer and copy data over to an external hard drive.

I think tried to install Xubuntu 10.10 from the livecd, with the option "download updates" checked. The install process moved along a bit, then halted for about 5 hours.

I rebooted my machine and tried the Xubuntu 10.10 installer WITHOUT the option to "download updates". The install completed in about 15 minutes.

So, all of that is making me wonder if there is someting about 12.04 that does not like my hardware. I'm willing to try again, but only if I know I will not have to spend hours just to get to an error message and a hosed up system like I did last night.

I also think I have a lot more RAM than is being reported in the output below. I had extra ram installed last year. I'm not good with the command line readouts, but there seems like there should be a lot more.

I wasn't thrilled with Unity. I am willing to try Kubuntu 12.04.

Will I run into the same problems?

What is the highest version of a *ubuntu can I upgrade to?

Thanks

CPU

Model:     Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.53GHz
Frequency: 2533.223 MHz
L2 Cache:  512 KB
Bogomips:  5066.44
Numbering: family(15) model(2) stepping(7)
Flags:     fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe up pebs bts cid

RAM

~$ free -mt
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1506        891        615          0         91        521
-/+ buffers/cache:        278       1227
Swap:         1609          0       1609
Total:        3116        891       2225

Video Card

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x] (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. V9180 Magic
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 16
Memory at fd000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at f0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M]
Expansion ROM at fe9e0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Kernel driver in use: nouveau
Kernel modules: nouveau, nvidiafb 

Motherboard

Intel 845PE ATX 533FSB DDR333 USB2