Hi itlarson,
Your friend has a Dell Inspiron 8209, whose specs are: Intel Pentium 4-M 1.6 GHz, 128 Mb to 1 gb RAM, and perhaps only a 20 gb harddrive. That it runs xbuntu at all suggest that RAM has been upgraded to at least 512 Mb. When Ubuntu talks about Long Term Support, it means the ability to upgrade to "the latest and greatest applications that the open source world has to offer" for about three years without having to install a new kernel by downloading and installing an entirely new version of Ubuntu. Each ubuntu installation eats up about 5 gbs of your harddrive, more if you install applications which aren't already included.
LTS has a price: the newest and greatest versions of applications almost always take up more space than the version they replaced. Ubuntu has moved on to glib 3, so even though your friend can barely run the current Ubuntu LTS, chances are his computer won't run the next LTS.
In this context, there are many LTS Puppies, because their design is different from "the big boys." Although they can be run as "Full Installs," they are designed as Frugal Installs, usually run with a "SaveFile" to preserve settings and added applications. As a Frugal Install Puppies use only about 500 mgs of harddrive, excluding a SaveFile which can run from as little as 32 mbs to 3 gbs or more. But usually between 512 Mb to 1 Gb. In addition to installing applications, Puppies can uses SFSes: entire applications you can load-on-the-fly and unload when not needed. SFSes have several advantages, not the least of which is that you can try the "latest and greatest version" of an application without wrecking your system if it doesn't work. And Puppy has a couple of applications for converting the "latest and greatest version" published as a pet into an SFS.
Although I don't mean to discourage devs who have fun developing pets of the newest and latest versions, with one exception most applications developed years ago can accomplish the same things as the newest and greatest versions of that software recently developed. Upgrades have to do with "bells and whistles" or being able to run under the newest kernels which your friends hardware may not support. The exception is Internet browsers and their associated software to view video. These are constantly being upgraded to deal with security issues. With that exception, all Puppies are LTS: As most malware is developed for "windows," you can safely use a Puppy until it your browser-flash-html5 no longer permits you to view videos. Then you can try the latest browser --in the form of or converted to an SFS. And if that doesn't work, well its time to look for a new Puppy.
Some versions of Puppy have proven to be LTS just because they were that good. Three years ago ttuuxxx published Classic Pup 2.14 and it's still going strong. And many of us, myself included, still use as our everyday work-horse playdaz Lupu 528, based on ubuntu Lucid thru onerick. Because Barry K still favors building Puppies from Ubuntu binaries --is even considering ending our "home-grown" wary as his base-- I'd recommend any of the several versions of puppy precise currently available. See my post about mixing and matching pups and pets,
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 436#680436. My best guess is that a couple of years from now, when ubuntu starts the alphabet anew with a bloated operating system, some Puppy dev will use ubuntu binaries to create a pup which, in addition to the pets and sfses compiled under that pup, will also be able to use most of the applications developed for precise.
And your friend will have an easy Upgrade: simply download the new pup-ISO, unpack it into a directory, add it to Grub4dos's Menu.lst, try it out, and if it runs load his favorite precise-sfses and be back in business.
mikesLr