Imagine for a moment, you have an old laptop from around 2010. It has a celeron, 2gigs of ram AND a slow drive. The main thing you want to do on it is using firefox (without 10+ tabs), watch/listen to some media and maybe some office tasks.
what would be the most lightweight distro for accomplishing this? It shouldn't look completely ass like xubuntu, so some themeability or good looks would be appreciated. Sry for the blogpost IQfyentooman, this is not my main board
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https://notes.valdikss.org.ru/linux-for-old-pc-from-2007/
interesting, thank you
Very cool article.
could you theoretically upgrade Mint afterwards without breaking the configuration?
most of the important and necessary tweaks emphasis on kernel
I am an expert on this.
Here are some:
LXLE
MXLinux
Slax
Bunsen Labs
SliTaz
AntiX Linux
Damn Small Linux
Puppy Linux
I'd prefer LXLE for a more full desktop experience or Puppy if you need to go wicked light but are okay with maybe tweaking settings to get certain things how you want them.
You can always upgrade a IDE drive to flash memory speeds by replacing it with a IDE-to-CF adapter and using a CF card in place of the hard drive.
This is wrong because you can still use the web on 32 bits if you're not an idiot trying to use terrible web sites like Facebook and YouTube.
>expert
>This is wrong because you can still use the web on 32 bits if you're not an idiot trying to use terrible web sites like Facebook and YouTube.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
read into tweaks, only uses preconfigured distros with kernels barely tuned for niche hardware
>>>>>>>>>>>>muh 32bit
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
listed doesn't support extra extensions, only the bare minimum (i386) doesnt take advantage cpu at all (MOVBE, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3) <- Intel Atom N280 mind you..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
install gentoo
I have used AntiX on very old PCs even shittier than yours with great results.
It is made by antifa filth but it works.
Puppy imo is a bit too lightweight, to the point that it limits its practical use as daily drive.
MX isn't lightweight enough for OP's computer. Just get antix, its MX without the bloat.
>Puppy imo is a bit too lightweight
This is a nonsensical statement. Its packed with software
Just checked Puppy isos seems to be around a few hundred megabytes...
I could almost swear that it was barebones trash two digits in size.
After a little bit googling I realized I confused it with Tiny Core Linux.
Ooops, I withdraw that part of my comment.
I believe I tried puppy too but I don't remember it well enough to comment.
It's all good everyone makes mistakes
i recently upgraded to a ryzen 5 7600 from an i5-4590 and nothing has changed at all about my computing experience except a kernel warning on boot which is only patched in 6.8. it's hard to put into words but cheap low spec builds are comfier
Arch with Xfce, cannot go more barebones than this. I have picrel and it works great
Based
>Arch with Xfce, cannot go more barebones than this.
a WM instead of xfce
OP said that this is not his main board so I doubt he even knows what they are
yeah you could go with dwm or i3 perhaps but OP doesn't want "ass looking". He seems like a normie, i3 prob scares him
I have a t61 and I have a desktop with a 10900k and a 2080ti and I literally use the laptop for 90% of my browsing and watching media kek. I can't explain it either but it's more enjoyable for me for some reason.
>i5-4590
That motherfricker lasted me 8 years.
same lmao, my i5-4590 with a GTX 970 lasted since 2015~ up until this January. Probably could last me a few more if I'm being honest.
using such a shitty computer in 2024 is literally a humiliation ritual. you cant even afford a normal $500 pc because you are that cucked and used to abuse. stop letting yourself get humiliated by israelites morons
>using such a shitty computer in 2024 is literally an impressive skill display you can brag about
There, friend. I fixed it for you.
Nearly described my current laptop. Not even a poorgay anymore, could easily afford a new one but don't feel like it coz it just werkz and I hate configuring stuff. I want to almost forget what distro I'm running and just do my shit.
Sorry for not really answering your question, but how I've usually dealt with old hardware is a minimal Debian install and working up from there, only installing what I need. It's bothersome especially if the process is unfamiliar, but somehow I always faced more problems with fuller distros. I'm sure I've spent at least as much time on search engines solving problems with more complete distro installs than setting up a simple debian. Maybe it's about minimizing the points of potential failure, I dunno.
Growing up broke and literally getting all my hardware from the dumpster is ironically why I'm making such good money right now. None of my peers whose families could just afford "a normal pc" and run windows from the get go are at this level. Even the ones working in software lack the respect for resources so much that they really don't see a problem with simple webpages taking tens of megabytes just to display a set of images and text.
Using a shitty laptop can be very useful as a secondary computer, especially when there is a blackout or a storm
I agree. $500 takes you pretty far with used and refurbished stuff. My current laptop is an old i5 that came with a hard disk. Doubling the RAM and swapping it out for an SSD for less than 500 including cost of the laptop was a no brainer.
it's only a humiliation ritual if you are BIPOCattle. Just refuse to use services that humuliate you like the free man you are
>you must consoom goy
It's how you spot Pajeets. They can't get anything else
debian stable with xfce or lxqt. they will look like ass by default but you can rice them however you want.
Slax on your picrel is good enough. i have several shitty pre-2010 netbooks that uses Broadcom B43 wifi that most distros dont support because "muh non-free wifi reee" but Slax includes them. old version of Puppy also works well. i would use both in RAM mode loaded from SD card to skip the slow drive.
thanks for the input anon 🙂
well, I own a mid-range PC but I had this laptop laying around for some time that I wanted to put to good use. I've used mint before, but loading firefox made everything unbearable.
Honestly you can try connecting to the desktop from the laptop over rdp and use it that way
Debian with lxde
try mint
if that doesn't work try something else
I've tried Mint (XFCE) on my shitty Celeron with 2GB RAM a couple of years ago...
i remember it running worse than Ubuntu
(this was before i switched to Debian)
Devuan, Artix, Void, or Alpine running a lightweight wm (windowmaker, icewm, dwm, openbox, bspwn.)
I guess Voids XFCE image could work well enough. I recommend a non-systemd distro since they're much more lightweight and snappier than systemd based ones.
i have this shitty PC for testing
neat
8/10
>8 cores
>quadro
>24gb ram
>"""""""shitty""
its a faildozer anon. its not 8 cores. its 4 cores at best and its ipc is that of intel core 2 duo series. its absolute horseshit. it was horseshit at release. clock for clock, its ipc was worse than amd's own PREVIOUS phenom series.
Now compare the usability to a literally brand new mini pc with an N95 and tell me again how shitty it is.
Pic related for actual e-waste tier.
I have a garbo machine at home when an AMD-A4 6320 dual core, a R7 240 and 8GB DDR3
honestly if it had a SSD it would be usable for web browsing and shit like that
Absolutely. That R7 is even just barely new enough to use amdgpu on Linux.
I have it plugged to my TV at the moment, but I don't really use it since it's limited to 30Hz at 4k sadly
I use it to try new distros sometimes without nuking my main machine (I think it has Nix installed at the moment but I haven't booted it in months)
wallpaper plz?
OP here, thinking of making a general out of this type of thread
Artix/Arch/Gentoo+DWM
kinda feels like neofetch shouldn't just be givin out usernames and hostnames like candy innit
I DO have a shitty ass laptop with a Celeron and 2GB of RAM
I've been using DEBIAN 11 on that thing (MATE and XFCE run pretty well)
I strongly recommend to use yt-dlp to download video from youtube, and then watch it using mpv
Look into ytfzf
The command line application to search and watch youtube videos?
I already tried that... it ran kinda slow
Works fine for me but ok
That sounds reasonable.
I used a Thinkpad X60s in uni for a while because comfy. Debian + LXDE worked like a charm. When writing essays I used to have background music playlists downloaded.
Downloading videos as opposed to watching them online is a great suggestion for media.
SOPA.
BASED TABLET BOARD ENJOYER POSITIVO GREATEST OF ALL.
OP if it's not your only machine, learn to use ssh and X11 forwarding. Dumpster laptops make great thin clients.
gotta look into it. many thanks
I suspect arch is not the best for this usecase and you will be happier with a stable debian distro. Go with a barebones installation and then add xorg and a tiny window manager like blackbox or something. Add firefox and see if you can get hardware acceleration to work if there is any.
-Debian with some light DE like XFCE or LXQT
-peppermint
-crunchbag++
-bunsenlab
-tinycore (only use it if you are hardcore tinkering autist)
My daily is an x220 (which I think is from 2012). Running Mint XFCE and a SSD and it works fantastically.
feck off, this shitty ass laptop is still usable
why does your plasma looks so nice? theme says its stock, but my stock looks different?
>It shouldn't look completely ass like xubuntu
frick off, xubuntu is extremely comfy, i used it in my cr-48
Damn small linux 2024
TinyCore Plus
Puppy
Slitaz
These are your best bets. anyone saying things like mint or X ubuntu or Whatever is wrong and uninformed
>celeron, 2gigs of ram AND a slow drive
>It shouldn't look completely ass like xubuntu, so some themeability or good looks would be appreciated
that computer is a literal toaster anon
why the frick do you care about themeability
you should be glad it works AT ALL
lubuntu is probably your best choice
yes, it looks like ass but it works
I have a Vaio with a Celeron, I use XP on it. Sadly network card got fried while a thunderstorm, and the wifi on turns on and off randomly (I'm asuming it's probably on the same daughter board and got fricked too).
If neworking worked I'd probably use it, but I have no idea if it's fixable. It has one of those not PCMCIA slots that I could use for a network card I guess, but from what I searched they're rare and expensive, and a usb wifi dongle is just slow.
honestly, I would just go for the usb wifi/lan dongle with your case. And using xp really isn't that great. Look at OP, try Slax because it actually doesn't suck
Solus 4.5 has an XFCE edition, it's currently in beta but it's working really well, we rolled it out on our 13-year old library PCs and it's snappier than those on win7/win10
>try to bring up installing loonix on the PCs in our library
>director immediately vetoes the idea
>bring it up again outside the meeting and explain how it's totally free and we'd be saving money by switching
>"our users are all old people, do you think they know what any of that is?"
>"to be fair, they don't even know the PCs now, which is why i need to help so often"
>still says no, that things are working fine
When our license starts reaching end of life, I will try again...
If you're the IT guy, try rolling it out first on just a couple PCs, if the users don't like it you can always say it's just for testing, and if they do like it then over time it becomes more acceptable for the admin to switch over the rest of the computers
I still have a Samsung ATIV Book 2 from 2014, with 4GB of RAM and a quad-core proccessor, Intel i3, as my main machine. It runs Ubuntu 20.04 LTS just fine, should I upgrade later this year? To what?
>should I upgrade later this year?
Probably
>To what?
Depends on how much money you have.
>It runs Ubuntu 20.04 LTS just fine
>just fine
>should I upgrade later this year?
No, unless you're a coomsumer
I use Bodhi Linux on a 10 year old laptop with a POS processor and it works decently well.
to be honest anything above 2.5 gb ram is comfy
2GB is easily usable with zram. OP could slap a $10 chink SSD in that thing for a major upgrade, and probably easily double the ram too. Diminishing returns if there are better used machines to be found for the same money.
I'd argue almost any x64 machine is still usable today with only minor tuning. Especially if it can do hardware video decoding.
>usable
Define this. For what?
Everything the OP mentioned. A shitposting machine.
Kiss Linux, custom kernel, -Os, 2Bwm, zram, yt-dlp, mpv, netsurf, emacs, etc. I recommend adding a cheap ssd it really makes a difference.
>It shouldn't look completely ass like xubuntu
anon literally just install a gtk theme... xfce is one of the most customizable DEs, if it looks like ass you either kept the defaults or didn't even try to make it comfy to you
Buy a $100 Thinkpad and put something Arc or Debian/Ubuntu based on it
Constraints breed creativity. That wouldn't be so bad. Actually, I think I have too much horsepower for my usage. I need to cut my wings to unleash my true self.
My laptop from 2009 had an i7 and 8 GB RAM
You have a shitty pc?
mitigations=off
This, just use common sense
Dubs and trips
Why are people afraid of pointing out the fact that browsers on desktops are HEAVY software? That is part because they are written badly, part because the web spec is bloated as frick and completed, part because you users expect pages to render shit with dozens of layers of shadows and 2d gpu contexts, and part because web devs are idiots that will simply not accept the fact that the web was objectively more usable from a design point of view in the mid 00s than what it is today.
OP, browsers are heavy. No lightweight DE is ever going to make your toaster handle FF well. What do you think does a DE do when you run a program? Like do you think its computing shit when you are not interacting with it? That's not how it works.
>multithreaded
>gpu accelerated
Basically a game.
>Why are people afraid of pointing out the fact that browsers on desktops are HEAVY software?
Everyone knows, but it's chromium or firefox, unfortunately
Why not spend $25 to get 4GB of RAM and a 240+GB SSD, if you don't already have one lying around? It will make it a lot more usable.
some celeron series dont support more than 2gb. at this point he might as well buy some $100 laptop on ebay, because most have an ssd and +4gigs
Low end laptops are way underrated. Modern ones get really good battery life even when gaming. Also touchpads are way better now if you prefer those over nubs.
LXQT with arch.
Devuan will run fine. Maybe try using a lighter browser than Firefox, or don't have 20+ tabs open at once, but 2 GB of RAM is probably the biggest chokepoint of your system. Upgrading to 4GB if possible would be the best way to spend your pocket money.
>all of this effort to make Linux use less than 50mb just to open one tab in firefox and make ram go up to 500MB
What are the browser alternatives for useful internet browsing (support for js etc)
>semi usable
Palemoon
>properly usable
Firefox
That's about it
none, read
Falkon
Otter browser
Midori
Badwolf
SeaMonkey
Netsurf
Epiphany
couldn't you run firefox in gamescope in tty
no desktop
Gamescope is for GUI apps