Lightweight distro for old laptop

envo said:
Ubuntu is like the Windows of Linux. So if you are looking for something that's memory effecient that doesn't crash, you were looking at the wrong thing
Click to expand...

Which was sort of the point of the thread - to get pointed to something better. :p

Feedback:
I've installed Bodhi 3.0.0 this morning. It runs Enlightened 19. Both Firefox and Thunderbird installed without pulling in too many dependencies. Skype, though, installed a couple of hundred MB worth of extra dependencies. Now that all is installed and configured, the machine runs smoothly. There's no noticeable lag when moving between desktops, Thunderbird searches actually work again, and I can switch between tabs in Firefox without wondering whether it is going to crash.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Re. Windows XP - it would work well on this laptop, but I don't have the installation media, I don't have a valid product key, and I have no intention of paying for a solution if an equal solution is available for free. The laptop is an old one I bought over from the work, but the XP license wasn't part of the deal.
 
Firefox will unavoidably get very slow over time on such a memory starved machine in special if one uses the necessary addons like Adblock et al. The automatic updates bring often surprises and rarely of the enjoyable kind. I use palemoon what is a optimized Firefox clone with the older interface but otherwise all the same in look and feel. If not now, you may consider it after some weeks from now when Firefox starts to act up.
Bodhi worked also for me great but I had problems to find and install a GPG frontend which integrates (how they left this out I cannot grok) and so I switched to Puppy Linux and with a better Laptop to ChakraOS, KDE is just the best desktop.
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
Please don't recommend XP to anyone who want to connect to the internet.

XP had it's day, it's time for it to die.
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What is dead may never die. I still have a laptop running it. Try find a laptop with a parallel port that can run windows 7+ ;)
 
Tacet said:
Hi all,

I haven't run Linux for a couple of years now, so I'm not up to date with the performance of the various distros.

I'm looking for a distro to run on an old laptop. The machine has only 1 GB memory (shared video), so memory is quite important.

The basic use of the laptop will be browsing (Firefox), email (Thunderbird) and Skype.

Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

Just installed Q4OS on an old laptop, Centrino cpu, 1GB ram - works well. Based on latest stable Debian, Trinity Desktop. Minimum requirements: 300GHz Pentium cpu, 128GB ram, 3GB hdd.
 
Arch is as light as it gets, but it is also a challenge :D
 
If you want a really lightweight distro for web browsing this is your chance to be a "real" Linux user. Install the OS without any desktop environment and browse from the command line using Lynx. Here is what this this thread will look like:

lynx.jpg

Sorry, no flash support.
 
Q4OS looks interisting, actually DO have a laptop that meets it's system requirements. Neva actually use it mind you but this means I have something else to do to it if ever win98se irritates me enough.
 
I had some issues on CentOS with things like Skype and qBittiorrent on the desktop.
I ended up using Linux Mint Cinnamon with Fluxbox as the Window Manager. Although I suspect E17 would be pretty similar insofar hardware requirements are concerned.
 
Archbang uses something like 50MB at bootup & is lightning fast. Using it on a old laptop.
 
Rickster said:
I dont see why its such a bad idea, the chances of getting hacked via the security flaws in XP are very low for the average user.
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No friend, the average user wants their "Free MP3 Download Free .mp3, Latest TRACKS BEST".

As for laptops, my fathers old laptop was struggling so I loaded crunchbang. Working pretty good so far.
 
Tacet said:
Hi all,

I haven't run Linux for a couple of years now, so I'm not up to date with the performance of the various distros.

I'm looking for a distro to run on an old laptop. The machine has only 1 GB memory (shared video), so memory is quite important.

The basic use of the laptop will be browsing (Firefox), email (Thunderbird) and Skype.

Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

The problem with old machines running windows or linux is the web content. You'd install a light weight distro but the moment you go online and open more than one browser tab the computer will just slow down. More ram won't hurt..
 
ODTech said:
The problem with old machines running windows or linux is the web content. You'd install a light weight distro but the moment you go online and open more than one browser tab the computer will just slow down. More ram won't hurt..
Click to expand...

Found Palemoon to be a good browser.
 
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