What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

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mmm
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What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by mmm »

What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?
32-bit; max RAM 1GB; 60GB HDD; no USB boot; dead battery; possibly dead CMOS battery.
Boots into MINT 18.3 MATE (with wrong date); Date corrects when Internet connected.

I wondered about LMDE 4 32-bit.
Or Peppermint? But is that still alive after its maintainer died?

I would appreciate expert advice.
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erikjan
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Re: What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by erikjan »

Dear mmm,

I can only think of one distro: Puppy Linux:

https://puppylinux.com/

Good Luck wit it.

Erik Jan
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Re: What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by rickNS »

mmm wrote: Sun Dec 05, 2021 9:59 am What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?
32-bit; max RAM 1GB; 60GB HDD; no USB boot;
AntiX.
Still maintains 32 bit versions. (current versions included, not just older versions as some of the other lightweight Linuxes)
The "Full" version runs on less than 125 MB. That's going to be tough to beat, unless you go with something like tiny core, and give up a lot of "stuff"

Screenshot proof.
ss211205-122108.jpg
ss211205-122108.jpg (21.45 KiB) Viewed 1968 times
https://antixlinux.com/about/

AntiX full has a lot ton of software included.
systemd free.
Mint 20.0, and 21.0 MATE on Thinkpads, 3 X T420, T450, T470, and X200
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Re: What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by mmm »

Thanks to you both.
What about the two I mentioned: LMDE 4 and Peppermint?
(Just because I am so familiar with MINT, having it on everything fo the last few years - and those two are closer to it than others.)
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spamegg
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Re: What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by spamegg »

LMDE4 comes with Cinnamon desktop only, so it would be near impossible to run on 1GB RAM.

This is what Peppermint website says:
Minimum System Requirements

Before installing Peppermint 10 Respin, note our minimum system requirements.

1 GB of RAM
Processor based on Intel x86 architecture
20GB of available disk space

Recommended System Requirements

4 GB of RAM
x86_64 or amd64 compatible processor
32 GB of disk space
So I think it would be fairly uncomfortable to use Peppermint.
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Re: What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by mmm »

antiX 32-bit worked well, after initial glitches.
Much to learn!
Need to scrap the machine really.

Now experimenting with a 2007 Latitude D430 with 2GB RAM, which is running MINT 19.3 cinnamon.
Would that be better with antiX 64-bit, or MINT Xfce?
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Re: What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by rickNS »

mmm wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 12:18 pm Now experimenting with a 2007 Latitude D430 with 2GB RAM,
I just booted all three Linux Mint 20 ISO's, xfce, Cinnamon, and MATE, in Virtual Machine, all with 2GB ram.

Results from inxi;

Cinnamon...650 MB ram
MATE.........506 MB ram
xfce...........497 MB ram

Numbers wise there's not really that much difference, but on 2GB ram Cinnamon is more sluggish than the other two.

I have seen people on here say they use mint 20 on 2GB ram, and it is OK for them, Me I find it "painful", but that is just my opinion. May not bother you at all.
I do think if it were me I might still go with antiX on a 2GB machine, giving you some 350-500 MB more ram to play with, compared to Mint.

Reminds me, I might revive a 2007 acer (2 GB ram) with antix. It worked "ok" with mint 18, but too slow with mint 19 or newer. It's what my mom was using till I convinced her to use my 8 GB thinkpad x240.
Mint 20.0, and 21.0 MATE on Thinkpads, 3 X T420, T450, T470, and X200
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Re: What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by karlchen »

<My 2 cents>
mmm wrote: Sun Dec 05, 2021 9:59 am What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?
32-bit; max RAM 1GB; 60GB HDD; no USB boot; dead battery; possibly dead CMOS battery
.
Personally I would send the device to the recycling process without hesitating and without shedding a tear. Recovering the precious metalls to be extracted from such a device and making them available to the production of new semiconductors is the most sensible thing, which can be done. Practiced environmental protection.
--
4 of my home computers are nearing their final retirement. [1] [2] [3] [4]

</My 2 cents>
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kevin987
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Re: What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by kevin987 »

mmm wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 12:18 pm antiX 32-bit worked well, after initial glitches.
Much to learn!
Need to scrap the machine really.

Now experimenting with a 2007 Latitude D430 with 2GB RAM, which is running MINT 19.3 cinnamon.
Would that be better with antiX 64-bit, or MINT Xfce?
Bodhi Linux
Linux Mint 20.3 (Cinnamon)
Linux Mint 19.3 (Cinnamon)
Bodhi Linux 6.0 (MokshaArcGreen)
Fedora 35 (Cinnamon)
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majpooper
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Re: What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by majpooper »

kevin987 wrote: Wed Dec 08, 2021 1:38 am
mmm wrote: Tue Dec 07, 2021 12:18 pm antiX 32-bit worked well, after initial glitches.
Much to learn!
Need to scrap the machine really.

Now experimenting with a 2007 Latitude D430 with 2GB RAM, which is running MINT 19.3 cinnamon.
Would that be better with antiX 64-bit, or MINT Xfce?
Bodhi Linux
+1 Bodhi Standard is excellent for under powered rigs.
I have tried many of the so called "light" distros - the usual suspects; Puppy, Pepermint, lubuntu xubuntu etc. etc. etc. I even installed about a dozen in VMs and took htop measurements to try and get an idea as to how light they in comparison. Keep in mind I am just a hack with no real computer knowledge or understanding of computer theory - I have no idea how to actually bench test anything. But from my experience I found three very light distros;
1.) Bodhi Standard - runs the Moksha DE which takes a little getting used to but is extremely light but customizable
2.) Antix - also very light but not my preference compared to Bodhi
3.) Debian netinst with IceWM as the DE - this is the lightest I guess because the windows manager is serving as the desktop environment so you are not loading MATE or Xfce or any DE. The downside for me was it was very primitive almost like Windows 3.1 days.
As for the rest . . . . they in fact are not particularly "light" in that they all have lots of what I call bloat meaning a bunch of software applications that I would never want or need. And they all have pretty much the usual DEs that are not really light even the ones that are touted as such.
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Re: What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by Reddog1 »

Bohdi. It's ugly, but pretty much guaranteed to work, and work well. Sparky Linux if you're feeling adventurous.
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Re: What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by kevin987 »

Reddog1 wrote: Thu Dec 09, 2021 1:44 am Bohdi. It's ugly, but pretty much guaranteed to work, and work well.
To some perhaps, but it does have 20 different themes to change the desktop look.
Linux Mint 20.3 (Cinnamon)
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Bodhi Linux 6.0 (MokshaArcGreen)
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Re: What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by majpooper »

Reddog1 wrote: Thu Dec 09, 2021 1:44 am Bohdi. It's ugly, but pretty much guaranteed to work, and work well. Sparky Linux if you're feeling adventurous.
For sure OOTB ugly. But with a little work (there is a learning curve for sure) Bodhi can be pretty nice.
One thing I like about Bodhi is that gm10's mintupdate will install.

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mmm
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Re: What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by mmm »

I have installed 64-bit Bodhi standard.
The install went well ... and then the puzzles started - like how to uninstall chromium and install firefox, which I eventually managed to do.

But how to make a taskbar shortcut for it aka pin to taskbar?
And how is linux mint gm10's mintupdate installed?
Reddog1's desktop looks exactly what I would like.
So if the route to that can be succinctly described it would be appreciated.

And is there an ssd for the D430?
(It has an odd hdd - very small and with a ribbon connector. Not worth spending money on, anyway.)

Amazingly enough MINT 19.3 runs fairly well, and would be better with all the special effects off as described by pjotr's Easy Linux Tips Project.
I imaged that using Rescuezilla and the wiped and tried all the suggested light distros, of which my favourite is Bodhi and I shall continue to wrestle with it for a while.
(But nothing is as good as MINT really.)
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Re: What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by kevin987 »

All questions for Bodhi should be directed at their forum:
https://bodhilinux.boards.net/

They also have their own wiki at:
https://www.bodhilinux.com/
Linux Mint 20.3 (Cinnamon)
Linux Mint 19.3 (Cinnamon)
Bodhi Linux 6.0 (MokshaArcGreen)
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Re: What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by majpooper »

kevin987 wrote: Fri Dec 10, 2021 10:45 am All questions for Bodhi should be directed at their forum:
https://bodhilinux.boards.net/

They also have their own wiki at:
https://www.bodhilinux.com/
+1 beat me to it
A really excellent source for setting up Bodhi - " Bodhi Linux 6 - The Complete Guide for Beginners"
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1086439
mmm everything you want to do is doable but again there is a the learning curve. I will admit Moksha (based on the Enlightenment DE) is not the most intuitive or easy DE to learn but will make a very low resource system quite "snappy."
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Re: What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by mmm »

majpooper wrote:
A really excellent source for setting up Bodhi - " Bodhi Linux 6 - The Complete Guide for Beginners"
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1086439
mmm everything you want to do is doable but again there is a the learning curve. I will admit Moksha (based on the Enlightenment DE) is not the most intuitive or easy DE to learn but will make a very low resource system quite "snappy."
Thanks very much. That book looks excellent - and a free download in Kindle format as well.
And it was the picture of YOUR desktop I liked - and wrongly attributed it to someone else. Apologies for that.
I will now persist for a while for the fun of learning. Your help is much appreciated.
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Re: What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by majpooper »

mmm wrote: Sat Dec 11, 2021 2:18 am majpooper wrote:
A really excellent source for setting up Bodhi - " Bodhi Linux 6 - The Complete Guide for Beginners"
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1086439
mmm everything you want to do is doable but again there is a the learning curve. I will admit Moksha (based on the Enlightenment DE) is not the most intuitive or easy DE to learn but will make a very low resource system quite "snappy."
Thanks very much. That book looks excellent - and a free download in Kindle format as well.
And it was the picture of YOUR desktop I liked - and wrongly attributed it to someone else. Apologies for that.
I will now persist for a while for the fun of learning. Your help is much appreciated.
Just for fun I will show you a few more that I did
Image
Image
This was the desktop when I was running Pi-Hole on Bodhi 5.1 (since then I run it on Debian 11 netinstl)
Image

I created something called FrankenBodhi - where I removed the Moksha DE and replaced it with Cinnamon. Mind you this really negates the whole purpose of Bodhi by replacing an extremely light DE with a very heavy one - If you want Cinnamon to look like this stick with Mint but it was just something to do in a VM during the pandemic.
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Re: What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by mmm »

If ... or rather ... when I go back to MINT ... should I use 32-bit or 64-bit?

Just to reiterate here are the laptop specs:
Latitude D430
2007
2 GB RAM which cannot be changed
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Re: What distro would you suggest for a 2004 Dell Latitude x300?

Post by kevin987 »

mmm wrote: Sun Dec 12, 2021 2:38 am If ... or rather ... when I go back to MINT ... should I use 32-bit or 64-bit?

Just to reiterate here are the laptop specs:
Latitude D430
2007
2 GB RAM which cannot be changed
It's a 64 bit machine I believe, so 64 bit 8)

Go with Xfce or MATE since it's 2 GB RAM.

You can try Cinnamon, but usually it runs a bit slower with that ram. I run Cinnamon with 4 GB.
Linux Mint 20.3 (Cinnamon)
Linux Mint 19.3 (Cinnamon)
Bodhi Linux 6.0 (MokshaArcGreen)
Fedora 35 (Cinnamon)
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