Which version to install on old low spec laptop.

[HecticZA]

Hi,

Could someone kindly advise me which version to install on my current XP 32 bit Windows laptop?
The 18.3 version seems to be a tad heavy for the laptop.

I'm a new user with very little to almost no Linux experience.
Bulk of usage will be YouTube videos, Forum/blog usage, Arduino IDE and 123D circuit.io simulation software and emails. Ability to share content with Windows 7 & 10 pc's is fairly high up on the list.

Specs
Compaq nx7010
1.7Ghz cpu
512GB ram
On board mobility Radeon 9200 display adapter

Would appreciate any feedback.
Thank you.

[Joe2Shoe]

Hello,
I have a 11 year old Dell Inspiron E1705 laptop that had an Intel DuoCore 1.66GHz 32-bit CPU. I always install 64-bit OSs on my machines, so I replaced the CPU with an Intel Duo2Core 2.00GHz 64-bit ($20.00 on eBay), upgraded the RAM from 2GB to 4GB, replaced the CMOS battery, and thoroughly cleaned the insides of the laptop after I had totally disassembled it, put it all back together, and installed LM18.2 Cinnamon Sonya 64-bit.
It runs very well
Good luck.

[Moem]

512GB ram

Oof. I would not recommend Mint for that little memory; maaaaaybe Lubuntu or LinuxLite will work. But it's really very little.
MX 16 should be a better fit, it's not as userfriendly though...

If you can upgrade the RAM at all, that would make things a lot easier, after all the web has gotten more demanding than it used to be.

[Mute Ant]

Lubuntu will work out of the box. Mint MATE will work if you use the same ZRAM trick that Lubuntu uses. This is from a machine with only one 512MiB RAM stick, shared with the video chip, running a Lubuntu Aardvark 64-bit, installed without any swap space on a USB store. Obviously it's running Firefox too, to post this...

Code: Select all

mute@kermes:~$ free
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:         442624      262952        8476       70404      171196      125212
Swap:        221304      116016      105288

The 'swap' is a ZRAM drive which Lubuntu sets up automatically to make the most of what RAM is available. ZRAM is built in to the kernel, so you can use it on, say, Mint MATE too. It isn't struggling, 125MB of real RAM is still 'available'.

How to switch on ZRAM swap
If you set a ZRAM drive to be half the physical total shown by the free command, that's about right...
sudo su -c "modprobe zram && echo 221M > /sys/block/zram0/disksize && mkswap /dev/zram0 && swapon /dev/zram0"

[Pepi]

Bodhi is the one I've been using ... It's a bit different but runs very well on light weights

[Mute Ant]

Here's a 512MiB machine with Mint MATE running Firefox. It can only just manage one Tab opened. Not recommended.

Screenshot at 2017-11-18 00-51-59.png

But it's mostly Firefox, greedy greedy. With just the Caja desktop it looks much happier...

Screenshot at 2017-11-18 01-12-28.png

[HecticZA]

Thank you for the replies, highly appreciated.

Saw I posted I had 512GB ram .
If that was true, I would not have any issue.


I will try the LuBuntu option for now.

[Faust]

Puppy Linux seems to work with hardly any RAM at all .... it will almost run on the fumes from RAM !

OK - that's an exaggeration , but I have Quirky Puppy running live on a 256 MB USB stick ( yep .. Megabytes )
... just for the fun of it
( and persistence comes built-in ! )

Puppy definitely has a different "feel " compared to other distros , but the user community is outstanding ;
super-friendly and all the help you could possibly need ( just like here ! )

.... just a thought .

[Moem]

It seems that RAM on this laptop can be upgraded to 2GB. That would open up a world of options. I highly recommend this.

[Daghoi]

Hi
I did a similar 'exercise' a month times back. Installed on a old computer with 1 GB ram and a atom cpu. Tried a few distro's and the simple test's I did pointed my in the direction that the main difference was which browser I used. Chromium gave best performance in my scenario. If I was to do it again, I would start with a Linux Mint distro with small footprint and Chromium.

The computer in question was used for browsing and YouTube.

I'm no expert, but this is how I experinced it. I got great suggestion on this forum, and the thread is not so many pages back

Good luck

[JasonStonier]

Check out Bodhi Linux. It's just incredible for low-spec machines, and it's very usable indeed.