Linux on an OLD Laptop 

I remember having a similarly-specced netbook with windows 7 starter and I decided to upgrade it to windows 7 ultimate because I wanted to have customizations. Let’s just say that I had the patience of a saint at that time.

They weren't kidding when they say Linux can bring life to old machines. Keep these vids coming, mate.

Isn‘t your grandma sort of the sponsor of the video, too?😄 Btw, I already recognized antix on the thumbnail by the wallpaper. It is a great distro, reducing tech waste👍

I had a netbook with Windows 7 Home. It slowed down over time and became unusable so I reinstalled windows. It took a day to install all the updates, after which it was as slow as it was before! MX Linux gave it a few more years of life.

I've watched a lot of your reviews of distrobutions. Love em. Seeing this fun stuff along with the reviews makes me want this channel on my feed all the time. Definitely subscribed. You're awesome dude !

I learned these by actually tryin them out in my mini-110 as well. Antix is the best options for this kind of hardware, extremely light, many CLI software out of the box, 32-bit supported Debian base, etc.. Even the lightest DEs like xfce and lxqt or hybrid like peppermint OS would not perform as well as the WMs in Antix with this machine. However, I had to use Pale Moon because Firefox is still bloated and not fast enough for 1G RAM.

What a coincidence - just a few days ago I discovered antix to load onto an old Acer netbook. Being a long time Debian fan, I love it. Bang on review.

Peppermint 10 raspin works very well on my 2011 laptop. There is no noticeable lag. It's great for much older hardware.

You're lucky you have the Intel GPU version of this laptop. I got one with the PowerVR GPU, and to this day it is still not supported by Mesa.

AntiX is a great distribution, I've installed many years ago in a Pentium 4 with 512 MB of RAM with IceWM desktop environment and it worked very well. Time later, mi GF and I bought similar netbooks similiar to the ones on the video, and I installed on both of them AntiX 32 and 64 bits with LXQt, using minimal edition. Both of them still working until today. Great video!

Electric toothpaste sounds outlandish. Imagine if it has a DRM where it locks up for having an "unauthorized" paste.

Bodhi Linux is also a great option for a netbook or lower end, older laptop.

Tried puppy on an old Atom but as I'm only a casual linux'er, there were some fiddly bits that were a bit too fiddly to get it where I wanted. Still a few on AntiX, but a tad more user friendly I think. I've been trying to migrate to linux for years, but usually get a driver, app or window manager screwup that pushes me back to windows after a few weeks/months. Just wanted to say a big thanks for the style of videos you do. I've completely given up on most tech channels for the long flashy openings and animations, loud music and loud, "in your face" speed talkers that seem to be the trend now. It's awesome to see people can still make calm, professional and entertaining vids. Great Job. Cheers.

Would be cool to see how the laptop battery life holds out on such a lightweight operating system versus the default.

This is awesome, I'm quite new to the Linux community and I really love watching these as I'm very interested to learn more of it

Didn't know about antix. Got an early Ultrabook with touchscreen, 2gb ram and Intel atom and even xubuntu didn't run very well on it. Gonna try it out.

Talk about a trip back to the past! I had that computer in high-school and to be fair, it's as tough as it is slow ; it fell multiple times, overheated in my backpack more times than I counted, I forgot it in a freezer at some point and other shenanigans, but it never stopped working! Plus, thanks to the metal hinges under the plastic, the screen never fell off either!

I wasn't expecting for you to deal with such an specific problem that I actually have had to deal with! Tho, you've done way batter than I. Thanks bro. Also, I wouldn't mind an artix video at all :^)

A top-ten lightweight distros would be great, including debian and arch linux.

Very nice test! In laptops with similar specs I install a lightweight Debian-based distro as well, usually Sparky or LMDE. Chrunchbang++ also does the job.

I got a few of these back when they were "new". Slapped 4GB stick of RAM and a 64GB SSD and they were not bad with a current Linux distro or Windows 7 Pro.

I just installed lubuntu on a really old macbook i had laying around. intel core 2 duo and 2gb of ram and a 120gb ssd i had lying around. honestly, im beyond impressed with how much i can get out of a machine that is so obsolete and previously seemed unusable. handles basic web browsing and video playback fantastically, and i set up retroarch for some retro games. super happy with how its turning out!

The video brings back memories. Installing Linux lite on my 2009 dell netbook all those years ago is the reason I use Linux today.

You've inspired me to bring a very old hp laptop of mine to life as well.

Dude this was not only my first laptop, it's also the first one I modified (not this exact model since mine used ddr3 instead of 2, but aside from that is identical) I upgraded the RAM to it's max 2gb capacity and installed windows 7 home edition to get full advantage, it lasted almost all my highschool until I replaced it

I did a similar setup to my 10 year old laptop though it has 8gb of ram and around 2.2 processor. But I went with Linux mint and it runs like a champ now. I actually prefer using it to windows

I have exactly the same netbook. First thing was doubling the RAM. Then I played with various Linux distros over the years. I'm using MX now, with Firefox browser. RU-vid videos seem to take a few seconds to spool up but once they do, they're quite smooth. Mine has 250 GB storage which I'll never use. The great thing about this thing is, I've taken it with me on two trips to the UK, and all the picture I took during the day got transferred to it at night. I travel light, with just a backpack with some clothes and that computer in it for two weeks. You might think it's crappy, but I appreciate it for what it is.

Zorin is not a light distro at all, don't get distracted by that 32 bit support.

I recently put antiX on a very similarly underpowered netbook and had a blast doing it

When browsing the web, sometimes it's not the OS or the browser, it's the website. Some sites just kill your tab.

I have a HP mini slightly older than yours that shipped with xp and it run great for its specs, now it’s running lubuntu 18.04 I believe, and serving as an octoprint server. It does it’s job well enough.

yes please I'd enjoy an antix overview, it seems nice and light

Great video concept to help others give Linux a test run. Knowing the basic specs of a machine and the best Linux distribution to use on it, is helpful. If other Linux channels could find a way to provide info about an old laptop using a Linux distro, maybe more people would be willing to give Linux a try. Zorin 16 works well on my dell Inspiron 17 5000 series. Thanks for the informative video. : )

I installed linux on my dad’s old windows vista laptop (1gb ram, 1core, 1thread) and it works pretty well again, I’m using it to learn linux

Great video, love the alternative.

I didn't know about this linux. I installed mint cinnamon on my core 2 duo with a cheap SSD. Will definitely look to changing over to antiX. Thanks a lot.

Raspberry pi os for the pc has got to be the lightest os for older kit and netbooks. Thinking about finding my 11year old netbook and giving it a spin. But would like to see you test it out before destroying windows 7 that I could keep for a museum piece lol.

For an old laptop with smaller screen (like 14") or netbook I can recommend Linux Mint Mate + Materia theme (compact) + Papirus icons + Roboto 10 font for UI + Roboto Mono 10 as monospace font. Proper scalling of the Mate Panel may be 28 in heigh + mate dock applet + workspace switcher applet and of course all the tray stuff and clock/calendar applets. It will give you a nice Chrome OS like look with Material theming. You can even make yourself a simple Conky widget with system monitor displayed in Roboto 10 font, because it's very lightweight and convinient.

Worth trying Puppy Linux on that machine, or Brad's newer project EasyOS. Both are well suited to very low powered hardware

My first laptop was a mini 210... Loved it back then

Thanks much. I learned, I enjoyed.

I've installed windows 10 build 10240. Works like a charm. Very smooth.

Good video, I had never heard about Antix before.

Yes please... More dedicated Antix Linux video. You can even put another toothbrush sponsor message inside it :)

I have an old Acer mini PC thing that has an atom processor and 2 GB of RAM, shipped with XP on it. It sat on the shelf for a long time and I noticed that there is a version of Raspberry Pi OS that is targeted at older PCs and Macs so I decided to give that a shot. Preliminary assessment it seems OK just from a little bit of usage looking things up on the internet while doing setup and getting updates. Have not tried a more normal type of browsing session yet to see how that feels. It uses LXDE for the desktop and Chromium for the browser. I have not tried using the installed apps yet either, but my previous experience with less powerful, low memory computers is that everything seems good until you try to browse the internet. Web browsers are hogs. I would be interested in seeing a roundup showing how different light weight distributions compare to each other.

I have a similar netbook with two gigs of ram. It's running Bunsenlabs linux (with openbox) like a champ now. What I like about Bunsenlabs is that you get the best of two worlds: speed and eyecandy.

Hi TH, thanks for another excellent video. Too much tinkering left my 11 year old HP G62 with only 2 gigs of RAM. Then Linux Lite, Zorin Lite 32-bit, and even Lubuntu would NOT install. I finally hit a bingo with Peppermint 10, 32-bit. Need a new video idea ? Explain us the advantages, (or disadvantages) of using 32 bit systems on older machines, even if they still have 64-bit systems. Thanks in advance.

I run Antix on thinkpad R50e 2Gb with a non PAE kernel, for months. I reinstalled MX linux 19 with forcepae option. The MX19 interface (the start menu, the file navigator, the wifi setup) is more usable for a colleague. With MX19, the laptop is about as reactive as with Antix. This 20 years old laptop run as fast as th win7 dell 3010 optiplex we have in our high school.

I have an acer aspir one wotj very similar specs, during the pandemics I tried my best to give it new life with an ssd and linux distros, I wanted to give it away to children in needs to use it for online class but I failed miserabily to make it usable. One famous italian linux youtuber installed a distro without any interface, only for coding and note taking, and it works really well. I think it's the only thing you can do with it

Lubuntu runs fine on my old C2D Asus laptop. Browsing holds up until you try videos or video calls. One thing to keep in mind for everyone trying modern OSes on old machines is to disable all the silly Spectre mitigations. You are not going to get hacked as you browse however you will gain 10+ percent performance by disabling them all. Also playing with the hardware acceleration settings in the browser might be all the difference you need...

Nice video. I am sure there are tons of similar devices laying around. Use simple screen recorder to screen capture. Pretty resource friendly.

The Weirdest sponsorship I've ever seen in RU-vid

I have an old Dell laptop with similar specs. Just for fun, I tried out Peppermint OS, Xubuntu, Q4OS, BunsenLabs, Antix, Bodhi, and Debian LXQT. Surprisingly, the winner was Debian LXQT, with Q4OS a close second. (What can I say, I'm retired and have too much time on my hands, lol.) Note, that every one of these were usable and better/faster than Window XP. It was really hard to decide which distro to leave on there. Thanks for the great video! Really enjoyed it.

I loved that machine! I had a similar Atom machine from HP. I had some flavor of Linux running in it, I think either Debian or some early Ubuntu. All I remember is I loved it!

I'd give bodhi or q4os a try as well, great video tho

Thank You TechHut / I needed this Video / Linux on an OLD laptop / I have an old ACER netbook that I just like. The look, the 11.6 screen, the color, etc. / I'm always looking for 32 bit distros. I use my other computers for serious ... but, the Acer is like a. fun sports car.

I'm planning on getting an older ThinkPad because I love the idea of learning Linux on an older system

My go to lightweight distro is actually lubuntu. I've tried zorinos and mint on some older computers, and found them both to be too heavy, while lubuntu seems to work wonders. Although I have yet to test it on a computer as low spec as the one in the video lol. I wonder how lubuntu would run on it?

Just a quick reminder that the default "swappiness" in most Linux distros is 60% and considering that the task manager in Zorin is keeping close to that mark, I'd be willing to bet that the machine is swapping to disk like crazy and that the overall used memory is likely a fair bit worse than what we're seeing reflected in that tool.

Got a same spec netbook back in 2009. Sit down: I loved it. Still sitting? I still have it, and still love it. Back in the day, I used it with debian and openbox as a sysadmin. Back when I have to travel a lot and this little guy was my best friend. Literally putted into my pocket when I had to go onsite support local intranet systems, this PC was able to stay alive 7-8 hours without a power cord back in 2009. When I got back into my office I plugged in az external mouse/keyboard/monitor/speaker and that was my little office setup. Internet was not the bloat sh.t that is today, this little pc was perfectly fine for daily use, listening to music, do some light mail/office work, watch a few movies in the breaks or play a few hours of openttd. Today I use it as a little companion device, when we travel somewhere still in use to type some documents (little, but very easy to type on keyboard) or just use it to repair microSD cards if I screw up my rpi setup. Netbooks was great if you bought it really for what they capable of, but for regular windows based desktop use... it was one of the worst pc experience ever. ps: q4OS with TDE is a great choice for these beasts.

I remember a cheap little Toshiba my family had since 2010 that also came with Windows 7 Starter. I had dual-booted Manjaro on it for a while and while it technically has an SSD, it got so slow, especially once it was full.

AntiX is pretty cool. Played around with it when I was using MX Linux heavily. (I left MX because Debian Stable was more like Debian Stale.)

I had an Acer netbook I used in college and it was perfect. I even emulated some n64/ps1 games!

I use the latest beta of AntiX on my main PC (Ryzen 5 5600X + RTX 3060 ti) and installed Gnome on it. Everything works great and by far the fastest and smoothest desktop experience I've ever had on Linux, and I've tried probably 16 distros this year.

Q4OS with TDE should be fine, and give you that retro feel. You can pretend you're back in the 90s

Linux really is great for making use of old machines. I will have to check out this distro.

I have a crappy 13 year old ThinkPad I still use. it was basically crippled by windows so I would try distros like pop which were still too heavy. i couldn't get comfy with xfce ane al the while, it would be sluggish as hell. i eventually installed arch with kde(yeah I could look for something lighter ik) and it actually runs smooth as long as I don't have too much open. this laptop is like a fighter to me now and I don't wanna replace it lol. I'll check out antix. cool video. i initially thought mine was way worse than your laptop, but I was dead wrong!

Frist I have actually seen if antiX, I'd love to see more.

One of my favorite computers is an eMachines EM350 with Puppy Linux installed to the HD. It has approx. the same specs as your HP, possibly worse graphics. I mostly use it to run stuff remotely. With a new 9 hr battery it's just my most portable computer with a good keyboard. It has great overall build quality. Also all kinds of ports (my modern super slim laptop has 3 USB-C ports, and that's it.)

Thanks for your help

I've got a similar spec netbook, it used to be perfectly adequate running Windows XP ULCPC Edition in 2010 when I got it (I suspect I would have hated to have had Win 7 on it though). Nowadays, after trying several other lightweight distros and finding them too slow, I run antix on it.

I just installed openSUSE Leap 15.5 on a Lenovo Thinkpad R500 from about 2007. I put on mate desktop environment. It dual boots with existing windows xp. It is getting about 250 gig disk space. I did increase ram from 4 gig to 8 gig. Thus, far all seems to be running fine. Just submitted this info for informational purposes.

There used to be a netbook distribution called "Easy Peasy" about 20 years ago that was so much fun when you have so little real estate. I think it got folded into the mate-netbook package, but that's my go-to for that form factor.

I always like these videos were old hardware is bring back to life using linux.

Just now I installed Xubuntu 20.04 64 bit on Acer D270 Works very fine

These old netbooks run Batocera pretty well for a portable retro gaming machine. I ditched the hard drive and run everything from an SD card.

I had one of these. It was so slow. It was the reason I got my first chromebook, Chromebooks were real netbooks.

I was running Raspbian OS on my Toshiba NB205 with 2 GB in it. It ran surprisingly well, but I eventually switched it to Haiku 32bit.

omg i thought you were gonna talk shit about W7 at the 1:45 mark, i use windows 10 now but still think back with fond memories of how objectively good it was

I have to recondition an old eeepc for a friend with only 1 GB of RAM. It's a real challenge in 2024 for these machines because many distributions give up the 32 bit and 1 GB is also very low memory today for the recent Linux distributions and for a modern internet navigator. Fortunately Debian keep the 32 bit so a distribution based on Debian can do the job. It has to be easy for a Linux beginner, not too ugly and with a very light desktop. I found Q4OS and AntiX ; Q4OS is lighter than AntiX but AntiX is more beautifull than Q4OS. I tried both in virtual machines and finally I think I will choose AntiX. Thanks for your video, We reached the same conclusion.

I have one, it is my daily driver for terminal, ssh, rsync stuff, email and basic doc editing. C, java C++ html and JS coding is surprisingly pleasant to do on vim. I'm rocking OpenBSD with full disk encryption(felt right at the time) and fvwm2. it can't go on modern web, buuuuuut, dillo and everything that runs on dillo is good. and I still manage to get +5 hour on battery(after market) I bought mine in 2019 for dirt cheap, back then.

This was my case too. I had a acer aspire with the same specs as you. Windows 7 was so slow I give a try to linux, and now my main pc have Ubuntu

2 weeks ago i did the same on my Asus eee 1215n, but I have installed Lubuntu ;)

Ive tried "linux lite" on an atom N550 with 2GB. It works really well.

I bought this brand new yes new 2021,friend bought it way back new but never took it out of box,i paid him 20 euros for it added new ssd drive and 2gb memory then i installed new sparky linux 6.0 and its running ok infact i use it in garden,just thought i would say ,,tried all distros sparkey works best and the keep sending updays,,top distro and so light.thanks for your video

Generally when updating an app (new version) it means more demand of resources (hardware and software) from host, among many things else. Is the same with every new version of Linux kernel?

I used Lubuntu on my old windows vista laptop and it worked also really well!

it reminds me of the msi netbook I bought on 2009 with win xp. about the same specs but with win xp I could do also gaming. amongst the games it could run no problem at all was mafia 1-2, max payne 1-2, sid meier's pirates and many others. I am still trying to revive it with a suitable linux edition.

I had an Acer PC with similar specs ten years ago. This was my first personnal laptop (I was around 11 at the time), and I learnt a lot of things on it, including C programming and installing Ubuntu, because Windows was slow as hell.

Looks great. Potato revived!

I've got an Acer Aspire One D255E. Linux Mint 19.3 xfce 32-bit Edition works fine on it, although you might be better off with a much leaner distro. Mint 19.x is notorious for being a bit bloated. They did fix this in version 20.x, but that is only available in 64-bit edition. UPDATE: Apparently, the CPU is an Intel Atom N455 1.66 GHz chip and supports 64-bit. Go figure. So, version 20.x it is. 😃

Q4OS (w Trinity desktop) is the best lightweight Linux distro.

my wife have a crap laptop like that one and I installed Lubuntu a few months ago. Is usable but not that good, I think I'll Try antiX Linux! Thanks for the video!

I've had one of those HP mini 110 in the past.. forgot the exact years, 2010 more or less I think, but I remember it can browse the web way faster while running whatever Windows version it had at that time, compared to my new cheap laptop that comes with several years old Intel N3050 running on Windows 10.

Our family had a similar spec netbook back around 2010 but from Dell. I find it funny that I had a heck of a lot of patience back then since I had to regularly reformat it (thank god for the Windows reinstall & driver disc Dell included) due to getting viruses from flash drives of other people that a sibling plugged in. It gone from Windows 7 Starter (I used Peronalization Panel if I remember correctly to change themes and wallpapers) to Windows 7 Ultimate then to Windows 8.1 Pro later on until the netbook bit the dust. I also tried live DVDs of Ubuntu 13.04 and 14.04LTS on it if I remember correctly for backing up files. The only thing from that netbook that remains with me are probably the 1gb ddr2 ram stick and the recovery and reinstall discs.

It happens to own an old netbook with dual core Atom and 2GB of RAM. Unfortunately it's very slow on Windows 10 - the updates take hours, and many apps are not shown properly due to low-resolution screen - I think 1024x600 pixels. Just for some browsing or RU-vid/online music streaming what you recommend? Antix Linux or something else?

I still have mine, running Haiku Also, MSI U100 is far worse than that, the scrolling part of the trackpad on the HP is at least bigger than your finger

Fun fact about HP laptops: They have a Linux distro preinstalled by default which is called “Quickweb”

Have you tried installing Q4OS? It is also another Debian bases lightweight OS. I used it to replace a Windows XP 32bit laptop.

antiX is an excellent Linux distro. I use it both on my crappy Celeron N3060 2GB DDR3 laptop and my main PC that has Ryzen 5 5600, 16GB 3200MHz DDR4, and RX 6700 XT. Makes it look like magic when it's so light yet it runs damn everything.