After installing the AntiX distribution kit on my home computer (2GB/80GB/AMD Athlon-64 X2 4200+), the computer came to life and it became comfortable to surf the Internet and watch videos on RU-vid without lag.
No way. RU-vid videos wonŽt play correctly without smtube unless you have very good graphic card. These "distros for old hardware" are just waste of time. They use less ram but with 2 GB you are ok with even Ubuntu MATE if you are not starting more than few programmes at the same time. Ergonomy of these "distros for old hardware" tends to be problematic and they just save you some RAM but not CPU or graphic card. Linux Lite is XFCE distro - who would recommend that in favour of Linux Mint XFCE?
@@potatoes5829hello. I do think that lightweight Linux distros are life saver for many old PCs. But 5 years old is not too old. In LATAM many people still use 10+ laptops and desktop PC. Greetings
My almost 15 years old AMD Sempron 145 single core would like to disagree too even on windows 10 lmao. It plays videos smoothly on 720p @@potatoes5829
@@arnorobinwerkman it's not only about ram, KDE uses more CPU. On my old notebook (4gb of ram and intel Celeron) I could use gnome, but couldn't use KDE because of the CPU, it was really slow. I have an old laptop with 2gb of ram and an Intel Atom, KDE is just impossible to run, but XFCE runs pretty well.
A note about using Rolling releases like Arch. If the old PC you are installing it on isn't used much and is kept in a drawer or stored away most of the time you shouldn't use a rolling release but instead should go for an LTS or a point release if you are the type that don't want to or dont know how to fix any issues that may happen from no updating the machine. I had an old machine running Manjaro that was left alone for 6-8 months. It had 1000 package updates and there was an issue preventing it from updating that I had to fix for it to work. Similar thing happened to Solus.
YES! I once compiled Gentoo for some old 2GB of RAM systems thinking it would be optimized for that processor, did custom kernel and everything and never planned how bad updates would be 6 months later! Yikes!
@@macblink Something Ubuntu based like Linux Mint or Linux Lite. I'd stay away from Vanilla Ubuntu unless you got the specs to handle gnome. Stay away from stuff like Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, and Ubuntu MATE as well because they are only supported for 3 years instead of 5.
Running on Antix on a 1.6 Ghz Atom with 2 G DDR2 Ram circa 2008. Runs nice. Apps are kinda snappy. Nothing will get web browsing going anywhere near acceptable but use it as an audio server, basically.
AntiX is actually the best for potatoes despite its toned-down graphics. But how did you find surfing on RU-vid, where there dropped frames or video lags observed with jsut 2GB of RAM? Were you able to watch videos on at least 720P?
My old HP ze2000 only has 2GB ram with an 18 year old processor AMD Turion MT-30, and I'm running the latest version Manjaro with kernel 6.5.3, some major distributions runs on old hardware just fine. Linux is awesome, thank you.
Recently I downloaded and used Puppy Linux in my OracleVM and it was awesome - lightweight and fast. But the main thing I needed a Linux OS was for running Hadoop and related programs, and these days everyone uses ubuntu based distros so setting up Puppy Linux was difficult for me, as I found less support online for the problems I faced. Hence now I am looking for lightweight Ubuntu or Debian based distros for a comfortable learning journey in Big Data. If you could tell me what I should go for - like Lubuntu or Linux Lite, it would be a great help.
I use Sparky with openbox on an eMachine525 with a single core Intel, 4Gig ram. It's Debian based and comes in 32/64 bit. It can be loaded into RAM. I used Puppy and antiX in the past and try them every few versions to keep in touch. I find it cheaper to change OS then laptop.
depends on the potato. i have a desktop with an amd phenom ii processor from 2008-9. Thing is at least 14, maybe older. Upgraded to an ssd, maxxed out the ram (16GB max) And I have no problem running KDE inside Ubuntu Studio. Gfx card is an onboard HD4200.
wow, I am glad you changed your mind about Q4OS I definitely think this distro deserves the spot :) It is the smoothest KDE Plasma experience someone can have on a 32 bit computer (on 64bit as well ofc). And it is really convenient for an ex-windows user. I remember once you saying: "why not just install debian with kde??"
@@activelivingchallenger4298 He probably tried to run it with little RAM. Lubuntu once had the advantage of being one of the most lightweight Ubuntu spins mostly because of LXDE but since the change to LXQt even the Lubuntu devs themselves don't claim to be more lightweight than other Ubuntu spins
I have personally gravitated towards EndeavourOS for all my older machines as it basically is just Arch made easy. After testing a bunch of distros, EndeavourOS just wins every time with how smooth of an experience I have. Debian comes in at a close second if you need more stability, but having access to a modern rolling release wins in my book.
Honestly I've changed my mind on "light" distros. I have a ~2009 ThinkPad T500, and I've found that modern desktops tend to run just as well or better. For example I went through several installs, including Debian w/ XFCE, Mint Mate, Arch with bspwm, etc. Every time, I missed the features of GNOME which is my favorite, plus there would be weird hiccups like menus and apps not loading all the way or taking a long time and dealing with screen tearing. So I installed openSUSE with GNOME and have had zero issues - things feel nearly as responsive and smooth as my much more powerful AMD rig that I built in 2020. I don't care for KDE, but seems like the more mainstream desktops have put in a lot of work to optimize resource usage and it shows.
I also have a ThinkPad T500. I upped the RAM to 6 GB and swapped in an SSD, then loaded Mint 64-bit with the Cinnamon desktop. Got the Calibre E-Book manger installed and then added the entire Baen Free Library. I'm really happy with that setup.
Yeah it's interesting with people getting into Linux/distros, I've been into this stuff since the 90s, and have often reflected on the fun/emotional aspect that draws us in, despite telling myself that I've always just been doing this for "practical" purposes only. We have all these choices & options for customizing things when it comes to Linux desktops especially, which is a big part of the fun of it all. As an analogy... Windows/Mac are like "regular pre-built toys"... and Linux distros are like Lego. The setup/building/freedom/creativity are where the fun is! (not for everyone, but for us at least) So when we have a low-spec computer, we think... "this is the perfect opportunity to find something new and specialized!", and that adds some more fun and novelty. I've done it many times myself, but yeah, like you're saying... in the end it often doesn't really make that much difference, unless you have a really really slow computer / special use case. And on top of this, sometimes it's worth losing a little bit of performance for more useful features, or just having consistency and not needing to deal with multiple ways/setups of doing the same thing. All subjective of course, but has been interesting analyzing my own psychology on this kinda thing. And I'm always reminded of it when I see people writing threads asking for suggestions, and talking about how much time/effort/bikeshedding people sometimes put into this kind of premature optimization, that likely never would have had much thought put into it were the sea of options not available in the first place. Can easily fall into "analysis paralysis", which I guess is basically what distro-hopping can be sometimes. But hey... it is fun. Just worth thinking about for anybody like me who might find they're spending too much time on the wrong things. Ah yeah, on desktop performance... it's not really the distro that matters anyway. It's more the choice of window manager / desktop environment. These days I mostly just stick with Debian on everything.
Oh very nicely said! I had to retire, and the old test bed system gives me something to keep the old brain cells rattling about. But the daily drivers all run Mint / Cinnamon because that (a) gets rid of Microsoft, (b) is comfortable for old MS Windows users, and (c) is consistent for maintenance / updates / upgrades. Very necesary to me is that Mint runs happily on everything from the old T-500 to the last Ryzen build. The only distro-hopping we do is on that test bed system, and the other half doesn't often want to look at a new distro. @@HappyCheeryChap
Screen tearing can be an issue with lighter weight desktops/window managers if you don't have a compositor running (or sometimes even if you have a software compositor). I've found that using picom (you can often still use compton if it's included, but picom is a newer fork) will eliminate this and sometimes improves performance by taking some of the processing load from the CPU and giving it to the GPU instead. Of course a later Core 2 Duo is more powerful than some of the machines that really need a lighter weight distro.
Running Pop_OS on a t420, with like 16 gigs of ram, and an SSD, and it's honestly really great for me. I'm good with the defaults for now, but might work towards more i3/awesomeWM at some point. I'm new to linux and been using linux for a few months as a desktop OS, but have used it here and there prior. Tried Minte Mate, Mint Cinnamon, Ubuntu, and Pop_OS works for now with their custom Gnome. Fits my needs at the moment, and I'm pretty content for now.
I often look at these videos and would try many of these suggestions. I have been "playing" with Linux for a long time (90's). I guess I am not pushing the old Macbook Air 2011 (4GB/256GB/i7) to much. It is my coffee shop, simple surf and remote into my home network. It handles all this fine. For the longest time I would always just come back to Linux Mint, it is a very impressive OS. But I would always tire and try something different, yes distro hopping. ; ) So counter to what is considered right, I have been using Fedora with GNOME and it has been GREAT.
Thanks for your top 5 recommendation. I tested install several distro to my old 32bit 2 Gb laptop.. AntiX, MXLinux, Q4OS... and my recommend is MXLinux because it was more user friendly than the three of them. Also, Debian 12, OpenSUSE, Mageia 9, all have their 32 bit edition and with 2 Gb RAM + Intel core 2 duo, basic office and browsing need are okay. I documented all my tested in my channel as well....
Sorry to necro, but I have a similar laptop hanging around... How was your experience with that setup? Did you try other OS on? What about navigation? Any info is apreciated
@@ginobarsotti2455 Hey, to be honest I didn't use it for long but it was running smoothly overall except when using the browser It was a bit slow. I haven't used it since that time, I'm thinking of installing arch on it.
recently i'm very happy how the instalation of arch linux went on core 2 duo, 4GB ram laptop. I was able to find in the AUR repository legacy broadcom wifi firmware and bluetooth (had problems with this in windows and had no idea how to do it in slackware linux). Don't use nvidia drivers, nouveau open source alternative works for desktop use just fine!
Puppy Linux iso's were so confusing to someone that barely knows Linux, that I gave up on it and went with Zoren lite, even though my laptop (17 years old), It was about 2 years older than the oldest recomendation for it. But it works. Wouldn't watch videos on it. But I can listen to music, search the net and use office Libre. And look at pictures. And won't play games. Unless something very very basic. But that is ok. It has basickly been turned into a workstation for one of my brother's kids. So he didn't hog the main pc.
Old intel hp used to run Xfce but not anymore is getting to heavy , lite linux was around 900 mb in idle!!! For years I was running opensuse leap (net install) with my personal openbox configs and was great. Now arch linux minimal install with a WM (i3 or sway) it took me several days to take care of the hardware acceleration - thanks arch wiki - and with upgrade ram, new keyboard and a ssd is flying ...
I was just bragging about Mabox on another channel. In the back of my Box o' Distros, way in the corner, sits a drive with the Mabox iso on it. It's my guilty pleasure because I really don't have time to learn all of the details in manipulating Openbox, but I just love playing with it so much and above all, looking at it. It is indeed the most beautiful window manager distro I've ever tried. And it is fast! If I could get 64-bit Scrivener to run on it I'd use it from now on.
Some small clarifications on hardware here : - Not all hardware is equal, - Not all hardware ages the same, - Desktop hardware will always outlive a laptop, in terms of performance and being able to run newer software, - Desktop hardware is much more upgradable and repairable, than a laptop. For example, my 10 yrs old machine is still better than many new budget laptops. I run a normal, up to date distro - hold your breath - and I run it on GNOME ! And it works nice. Actually, on my machine Win 10 also works nice. No gaming of course (but some games work too, of course not new ones), but it works with no problem. And I even don't have a discrete graphics card, I run on the CPU/mobo integrated graphics.
Of course I understand your point Mr. DT, but the irony (or perhaps even more aptly stated, truth..) of your initial statement is that once you switch your older computer to Linux, it's no longer a potato. 😀
My stepdad had an old shitty laptop that he just used for facebook, printing stuff and playing 60s rock on his Sonos. I tried so many distros, ubuntu32 and 64 bit, raw arch with xfce, linux mint with cinnamon and xfce, antix. All of them would just not go well with the hardware, the graphics would just jumble up randomly, fonts would not render in the correct spot, and randomly switch out letters for no reason, UI components turning into black boxes or just looking like NES cartridge tilt. It looked like the graphics memory would just corrupt in all of these distros. Then I tried the new Peppermint OS, no issue whatsoever, it's my new go-to for old hardware.
Arch Linux + LXDE is a really light distribution. Only you need install the base packages + Xorg + LXDE + Lxdm and enable the services. With 1 Gb RAM + 2 Gb Swap you will have a great distro.
@@AceOfBased Currently everybody can install Arch Linux with the command "archinstall", but not a rookie, better an intermediate user in my opinion. The Arch installer will guide you easily for several options you want. Here in youtube exists a lot of videos how install Arch with archinstall.
I personally started my lightweight linux journey with antiX, but later I realized you can choose basically any distro and it ultimately comes down to preinstalled software and window manager/desktop environment, so you're free to choose anything else - init system(systemd/runit/openrc/etc), software release system(rolling(arch based or similar)/stable(debian based or similar)), precompiled binaries/compile locally(non-gentoo distros/gentoo itself). But if you want just a running system right away, I'd probably prefer something like antiX/Peppermint, only because I'm somewhat familiar with them
I personally like those 2 distros for old hardware too ... But I tend to prefer Peppermint over antiX because, by now, IceWM has a really outdated look and feel to it. RAM usage is nearly the same. A while ago I tried both on the same machina and AntiX's RAM usage was 298MB vs. 314MB for PeppermitOS. Both can perfectly run on machines with as little as 1GB of RAM. But if you want to have a decent browser experience, a minimum of 2GB are a must
I am using a Potato right now, running Lubuntu 22.04.03 LTS and it runs good enough for my taste. Q9300, 8GB DDR2, 128 GB SSD, GTX 960 - a bit slow from time to time but mostly usable. Linux Mint should work aswell but I wanted to stay at a Ubuntu-Flavor since on my main system runs Kubuntu.
On my old potato dual core 2ghz 3gb ram system I dual boot XP and Linux with q4os Trinity. I may try one of these other dostros ya mentioned. Thank you.
The Debian installer allows you to not install a desktop, so you can build it up from scratch much like Arch Linux. It is good for minimal installs too
That's how I use it. Openbox+Lxpanel. Arch is not good for a new linux user, because it shits itself after 3 months of updates. Then what does grandma do with it? My experience in terms of reliability: Debian Stable -> 2 years until the first serious problem Debian Testing, Ubuntu LTS -> 6 months... Debian Unstable, Arch -> 3 months... I don't mind someone telling you how good Arch is, just add, I beg you, that you will suck with it sooner or later(sooner). Use it if you like challenges. And then I'll take it. But not like this...
@@kutyajani249 I will only say that once you have learned your way around Arch, you learn to take its problems in stride, at least I do. I installed it on my new AMD + Nvidia card system, and game on it. I installed it with BTRFS and Timeshift with roll backs, haven't rolled back yet..
@@edbeckerich3737 , Not yet, but you will soon. But at least you know what you're doing... BTRFS is a good option. It simply irritates and triggers me, because he recommends a system without going into much detail about its nuances.If someone, say a novice, jumps into this, he can easily get a slap in the face and may never come back to the world of linux, saying that "linux" is bad and unreliable.
I'm not much concerned about distro names as much as desktop environment choices. With more RAM I would go with XFCE or Trinity, with less RAM and very old CPUs I would choose LXDE. Q4OS Trinity is easy to setup to look like old Windows. There are also other good choices like Fluxbox, IceWM, Moksha / Enlightenment. Any PC that runs KDE Plasma, GNOME, Cinnamon, Budgie, Pantheon, Deepin, UKUI, LXQT or MATE without problems I wouldn't consider to be old in performance.
I still have a really old Samsung laptop, 32 bits, 512 mb, from around 2005. Tried Puppy, AntiX, Devuan. Ended up with debian. The machine is so slow, can't even run xfce properly, so it runs lxde, openbox and icewm. Booting time is about 2 minutes. It's practically impossible to run any modern web browser with that cpu and memory. But still possible to play old DOS and ZX Spectrum games with dosbox and fuse.
For older computers the only sollution is NOSYSTEMD 1. Adelie Linux (prove me wrong) 2. Antix Linux 3. Slitaz Linux 4. Miyo Linux 5. Tinycore Linux as for puppy devuanpup or void pup are the way to go I would also add Void Linux but this is better to "best linux for every case".
How would any of these do on an imac? 17" 2006 2 GB ram. (it runs snow leopard now) 2.0 ghz Cor 2 duo (64 bit? - it's in storage - think I have the specs right). And can you use a thumb drive on this to boot up and add an OS?
I have an old Chromebook (16GB Emmc, 2 GB ram, Intel bay trail CPU) that runs real well with Debian. It actually handles modern software and websites just fine (although video streaming is limited to 720p or 480p if I have things other than a browser running). I of course also have a much more powerful computer, but the little thing is really portable and great for web browsing, document typing, and video watching. Alpine might also be worth trying on a low spec computer. Super lightweight with an easy desktop install, but a little less hardware compatibility.
Which of these has high graphic interface with low RAM usage? I am looking for a beautiful look to make a new stand alone HTPC. Older dell 7010, 24Tb HDD. 8gb Ram. I am retiring my WinXP gaming PC that was running Librelec with a 2TB upgrade.
What about the availability of additional applications? Can new users easily find and install the programs or games that complete their experience? This is a big drawback for many new users.
You can install anything straight from the upstream Ubuntu repository in Linux Lite, and I suppose things work similarly for most other lightweight distros. Whether programs will function smoothly or not depends on potatoes' specs.
The honourable mention is Arch, buut The esteemed, prestigious, renowned, distinguished, venerable mention is Gentoo. It still has 32 bit support. And you can trim it down more than all distros in DT's list, so even 30 (yes, thirty) year old computers can run on it. As long as they have 32 MB of RAM. And an Intel 486 compatible CPU. It won't be fast though. A Pentium 3 tier CPU + about 2 GB I'd say is the minimum for kind-of-modern way of using the computer for modern-day light activities. The down side is that Gentoo is totally not for Linux beginners. There's a lot to learn in order to customize and use it effectively. While we're at it, Debian itself is a good option. Since, you know, 80% of DT's list is based (directly or indirectly) of Debian. And, of course, Devuan too (maybe even better). Lastly, but not least, I'm pretty sure that Slackware is also an excellent distro for this.
Puppy Linux has always been my go to after finding back in 2009. Unfortunately I had old hardware and trying to run this Ubuntu disk I received in the mail the old days 😢 Trying to install Bookworm Puppy on a Lenovo idea pad. It's was only 40 dollars. Windows is OK but it doesn't have a lot of storage space at 38gb. This is my I don't know done loss count of how many times I attempted to install Puppy on here here I go again.😂 .
I found Zorin OS Lite lightweight and better than Linux Lite. I am using Zorin OS Lite 17 now on my Lenovo T400 ( intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 8 GB DDR3 RAM, 240 GB SSD + 500 GB HDD). I wanted a Debian/ubuntu based distro to use and that is why I have chosen this distro. Working fine till now.
I have a MSI Wind U200 I run Manjaro KDE on it. I think you can use whatever Linux distros it doesn't affect performance. The bottleneck is the webbrowser they hold every machine back and it doesn't matter what distro you are using.
With a somewhat beefier system i would agree. If you have something really old that still has a spinning hard drive and limited ram, from experience i would say that the main things that matter are a) init system. Big difference in overall snappiness and boot time b) replacing all your day to day apps with leaner ones. Antix is particularly great IMO since they have a large selection of replacements for pretty much all of the productivity apps you might need. They even try to give you a light weight YT streaming app so you don't need to open a browser to view online videos c) Sad to say this but use chromium instead of firefox. It is significantly faster and makes a difference on low end hw. d) lean window manager instead of full desktop env (duh)
Linux Lite is my favourite of the bunch, but I really dislike Chrome as a default. I'd prefer Brave or Vivaldi as alternatives to Firefox (and Firefox based) browsers.
This would have been a good video to mention at least something about BSD. GhostBSD is a fantastic and beginner-friendly "distro". Or because you mentioned Arch, you could also tell people about Free/Net/OpenBSD. Because it´s by far a lot simpler to build your own system with any of these than with Arch. And all of them are really fast and frugal with resources, and all of them runs on any hardware regardless of 32/64bit or type of CPU. OpenBSD even comes out of the box with graphical login and a windows manager. And not any WM but the almighty FVWM. And if you don´t fancy that, it´s a five minute job if you want the latest Gnome for instance.
he cannot mention bsd because bsd does not use systemD... DT is loyal to systemD and shows only systemD sollutions (which btw are not real sollutions) and the only reason he showed antix is because is based on debian (which of course is systemD based) i hope he changes his mind and show the other the -dark- bright side and not only the dark one before it's too late for linux and foss
BSD and Gentoo are really great things for those who know what they are doing but i would be cautious about recommending them to newbies who seek a plug and play way of doing things. Yes systemd is slow and bloated but if you choose something leaner there are a whole host of programs that simply wont run, such as games and modern proprietary software. Newbies will maybe think that linux can't handle those things at all if they go with the leaner ways. BSD has comparatively small hardware support which can also come as a shock for anyone who is pleasantly surprised with the OS as a whole. If you are ok with making the trade-offs and have the extra time though i hear both can be very rewarding.
You are all wrong imho. Let me explain. Why targeting new users only ? And why target them like they are idiots ? Who said games can't be playable on nosystemD LINUX ? BSD lacks hardware limitations ok this is true but i was merely talking about nosystemD sollutions. DT shows arch. Is arch for new users ? Well yes and no. So is everything. I was new and started with systemD and i broke my distro because they told be it's easy to manage it. Well you have to invest some time. Nothing is easy or at least everything has a learning curve. AND yes nosystemD is not harder than systemD. For example why is devuan harder than debian ? It's not and is even better ootb experience. The only problem with nosystemD is some "linux" users or guru (lmao) as i say have to re learn what they know. And they should because in a few years linux might be a nightmare. And i @@Kalasklister1337
@@Kalasklister1337 To be fair, BSD isn´t that bad with hardware support. There are a few spookiy devices (mostly wifi) that Linux may support while BSD doesn´t. And there is of course OpenBSD vs Nvidia. Theo De Raadt went beyond Torvalds middle finger when it comes to Nvidia. Anyway, I run OpenBSD on lot of stuff including some Macs of all things. The funny thing is that I installed a Debian with FVWM the other day as a side project. I have to say was a mistake. I got tired after a couple of hours of fiddling. I thought it would be as easy as setting up a FreeBSD+FVWM. Spoiler: It wasn´t.... And with OpenBSD coming with it out of the box, I would say it´s one of the easiest ever to setup. Anyway, are you Swedish by any chance? Lets just say that your username gave me the urge to call you "Konrad". ;)
As far as I am concerned BSD is not quite a Linux distro so how would he mention it. Btw it is suitable only for those who really know what they are doing
For older hardware i suggest Slackware or Gentoo. Slackware is polished and stable while gentoo, with the use of flags, really allows you to tailor what is on your system. Custom kernels also help as you can again optimize your architecture. 32 bit laptops are almost 20 years old i believe intel stopped manufacturing them in 2002. The biggest problem in 15+ year old machines is by far failing hardware especially RAM, hard drives, and to a lesser extent network or video cards . At a minimum i suggest you check the health of your hard drive and back up your data
@HikingFeral It takes a while to tailor it to your needs, and you really want a separate, much more modern, machine to do the compiling or else it will take forever. Gentoo wiki is really good so it not too hard, but it requires some time investment for setup and upkeep. Gentoo allows for really minimal setups, I have laptop that uses only around 60-80mb of ram while idling on desktop and it not even with just the bare minimum running.
Gentoo is a seriously mixed back for older hardware. On the one hand the performance gains from a fully compiled system are nice for older hardware, on the other hand actually compiling everything takes A G E S
As of Debian 12 it still supports 32 bit and can run on half a gig of ram👍. Might need to prune your systemd services and disable some junk in /etc/xdg/autostart/ for a smooth experience.
I love Solus Budgie for older 64bit hardware as it's a good balance of lightness, and usability, but a laptop with a strong 64bit dual core, 8gb of RAM, and a good SSD will run Manjaro Gnome in traditional layout just fine.
so... it's 2024... are there distros that come with pre-installed WINE out of the gate besides Zorin OS? and is Puppy Linux of today fully compatible with Ryzen generation of processors? (and APU graphics)
does Zorin OS even exist 🤣I liked it when I tested an older version of it, nothing wrong with it, it just ran a bit too slowly directly from the flash drive, hopefully modern releases addressed that
@@Hoztag3 I'm Linux newbie here. Currently I'm using kubuntu. I'm installing minecraft with .deb extensions. It's said, the dependencies not supported. But other apps, with .deb extension like steam, are working. Do you know why?
Hey DT! Nice rant... but I think you forgot some very important aspects: do define the "older hardware" concept: for some could be 32bit, IDE potato laptop.... for some could be and 64bit Intel core 4th gen Your recommanded distros are all over the place... cmon... linux lite ?!?! For me, older hardware to be usable in every day tasks it needs to be 64bit, Intel Core i, 2nd gen or AMD equivalent, min 4GB DDR2 (or DDR3), upgraded to a SATA SSD. Even with this baseline, some light distros could require some tweaking to make them lighter, like deactivating processes, switch to a window manager from an DE... I don't have much experience with many light distros but I would recommend MXLinux, EndeavourOS (currently on my potato laptop with similar spec to the specified baseline), ArcoLinux and Void linux. For Linux Mint (xfce) I would recommend a better spec that the baseline specified above. Back in the days there was a misconception that if you have a crappy pc .. you should install Linux. I believe that if you want to make an omelet... you need to crack some eggs.... otherwise you'll end up with a crappy pc which will just run the OS and nothing else.
I put mabox on a 2016 mac book pro. I miss the wifi and touch bar. (I did switch it to Linux Mint and I installed the kde desktop environment with a ethernet dongle.)
This was good info but I clicked on it hoping to find a different purpose. I've got 5-10 used laptops, all with various x64. I also have 15-20 RPi or an ARM clone. I would like to find specialty Linux Distros like Home Assistant, KODI, NAS, stuff like that, especially where there's a gap between PC and ARM. Any thoughts on x86 specialty Linux Distros? Something where you're not using 1200watts to try and keep up with a Raspberry Pi Zero, like gaming emulators media centers.
lol I just installed arch in my old laptop a month ago and come to the video looking for an even faster distro. I'm using just nvim in TTY and sometimes loading hyprland to use qutebrowser. Is hyprland a good idea or should i look for another wm in xorg? Edit: i'm looking only for responsiveness, my main workstation is a desktop and revived my laptop just to present my work
Hmm, surprised MX Linux didn't make the cut. Doesn't necessarily advertise itself as "lightweight" but I found it to be pretty light. Actually runs way better than Linux Lite on family member's old machine I put it on. Funnily enough, at least in my experience, Linux Lite seemed quite "heavy" actually especially among the "lightweight" distros.
The one time I tried MX Linux, just a few months ago, on a potato 13" Intel Atom "Windows 7" laptop, it was stuttering the pagefile so bad I could barely even load up the Shutdown Menu. I don't remember when was the last time I've had such an experience, maybe on XP but even then only due to some hung software. Mind you this laptop has been running Debian with XFCE just fine out of the box with no tuning whatsoever. I don't know if I just got a bad release or if that's normal but it seems like MX just adds a lot cream and cherries to go along with a normal Debian and XFCE. If you want lightweight Debian with an XFCE desktop environment, then you probably don't want, don't need, or can't handle the doodaads MX preinstalls.
@@pubcollize I think on older hardware it's recommend to use a swap partition instead of a file. Don't quote me on that though. Personally I use a partition always though. Anyway as for MX, like I said, that was my experience with it. Did you try Linux Lite on that potato ? How did it run by comparison ?
@@Alegzander1990 Come to think of it I was running it Live at that time, so take it or leave it but I wasn't impressed. No I didn't try Linux Lite, I'm not much of a hopper, and I don't even remember why I tried MX (def from a DT recommendation but I just don't remember why I bothered). That laptop works fine with Debian XFCE and the only thing it ever struggled with was that MX, otherwise it always exceeds my expectations. The keyboard is terrible and the power button is annoying but those aren't software issues.
I don't really get the point of any of these anyways, you want Debian install Debian, you want things to constantly break install Arch, then on top of those install whatever packages you want to install. What's the added benefit of all of these? It says "Linux Lite" but it's heavier than Debian with a prepackaged DE is it not? If these things are only good because they have an apt-get script with hundreds of packages then wouldn't it be "lite"-er to just download a bash script that does "apt-get install "? could even add a gui with checkboxes to it and call it Synaptic...
@@pubcollize While I do also kinda lean towards the "pure" distros from a "philosophical" point of view, I don't necessarily agree that other flavors don't have their place. Got Debian running on PROXMOX in a container for Pi-Hole and Unbound and also have an Openmediavault (which is Debian based) VM for a NAS. Rock solid distros, all of them. Been running Mint on a family member's Laptop, then switched it to Manjaro and then to Endeavour OS after Manjaro decided to take away the codecs. Also dual booting Endeavour OS on my main PC alongside Windows 10 LTSC (on separate drives). Got systemd boot entry setup for Windows 10 aswel (was a pain) and I boot that so I get a boot menu. Don't actually agree with Arch (well Arch flavors in my case) breaking all the time either. At least not on my machines. Also been rock solid actually, and I'm no Linux expert by any means, but I've learned a lot in the past few years. I like to tinker with it though. Especially after I had to ditch Windows 7 as I didn't really want to move to Windows 10. Eventually settled on LTSC after a while for my Windows drive. Got my Endeavour OS install pretty much exactly the way I want it. Also gave Garuda a spin on my main machine a while back and it was pretty cool although a bit bloated and some things annoyed me so I moved to Endeavour OS straight after as it's as close to mainline Arch as you can get, but it's a little more user friendly. Rolling releases don't break that often, if at all, nowadays in my experience.
I have a USB (VID0A46 / PID9621) Ethernet Adapter and found driver source code for it, qop_kernel/drivers/net/usb/dm9620 I can compile code using gcc, but not sure how to compile/load the driver, such that I can plug it in and call functions from the driver, ex. "dm_write_eeprom_word' function"? Any suggestions how to do this.. what distro, commands to load, etc?
Linux Lite is not as light as stated because it uses more or less 1GB of RAM upon boot up. Linux Mint and MX Linux will do better in terms of minimal memory consumption. Yes, Bodhi needs less RAM but its Moksha environment is not as user friendly for converts from Windows. Glaringly omitted from the list was AntiX Linux that uses only between 198 to 250MB of RAM, despite its toned-down graphics.
Oh wow I didn’t know you could run a Puppy Linux that’s Ubuntu-based. Good idea. If only it didn’t come with all those desktop widgets. Plain openbox is enough.
Hello what is the best distribution linux for old pc of her optiplex 760usff, I want it to be stable, fast, fluid, very customizable, good, office performance, a little bit gaming and office automation
