For a old laptop with Intel atom processor and I think 2gb ram.
antiX I’ve used this before on an old laptop (also an atom and 2gb RAM) and it’s very lightweight. It just doesn’t have defaults that I prefer but if you tweak it enough, it should be fine.
Might be overkill (or underkill), but Tiny Core Linux is the most lightweight I know. While having an up to date kernel (6.1.2) and glibc (2.3.6).
What are the minimum requirements? An absolute minimum of RAM is 46mb. TC won’t boot with anything less, no matter how many terabytes of swap you have. Microcore runs with 28mb of ram. The minimum cpu is i486DX (486 with a math processor). A recommended configuration: Pentium 2 or better, 128mb of ram + some swap
Okay, yeah that’s a bit much lol
Also, I’ll just mention that it all means nothing as soon as you open a browser window. Then all your RAM is gonna be used up anyway.
Can I introduce you to Lynx?
Sure, play your youtube videos on Lynx.
We all know that’s one of the main things people use browsers for, that’s not work, these days. ;)
I oftentimes play youtube videos in mpv.
I always play youtube videos with mpv.
Honestly, I don’t even use Lynx
Downloading videos via yt-dlp and playing via MPV will not take all the RAM. And Firefox with uBlock Origin can be set to hard mode to block scripts, or even nightmare mode for a barebones no JS experience.
Downloading videos via yt-dlp and playing via MPV will not take all the RAM
Depends on how big the video is and how large you have your mpv buffer set to ;)
A buffer of upto 1 minute will always work fine. MPV defaults are fine. Browser will always be worse, no matter what. (Playing to the bait…)
You can do a really slim install of Debian that should work. For DE I recommend LXQT.
If you’re feeling adventurous, Alpine might be slightly lighter. It’s a good distro.
Those specs are not going to get you a terribly fast experience, but my laptop runs Debian ok and it’s in the same ballpark.
As other have already alluded to, any distro with a lightweight desktop environment should work on that laptop. However, we don’t know if it would work out for you; simply for the fact that you haven’t given any other information.
I’d go for Alpine Linux in such case.
Debian with XFCE or LXDE.
Isn’t LXDE basically discontinued? It got combined with RazorQT or something back in the day and became the LXQT we know today if I’m remembering right.
Seems like you’re right, I just remembered trying it a while ago and thinking it was quite decent.
Yeah it was a good middle of the road option. There’s much lighter, but it gets a lot more involved at that point.
A request was made to sticky it
I checked this yesterday, but could not decide. So had to ask.
Then download random live iso, test DE for 10 minutes and install it if there is no major hurdles.
Debian stable or testing, with MATE or XFCE or something crazy like WindowMaker (wmaker)!
I’ve heard Puppy Linux is good, never tried it myself however.
You can use whatever distro you want that you can install on it (btw it is a eeepc?), just avoid to install heavy programs and/or DE.
IIRC there should be a Debian derive distro for atoms, I used it on a eeepc, don’t know of still a thing
thank you, I will check it.
If it’s 32-bit, your options dwindle somewhat.
Armbian is lightweight, and has an x86 version.
If you want to take it to the extreme, Alpine is probably one of the best options.
It’s not worth it. Ram is dirt cheap, you can get 8gb for like $30. For $150-$200, you can find an used Thinkpad that will perform 1000x better.
I would only use such a machine for playing with old software like Windows 2000 or XP, old Linux distros.
I was on the same boat few days ago, I pulled out my 2010 CR48, Atom processor and 2GB ram.
I end up with Archlinux with xcfe DE, a tad slow but completely workable.
