So i have a bunch of pc’s/laptops/computers and such that my family members refuse to depart with even though there really bad. so far they mangae to keep 4 bulky computers in total, we do have some new-ish ones but theses ones im talking about need some loving.1 computer is 32 bit and has 2gb of ram, the other 3 have 64-bit and range from 1gb of ram- to 2 and one of which has only 75 space hardrive.
are there any linux distros that might work becasue im a noob who uses windows so im very lost. any tips or suggestions or something would be great.
also if im posting in the wrong plac eplease let me know in the comments.
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those are very low specs for every day distros (meaning usable for the general public), you might get away with linux mint xfce, if it ends up usable on those machine and not lag too much then don’t bother with anything else, otherwise you might have to install lighter stuff like antix or lxle. If none of the above are usable you can always install puppy linux, it can run on a toaster but is not very pleasant to use. note that regardless of distro, surfing the web is going to be a chore due to half of the modern internet being heavy as fuck and hard to run, you might want to look for alternative frontend to websites like piped for youtube, urlebird for tiktok etc.
I’d suggest Debian with LXDE, which, from my personal experience, works pretty fine on low-end computers. You can replace LXDE with your choice of Windows Managers for an even lighter system, but that might be a little hard if you’ve never used Linux before.
Puppy Linux runs on a potato of any architecture and is super user friendly (grandpa certified)! Only 300 MB or so. https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/
I know a lot of people recommended Mint, which I personally use on my very modern budget gaming pc, but you should really try Puppy Linux, it’s meant for the exact use case you’re describing.
For a more “friendly flavored” distro, MX Linux is Debian-based and comes with a bunch of quality of life tools
MX Linux seconded. It’s available in 32-bit versions, too.
I haven’t used it on a machine with less than 4GB though, but it runs well on an old Dell laptop from 2009.
Browser choice is probably going to make just as much difference as distro choice. Modern browsers kinda need at least 1 GB to be usable, ideally more. Depends what you do with it of course.
Try Pale Moon, Falkon and Konqueror.
In my experience, palemoon struggles a lot with modern JavaScript-bloated sites and becomes much slower to use. My suggestion is to use 32bit firefox.
Try mint with Xfce - on 64 bit machines and then go lighter.
alright and are you sure that is the best starter option? also what can i do on linux compared to windows?
best option
Ubuntu is popular and new-user friendly. And xfce is generally lighter on resources. It’s a good choice.
What can I do
Almost everything.
Some proprietary apps you’ve used from windows may not be available, but equivalent ones would be available on linux.
Stuff like browsing the web(provided that you don’t open too many tabs, because you have low ram) and watching movies n all is quite good.
What all things fo you intend to do on it? I think it’ll be easier to check that the things you want are there.Think of it as Windows 7 in terms of functionality but with a Windows Vista/XP GUI.
That said, your CPU’s performance will increase noticebly on Linux.
I’ve used Debian on an old netbook with an Intel Atom and onyl 2GB RAM. The experience wasn’t so bad but web browsing was definitely a pain. Video calling and watching YouTube (Firefox) was very sluggish and annoying to deal with. It’s fine for working with documents and watching low resolution videos locally but that’s about it.
I’ve also tried antiX but a lot of the defaults were annoying. If you (or your family members) can deal with it, then it’s probably the best lightweight Linux distro out there.
are there any linux distros that might work becasue im a noob who uses windows so im very lost. any tips or suggestions or something would be great.
In this case, I recommend just leaving your family members to do their own thing. From my experience, it is very hard to manage other people’s Linux issues if you don’t have decent knowledge on it yourself. If they don’t want to upgrade, that’s their problem. Not yours.
I installed ZorinOS lite on someone’s laptop which still ran Vista and it just worked like a dream. No idea regarding the specs though.
My favorite very light is peppermintOS, I think you may have to go back to version 10 for 32 bit though.
AntiX is quite good on older hardware but beware of the fact they don’t use systemd. Nice effort to try and use newer init services but a lot of things really depend on systemd being installed.
WattOS (which uses systemd) is also very performant on old rigs but it needs more tweaking OOTB I’d say.
Puppy Linux is made for old machines and generally just works. You can boot it up on a live USB and see what you think. Lots of flavours to choose from.
I’d suggest Linux mint Debian edition, at least for the 32bit machine. Many distros have stopped supporting 32bit lately.
It should be fairly user friendly.
I, personally, would suggest Debian 12 especially since they still supply 32 bit ISOs. (Also 64 bit, but that’s kind of a given at this point)
- Debian is rock stable due to testing like crazy
- Adding a lightweight desktop like XFCE would help with not overloading the PC
- If I remember correctly, updates for the next 5 years since it’s a long term support (LTS) release
- I am guessing you mean 75 GB which should still have, at minimum (absolute worst case everything went wrong kind of wrong), 60 GB left for programs and files
Since they provide both 64 and 32 bit ISOs and run the same thing, all support issues can be done exactly the same on all the computers since, I assume, there is no dedicated graphics card (Nvidia, AMD) in any of them.
Here’s a link to the downloads: https://www.debian.org/distrib/
Download from the “complete installation image” area on the left, second section down.
Edit: If you can use a DVD or USB then use the DVD link, but if they can’t then the CD image will also work.
This answer is getting down voted, but Debian is the answer because it is user friendly and supports 32bit. If you need to seriously bring new life to these machines upgrade the RAM and buy SSDs. Using a lightweight desktop environment like MATE is a good option.
Don’t give users unfamiliar with Linux a window manager or Arch.
I would suggest Mint. Considering the hardware, the XFCE version. Have you looked into any hardware upgrades for these machines? I’ve found that a simple ram or hdd–>ssd upgrade can be rather inexpensive these days.
There are a lot of distros which are more focused on old hardware than Mint, but Mint definitely wins in the “this distro will be familiar and discoverable to people who are used to Windows” department. If it works, it’s great for that reason.
Ya, I think in a case like this, it’s best to go with the most user friendly and easy to pick up distro
I’d like to do something similar on my Pentium 3 box. Maybe Debian with a really light WM would be a good fit, maybe IceWM? It only has 512MB of RAM though so I might have to go even lighter than Debian. I also have an Athlon XP box with 2GB of RAM, but that’s too new to be fun. :p
Puppy Linux runs on a potato of any architecture and is super user friendly (grandpa certified)! Only 300 MB or so for the OS and very little RAM use. https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/
