Best linux option for the specs

[ShayOh]

Hi!
i got an old laptop that i would like to use as a learning, lite browsing, beginner station.

it is an Acer Aspire One 532h-2223

 

• CPU = Intel Atom N450 / 1.66 GHz
• 1GB Ram DDR2
• Graphics Processor = Intel GMA 3150
• 160 GB HDD.

 

Yes later on i could add another stick of ram to get it to 2 GB and maybe add an SSD but as of right now. what would be best desktop like distro i could install on it?

Thank you!

[Wh0_Am_1]

Personally I would recommend mint.

[Ashleyyyy]

lubuntu

[vlads_]

As far as performance goes, the Linux distribution isn't as important as the desktop environment (DE) it will come with, so you may want to look into that. Ubuntu (use the Lubuntu or Xubuntu flavors for low power machines) or Mint are good choices for beginners.

[sp331yi]

Slax

Bodhi

LinuxLite

In that order and IME.  Don't believe me?  See this page -- older but still accurate!

Best wishes!

[benitiv]

Hello,

 

we just had a very similar topic 2 weeks ago.

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1180526-linux-for-an-old-laptop/

I think this forum does support a decent search function.

[Worstcaster]

8 hours ago, Wh0_Am_1 said:

Personally I would recommend mint.

I've got Mint running on an almost 20 year old Toshiba Satellite.  Works fine.

[MasterGeekMX]

Depends on how low you want to go. A small unpowerfull computer is like a small cheap apartment: you have low space, and you need to trade having space or having fancy furniture.

 

Linux onto itself (the kernel and the basic system) is lightweight, and it will run on 64MB or RAM and a 486dx. The desktop environment and other apps are the ones who are the real weight adders (the furniture in the apartment analogy), so using more simple and stripped down programs are the ones who will make a difference.

 

In my experience the thing that maters most (both in terms on how much resources and how you will use your computer) ais the desktop environment. It allows you to have taskbars, start menus, a desktop with icons, etc. The most lightweights out there are XFCE, LXQt, MATE, Cinnamon and Enlightment. There is also the option of using something even more basic: a window manager. it trades having more "modern" things in exchenge of being simpler and leaner. Examples are IceWM, Openbox, i3wm and Awesome. Try some distros with them and check which one fits the balance between low resources and enough "comfort". it is more common to see a distribution shipping with a Desktop Environment, with window managers needing to be installed aftwerwards.

 

I will recommend using Debian or Fedora or Manjaro.

 

Debian is more lighweight in comparison, and if you use the net installer it lets you choose wich desktop environment to install, but the site is cumbersome to navigate in order to find the .iso download, and becasue it only ships with free software, there is the chance of some piece of hardware not working becasue the firmware is ony non-open. It has the advantage of being the "dad" of Ubuntu, so a lot of guides from it will help on Debian. A disadvantage is that Debian uses older versions of programs for stability sake (stability in the sense of a dependable service) and it gets updates slowly, with versions coming up every couple years.

 

Fedora in contrast is sligthly more heavy, but it offers more drivers in comparison. The default edition (Fedora Workstation) comes with the GNOME desktop environment, but it's too heavy for your laptop. Go to the Fedora Spins page instead. In there you will find editions of Fedora with the aforementioned desktop environments already shipped. Fedora is the basis (and testing environment) in wich Red Hat Enterprise Linux bases upon, and in contrast with debian it gets updated more frequently and with the latest technologies, having a new version each 6 months.

 

Manjaro is intended to be Arch Linux for beginners. It comes in several editions (3 official and the rest are community-made) with almost every desktop and window manager imaginable, including the ones I mentioned. Becasue it is based on Arch (it uses basically the same repos) it enjoys the most up-to-date bleeding edge software, but at the cost of sligthly more probability to find a new bug and updates acumulating if you don't do them regularly. It has excellent hardware support (it even comes with a tool to detect and install GPU drivers).

[ShayOh]

On 5/6/2020 at 1:43 AM, MasterGeekMX said:

Depends on how low you want to go. A small unpowerfull computer is like a small cheap apartment: you have low space, and you need to trade having space or having fancy furniture.

 

Linux onto itself (the kernel and the basic system) is lightweight, and it will run on 64MB or RAM and a 486dx. The desktop environment and other apps are the ones who are the real weight adders (the furniture in the apartment analogy), so using more simple and stripped down programs are the ones who will make a difference.

 

In my experience the thing that maters most (both in terms on how much resources and how you will use your computer) ais the desktop environment. It allows you to have taskbars, start menus, a desktop with icons, etc. The most lightweights out there are XFCE, LXQt, MATE, Cinnamon and Enlightment. There is also the option of using something even more basic: a window manager. it trades having more "modern" things in exchenge of being simpler and leaner. Examples are IceWM, Openbox, i3wm and Awesome. Try some distros with them and check which one fits the balance between low resources and enough "comfort". it is more common to see a distribution shipping with a Desktop Environment, with window managers needing to be installed aftwerwards.

 

I will recommend using Debian or Fedora or Manjaro.

 

Debian is more lighweight in comparison, and if you use the net installer it lets you choose wich desktop environment to install, but the site is cumbersome to navigate in order to find the .iso download, and becasue it only ships with free software, there is the chance of some piece of hardware not working becasue the firmware is ony non-open. It has the advantage of being the "dad" of Ubuntu, so a lot of guides from it will help on Debian. A disadvantage is that Debian uses older versions of programs for stability sake (stability in the sense of a dependable service) and it gets updates slowly, with versions coming up every couple years.

 

Fedora in contrast is sligthly more heavy, but it offers more drivers in comparison. The default edition (Fedora Workstation) comes with the GNOME desktop environment, but it's too heavy for your laptop. Go to the Fedora Spins page instead. In there you will find editions of Fedora with the aforementioned desktop environments already shipped. Fedora is the basis (and testing environment) in wich Red Hat Enterprise Linux bases upon, and in contrast with debian it gets updated more frequently and with the latest technologies, having a new version each 6 months.

 

Manjaro is intended to be Arch Linux for beginners. It comes in several editions (3 official and the rest are community-made) with almost every desktop and window manager imaginable, including the ones I mentioned. Becasue it is based on Arch (it uses basically the same repos) it enjoys the most up-to-date bleeding edge software, but at the cost of sligthly more probability to find a new bug and updates acumulating if you don't do them regularly. It has excellent hardware support (it even comes with a tool to detect and install GPU drivers).

I installed Mint with XFCE4 and xfwm4 is running the computer at between 65-100% CPU usage and basically its impossbile to use it. i even upgraded the ram to 2gb.

Not sure where to go from here.. seems like XFCE is too much for that laptop.

[ShayOh]

On 5/5/2020 at 10:20 PM, Worstcaster said:

I've got Mint running on an almost 20 year old Toshiba Satellite.  Works fine.

I installed Mint and xfwm4 is running between 65-100% CPU Usage and making the computer completely unusable. i even upgraded the ram to 2GB

[vlads_]

1 hour ago, ShayOh said:

I installed Mint and xfwm4 is running between 65-100% CPU Usage and making the computer completely unusable. i even upgraded the ram to 2GB

I've had the same problem with Xfce. There is a particular process which bugs out and uses 100% of one core. Use htop to see what it is. You can uninstall it.

 

This issue should be fixed upstream, but Mint has old packages so idk.

[sp331yi]

antiX 19.1 is not the prettiest, but is debian-based and therefore has lots of software options and very good support. 

It will definintely work on such a limited-resource machine as the one described. One gig of RAM is the bottleneck.

And I would not suggest trying to go with the latest kernel nor 64bit!

 

 Give it a whirl!

[ShayOh]

10 hours ago, sp331yi said:

antiX 19.1 is not the prettiest, but is debian-based and therefore has lots of software options and very good support. 

It will definintely work on such a limited-resource machine as the one described. One gig of RAM is the bottleneck.

And I would not suggest trying to go with the latest kernel nor 64bit!

 

 Give it a whirl!

I upgraded to 2GB
but i found the problem (And solution) i hope Google will index this post,
the problem was due to an external screen connected to the laptop, once i switched on the laptop settings to only display the external screen and not both, the problem went away.

[sp331yi]

Quote

i found the problem (And solution) . . .
the problem was due to an external screen connected to the laptop, once i switched on the laptop settings to only display the external screen and not both, the problem went away.

And part of the problem from this end was OP not stating all hardware nor intended usage of it, from the outset!

Am glad OP figured it out, however!