Best Lite OS for Old (2011) Netbook

[Bouncewasp]

Hi All,

 

Just found my old netbook gathering dust and thought I'd try and bring it back to life as a little project

 

I'm thinking of installing linux, but I'm a total noob and have never used a Linux OS. Can anyone recommend a good version of Linux (and one that's easy to use as a beginner!), I've googled around a bit but there appear to be 100's of different versions!?

 

Netbook specs are:

Samsung mainboard

Intel Atom N2600 processor (1.6ghz)

2GB DDR3 RAM (I upgarded from the 1GB it came with shortly after buying it all those years ago)

I've just stuck a 240gb SSD in there I had lying about to replace to old mechanical HDD.

 

Not sure what I'll actually use the netbook for, maybe just light browsing or as a media player for plugging in external speakers to?

 

TIA!

 

[Vishera]

Manjaro Linux XFCE + installing the Snap store and you are golden.

The Snap store is like Apple's App Store and the Microsoft Store.

You can easily install it in the terminal with the following command:

Quote

sudo snap install snap-store

 

[RollyShed]

We  have an Acer 350 with an Atom N450 running Linux Mint with 32 bit MATE and has been updated to 2GB of RAM. It will run Linux Mint with Cinnamon, 64 bit as I have tried it.

 

You have done the main thing, installed an SSD. It still won't be the fastest thing around and will probably take 30 to 40 seconds to boot from totally OFF.

Your one would appear to have been released in 2011 so is only just over 10 years old.

 

I commonly use an ASUS TP200S, Linux Mint with Cinnamon desktop, when travelling and it only has 2GB of RAM.

 

For light browsing and playing music there should be no problems. I use Audacious for sound as it is possible to drag & drop a large number of music files into it easily and leave it to play them sequentially.

 

As for easy to use, my partner running Windows for years had her machine wiped by Microsoft (October 2018) and next day sat down at a Linux machine with all her files and folders which had been backed up on a Linux disk. After dragging the icons to where wanted on the desktop (messy desktop) she carried on as if nothing had changed except the computer was now reliable, month after month, year after year, unlike Windows.

[Bouncewasp]

Thanks all, I ended up installing Lubuntu in the end, seems to work fine, now I just need to find a use case for the old machine but at least its alive!