Suggest a Distro for an old Dual-core Laptop?

[ayandon]

Hello,

Pls suggest a Linux Distro for Dual-core Laptop?

 

Configuration -

• AMD Dual Core Processor with in-build Graphics

• 16GB DDR3 RAM

• Samsung SSD 850 EVO 256GB

Full Configuration

 

Software Requirements -

• Fast and Responsive Desktop with decent look-and-feel

• Browser with good YouTube (only) performance.

• Arduino IDE for IOT coding

• any Edition for PHP and Python

• Office

• VLC for Movies

I am confused in BOTH Linux Distro and Linux Desktop Environment.

 

Pls suggest.
Thanks and regards.

[mMontana]

20 minutes ago, ayandon said:

AMD Dual Core Processor with in-build Graphics

Please, more details on that, if possible.

 

20 minutes ago, ayandon said:

• Fast and Responsive Desktop with decent look-and-feel

• Browser with good YouTube (only) performance.

Due to several factors, including your personal "taste" for decent look-and-feel, these results might be unachievable. 

[Eigenvektor]

2 minutes ago, mMontana said:

Please, more details on that, if possible.

Click on the full configuration link above. It's an AMD E1-6010 APU with AMD Radeon R2 Graphics

[ayandon]

1 minute ago, mMontana said:

Please, more details on that, if possible.

 

Due to several factors, including your personal "taste" for decent look-and-feel, these results might be unachievable. 

I have attached CPU-Z details.
Pls do not comment when you have no value to add.

[Electronics Wizardy]

I'm a fan of debian, so I'd just run debian with something like lxqt as the de. 

 

And since you have the hardware, why not try it? LInux is free.

[mMontana]

Just now, ayandon said:

Pls do not comment when you have no value to add

I'm really sorry, what I'm gonna write won't please you at all. And believe me, what I reported is simply... value.

 

Unfortunately AMD passed an awful moment, since the deployment on market of Bulldozer generation CPUs.

Started in 2011, ended in 2017 with Zen.

Bulldozer, Piledriver, Steamroller, Excavator, Bobcat, Jaguar, Puma (latter three are low powered version) they unfortunately all were... dogcrap.

 

You're personally concerned about your goal, so consider to verify this link.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/2308vs1433/AMD-E1-6010-APU-vs-Intel-i3-2310E

Your APU is wiped away from a two-year older APU from intel.

 

Adding insult to injury, a six year older CPU for desktop has roughly the same power.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/2308vs1127/AMD-E1-6010-APU-vs-Intel-Pentium-D-830

Now.

 

Accepting lots of compromise, you can install a lightweigth Linux distro. However, your declared goals might not be achievable due to total lack of computational power of your laptop.

 

Again, I'm sorry, it was value, even one you did not like.  

 

 

[manikyath]

my usual goto is just xubuntu.

 

i've had xubuntu on an E-450 (which is about 20% slower) and it was perfectly happy, but you'll just have to accept that youtube is gonna be a struggle for this level of machine no matter what operating system you put in the middle of that.

 

case in point, before mentioned E-450 was just happy running windows 11 too, given it was stripped of some non-essential background stuff. (and funnily enough, it liked win11 better than win10 and win7...)

[_Omega_]

Or maybe try POP OS its quit a user friendly Linux distro in my opinion (even my parents can do simple tasks with it, without calling me every day :D)

[BankHealthy]

 I use a Core2Duo machine with 6GB DDR3 on it, and I have MXLinux with Fluxbox running on it. Runs well.

 

In case you might get confused, MxLinux is the distro and Fluxbox is the Desktop environment. You could also use the XFCE desktop environment since that's also quite light.

[E-waste]

On 8/24/2023 at 5:56 PM, BankHealthy said:

You could also use the XFCE desktop environment since that's also quite light.

Running un a VM with only 864 MB of ram is a good performance test.  Even Ubuntu 16.04 with Unity runs well with 640 MB of memory.  XFCE setup by MX Linux is crazy heavy, where as 256 MB of memory is usually plenty for xfce.

[BankHealthy]

4 hours ago, E-waste said:

Running un a VM with only 864 MB of ram is a good performance test.  Even Ubuntu 16.04 with Unity runs well with 640 MB of memory.  XFCE setup by MX Linux is crazy heavy, where as 256 MB of memory is usually plenty for xfce.

In that case, using Fluxbox would be lighter. Using only 400mb. But then again, OP mentioned the machine has 16GB of RAM. So a couple o' hundred megs isn't really gonna hurt much.