Linux distro for old laptop

[porina]

Looking for distro suggestions as I'm totally out of date. I randomly try them every few years and I just randomly decided that time is now.

 

I decided to use an old but not too old laptop that will be redundant once Win10 goes EOL. Main use will be relearning Linux in general as I largely forgot what I knew. Specifically I want to have a go at compiling and running HPL (a version of Linpack). If there is a choice between stable and leading edge branches, I'd go more towards leading edge.

 

Laptop specs:

CPU: i5 460M - 2 core 4 threads, 2.53 base, 2.80 turbo GHz

Ram: 8GB DDR3 1333

GPU: Mobility Radeon HD 5000 series - Windows driver doesn't report the specific model. 1GB VRAM.

SSD: I have spare SATA SSDs I can swap in for a fresh install.

 

One request: it would be nice if the mouse pointer can be set to purely linear motion, or no acceleration in Windows speak. Windows is the only OS I've ever used that does this well. With previous attempts at Linux I can reduce acceleration effect but not eliminate it.

 

Bonus points if I can try gaming on it somehow. It is very old GPU so modern games are out, but older ones still run in Windows.

[Eigenvektor]

3 minutes ago, porina said:

If there is a choice between stable and leading edge branches, I'd go more towards leading edge.

I'd give Manjaro with Xfce a try.

 

5 minutes ago, porina said:

One request: it would be nice if the mouse pointer can be set to purely linear motion, or no acceleration in Windows speak.

This would be what you're looking for, right? This is in Manjaro + Gnome though, not sure if it's also available in Xfce.

Spoiler

 

[porina]

2 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

I'd give Manjaro with Xfce a try.

Thanks, I'll look it up.

 

2 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

This would be what you're looking for, right? This is in Manjaro + Gnome though, not sure if it's also available in Xfce.

Possibly. Acceleration might be a Windows specific term and it may not be used consistently elsewhere. Should I look at Gnome instead?

[RONOTHAN##]

4 minutes ago, porina said:

With previous attempts at Linux I can reduce acceleration effect but not eliminate it.

All the Linux distros I've used have had ways to disable it, though admittedly they did all involve going into the CLI to disable it completely. 

 

Generally for older laptops my go-to recommendation is something like Lubuntu since it's lightweight, pretty stable, and able to do most things you'd want. If you want more cutting edge though, there's a few:

• OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
  • Very versatile and probably the most stable rolling release distro out there. Main issue with it though is that the default DE of KDE is fairly resource intensive, so not necessarily the best pick for an older laptop. 
• EndeavorOS
  • Arch-based, so all the pros and cons of that, but with a good installer and pretty light weight. 
• Main-line Arch
  • The lightest, but also a pain to install and setup fully. If your goal is to relearn Linux though, getting an Arch install fully setup is IMO the quickest way to do that

[Eigenvektor]

4 minutes ago, porina said:

Possibly. Acceleration might be a Windows specific term and it may not be used consistently elsewhere. Should I look at Gnome instead?

Not sure how well Gnome performs on older hardware, but supposedly it's not that resource heavy. You should be able to try it out with a live-USB before making a choice.

 

I've disable acceleration as a test and it seems to do what it's supposed to (not that sure, since I generally use a Wacom, but that's semi-broken in Gnome 45.1 for now, so mouse it is…)

[porina]

6 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

• OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

I think SUSE was one of the first distros I tried. Maybe Slackware was earlier.

 

6 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

• Main-line Arch
  • The lightest, but also a pain to install and setup fully. If your goal is to relearn Linux though, getting an Arch install fully setup is IMO the quickest way to do that

I vaguely recall in the old days having to do things like command line partition the disk before even starting the install. How bad can it be?  

 

2 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Not sure how well Gnome performs on older hardware, but supposedly it's not that resource heavy. You should be able to try it out with a live-USB before making a choice.

Good point. I'll have to pop out for an extra USB stick tomorrow to get this rolling. Not sure any I have spare right now have enough capacity.

[Eigenvektor]

1 minute ago, porina said:

I vaguely recall in the old days having to do things like command line partition the disk before even starting the install. How bad can it be?

Arch: Hold my beer https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/installation_guide

 

EndeavourOS is very close to Arch, but has a graphical installer. Manjaro is somewhat similar (also Arch based), but probably a bit more polished and tends to hold updates back a tiny bit more for them to stabilize.

[RONOTHAN##]

13 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Not sure how well Gnome performs on older hardware, but supposedly it's not that resource heavy.

Pretty sure that's not true, everything I've heard and seen has Gnome as one of the heaviest DEs you can find, only thing worse is heavily customized KDE. I still do use it on laptops since IMO the virtual desktops implementation is the best by far, though it's far from my first choice for laptops this old. 

 

5 minutes ago, porina said:

I vaguely recall in the old days having to do things like command line partition the disk before even starting the install. How bad can it be?  

 

Yeah, it's not that bad, but I wouldn't want to do it everyday. 

 

2 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

EndeavourOS is very close to Arch, but has a graphical installer. Manjaro is somewhat similar (also Arch based), but probably a bit more polished and tends to hold updates back a tiny bit more for them to stabilize.

Ironically my luck with EndeavorOS is much better than Manjaro, where every Manjaro install I've had broke within a week while the EandeavorOS installs lasted until I nuked the drive. 

[Eigenvektor]

8 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Ironically my luck with EndeavorOS is much better than Manjaro, where every Manjaro install I've had broke within a week while the EandeavorOS installs lasted until I nuked the drive. 

Mine is close to 2.5 years old at this point (stat / | awk '/Birth: /{print $2}')

 

The primary reason I went with Manjaro over EndeavourOS is that it comes with Dash to Dock out of the box. On my previous install (Antergos) that plugin broke with every Gnome update until the developer got around to fixing it weeks later. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I can't stand Gnome without it

 

8 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Pretty sure that's not true, everything I've heard and seen has Gnome as one of the heaviest DEs you can find, only thing worse is heavily customized KDE. I still do use it on laptops since IMO the virtual desktops implementation is the best by far, though it's far from my first choice for laptops this old.

I have an old laptop (HP EliteBook 8740w) with an i5 M560, 8 GB DDR 1333 MHz and a FirePro M7820 (roughly HD 5870 equivalent), so fairly close to porina's system. Think it's time to try it out myself. I just remember that getting it to boot Linux from USB took some fiddling last time I tried.

[RONOTHAN##]

17 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

The primary reason I went with Manjaro over EndeavourOS is that it comes with Dash to Dock out of the box. On my previous install (Antergos) that plugin broke with every Gnome update until the developer got around to fixing it weeks later. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I can't stand Gnome without it

I don't know why my luck with Manjaro is so bad though, I've had multiple installs that didn't survive a reboot with the rest not lasting longer than a month. After about the 6th or 7th OS death within 6 months, I swore off using it and just using Fedora when I want a desktop OS. Endeavor has worked well enough though when I've needed Arch based systems, and I've yet to run into anything significantly wrong with it. Those issues were over a year ago though, it might be worth giving it another shot.

 

I'm the same way about dash to dock though, it's the first thing I get setup when I get Fedora installed. Since Fedora is a static release model I don't have the same issues where the plugins break every other week, just whenever I do the version upgrades, and usually dash to dock is fixed by the time I get around to the version upgrades. 

[porina]

I decided to go with Manjaro to start with. Found a USB-M.2 enclosure and an old SATA M.2 drive as my "USB" stick. Will give it a go once I've had a chance to get a coffee and caught up on other daily stuff.

 

I almost started to hate Manjaro before I started. Their website managed to make an ad more annoying than it needs to be, in that it pops up, stays for a few seconds, then disappears again, every time you change page. My adblocker didn't block it by default and because it didn't stick around, I couldn't manually select it. I was not going to be defeated, and had to revert to the access log to see which URL was serving the ad and block it that way. The ad content itself weren't bad, had it been a static banner ad I would have ignored it.

[porina]

Ok, my new user experience with Manjaro Gnome is not the best so far.

 

Even before I could run it, their recommended USB stick writer for Windows fails for reasons unknown. I only got a good write when I used the one from memtest86.

I don't recall if it was on boot or the installer, but I went with open source drivers over proprietary. I figure my hardware, especially the GPU, was old enough it should be well supported by now.

Couldn't be bothered to play with the USB boot, so did an install straight away. The only time I deviated from from defaults was to select British English and also allow it to swap to file, since I'm not sure how far 8GB of ram will get me. Given it is a SSD I don't think a dedicated partition like the old days is needed is it? It warned me I didn't have an internet connection at the time. I'll worry about that later.

Once booted to the install I poked around and found and added wifi. Found the update section and let it run. Restarted.

I now have a red dot "1" on the software utility. Opening it doesn't reveal anything I need to do. I obsessively want to clear red dot notifications. 

Ok, let's try using some apps. Firefox started ok. It reminded me why I ditched Firefox on the desktop as their UI kinda sucks. Customising it will be a battle for later.

I tried hitting what I guessed was equivalent to the Windows start menu. Nothing. After some searching I found the below which is exactly the problem I had. Changing that setting made it work. This really isn't giving me confidence. Why do I need to do this on a fresh install?

https://forum.manjaro.org/t/dash-to-dock-show-apps-icon-not-working-when-clicked/151067

 

On the positive side, I turned off mouse acceleration and it feels good in initial use. Presuming this is a gnome feature so if I decide to nuke Manjaro I can just find another distro using gnome and still be fine?

 

I'll play about with it a bit more and see where I get with it.

[Eigenvektor]

9 hours ago, porina said:

Given it is a SSD I don't think a dedicated partition like the old days is needed is it?

The partition has a performance advantage, while the file is more flexible. You can resize and move it as needed. I think most distros recommend a file these days, since the performance difference for desktop is negligible.

 

9 hours ago, porina said:

Presuming this is a gnome feature so if I decide to nuke Manjaro I can just find another distro using gnome and still be fine?

Yep, other than dash-to-dock being a built-in plugin there should be nothing Manjaro specific about it

 

9 hours ago, porina said:

I tried hitting what I guessed was equivalent to the Windows start menu. Nothing. After some searching I found the below which is exactly the problem I had.

It's a bug. Ran into this myself when I recently updated to Gnome 45.1. Gnome updates can often break things initially, so it's usually best to wait at least until the first point release. As it stands I still can't use my Wacom, since the mouse point will "stick" to things, but apparently a bugfix is on the way (https://forum.manjaro.org/t/wacom-tablet-frequently-crashes-gnome-desktop/151983).