What OS should I install onto my "brilliant" laptop?

[grimreeper132]

the laptop specs are
Intel Atom N270

2GB of RAM
160 GB HDD

 

I would just be using this laptop to browse the internet, as it's too OP to do anything else , what OS should I get, it would need to be 32 bit and be free, which why I am going for Linux. Any suggestions???

[The_Denks]

6 minutes ago, grimreeper132 said:

the laptop specs are
Intel Atom N270

2GB of RAM
160 GB HDD

 

I would just be using this laptop to browse the internet, as it's too OP to do anything else , what OS should I get, it would need to be 32 bit and be free, which why I am going for Linux. Any suggestions???

Windows 7. 32 BIT ONLY

[grimreeper132]

14 minutes ago, UberGamerKing said:

Windows 7. 32 BIT ONLY

The only problem is that costs money, and yea, it's 32 bit, I know, it's op as fuck

[DarkEnergy]

Ubuntu or Mint because they have the most support, anything else will just give you a headache. 

[grimreeper132]

ubuntu annoys me so it would be mint

[Mikensan]

Seems like a candidate for ChromeOS

[steezemageeze]

Go for Lubuntu or Xubuntu. Both run really well on low-spec machines

[Dat Guy]

OpenBSD runs great on machines like this.

[/dev/God/Haruhi]

Go with Lubuntu or Xubuntu, both are great for that purpose. Or if you want something with more bling for an older machine you have LXLE, based on Lubuntu with more attention to have a cohesive and great design. What I've found to work for me the best is to install things by hand and use something lightweight like LXDE or LXQT, so you have only what you need, but then I'm a crazy person that uses Arch Linux.

[Sintezza]

 

- Ubuntu Mate

- Linux Mint XFCE

- Lubuntu

- Linux Lite

- puppy linux

- SliTaz

 

etc etc

 

There are gazillion options realy.

[Ronald Browen]

Console linux, comes with games on it already. and it is light and fast. I used to use it on an old laptop that I had. Also linux mint 17.2 is much heavier but it works good to.

[Ronald Browen]

1 hour ago, Sintezza said:

 

- Ubuntu Mate

- Linux Mint XFCE

- Lubuntu

- Linux Lite

- puppy linux

- SliTaz

 

etc etc

 

There are gazillion options realy.

Distrowatch is also a good place to look. it helps you out a LOT.

[Azgoth 2]

On a single-core, 1.6GhZ processor, you're going to have to reach for some of the really lightweight distros.  Lubuntu might work--it struggles on single-core machines in my experience (granted, I was using quite old single-cores)--but if it runs well it would have a very good mix of usability and being lightweight.  You might also look into an Ubuntu minimal installation or a Debian net installation if you've got some Linux experience under your belt already (both are very similar, but the Ubuntu one lets you pick from pre-assembled software collections like "Lubuntu Minimal", where Debian makes you pick all of your packages by hand).

 

Arch would also be a possible candidate if you don't mind the much more involved and difficult installation process (it's very well-documented on the Arch wiki, but can still be a bit confusing the first time through).  It's designed from the ground up to be a minimalist system that installs very little to your machine, but the tradeoff is that you, the user, are expected to do a lot more work to run and maintain the system.

 

I've personally installed SliTaz on machines with slightly worse specs than your machine, and it runs beautifully.  It's an extremely minimal distro that will load the OS into memory, so it's super responsive, and it only takes up about 200MB of RAM.  It's its own distro, not based on something like Debian, so it has some quirks, but once you get used to it it's really quite a neat one.  It's not the most user-friendly, but I can state with great confidence that it will work with those specs very well.  It comes with Midori as the default browser, but I think you can install Firefox on it without too much trouble (could be wrong, been a while since I booted up a SliTaz install).

 

Puppy Linux would be the other one to check.  It's another one of the ultra lightweight distros, like SliTaz, but is more user-friendly and slightly less lightweight (but the difference is usually negligible, I think).  This might be the best one to look into first, given that SliTaz has some quirks that make it a little odd at times.

[grimreeper132]

On ‎09‎/‎10‎/‎2016 at 8:08 PM, Azgoth 2 said:

I've personally installed SliTaz on machines with slightly worse specs than your machine, and it runs beautifully.  It's an extremely minimal distro that will load the OS into memory, so it's super responsive, and it only takes up about 200MB of RAM.  It's its own distro, not based on something like Debian, so it has some quirks, but once you get used to it it's really quite a neat one.  It's not the most user-friendly, but I can state with great confidence that it will work with those specs very well.  It comes with Midori as the default browser, but I think you can install Firefox on it without too much trouble (could be wrong, been a while since I booted up a SliTaz install).

I am currently using Lubuntu, it's well, uuum, unbelievably  slow, excluding someday's when it's just really slow and can only load one or two webpages at a time, which take ages to load otherwise it becomes unusably slow, and/or crashes to desktop, so yea, I think I'll take your advice and use SliTaz, luckily this isn't my main laptop which is rather good, anything that's resource intensive I do's on the done on the Proper Computer (the only Desktop computer I own that's not terrible or from around 2007) not brilliant. So this laptops just for traveling as it's light enough to do that, so I can still browse the web when I'm away from home, so yea, I'll try SliTiz if it's not going to be as resource intensive.

[ANONYMOUS_POTATO]

I use a laptop with worse specs (atom n455 and 1gb ram) and i run xubuntu runs the internet browser fine and i also use cub linux on the same computer \

 

[xc3ll]

I would go with Xubuntu. Tried it a few month ago and was surprised how fast it felt on a low spec machine.

Lubuntu is a good choice as well, but I prefer the visual style of Xubuntu. Elementary OS had too much bugs when I tried it, but maybe they are fixed by now. But it still wouldn't be on my list for a machine like yours.