Old PC, What Operating System?

[jappypack]

Alright so there's this abandoned computer my family has, I'm going to go get it in a day or two (since fixing it up sounds a tad easier than dealing with my atrocious laptop). This was from like, almost a decade ago. I barely remember it, it ran Windows XP and it was so slow it used to freeze on that. It probably ran low end specs like an AMD Sempron. It had Nvidia graphics, although I don't know what card (I only remember seeing the stickers), but it was probably also low end. As for RAM, HDD, etc, I don't know. I hope, although not likely, that it was at least 1GB. If it is, then I wonder if I can play League of Legends...

Otherwise, I do want to revive it into a Linux machine. But what distro? What desktop environment? I want to use KDE, but I'm assuming that Ubuntu MATE is the good option? I've heard Arch Linux is pretty lightweight so would I be able to go that route?

[Dr0pp3r]

You might have to get a better graphics card plus more ram to play league of legends

[Stevoisboss]

2 minutes ago, jappypack said:

Alright so there's this abandoned computer my family has, I'm going to go get it in a day or two (since fixing it up sounds a tad easier than dealing with my atrocious laptop). This was from like, almost a decade ago. I barely remember it, it ran Windows XP and it was so slow it used to freeze on that. It probably ran low end specs like an AMD Sempron. It had Nvidia graphics, although I don't know what card (I only remember seeing the stickers), but it was probably also low end. As for RAM, HDD, etc, I don't know. I hope, although not likely, that it was at least 1GB. If it is, then I wonder if I can play League of Legends...

Otherwise, I do want to revive it into a Linux machine. But what distro? What desktop environment? I want to use KDE, but I'm assuming that Ubuntu MATE is the good option? I've heard Arch Linux is pretty lightweight so would I be able to go that route?

All linux distros should probably be light enough for it as long as it has like 2 gigs of ram. If you want something really light maybe try lubuntu. 

[jappypack]

Just now, Stevoisboss said:

All linux distros should probably be light enough for it as long as it has like 2 gigs of ram. If you want something really light maybe try lubuntu. 

What about 512mb?

[Stevoisboss]

Just now, jappypack said:

What about 512mb?

lol yea you might wanna try lubuntu then. Gaming isn't gonna work most likely

[Stevoisboss]

Also keep in mind that computer might be too old to boot off usb. You might have to do the installation on another computer and move that harddrive to the old one. Or you can burn a disk or something and boot off that. 

[JenjerBread]

you could also use grub ? and im guessing that its gonna be ddr2 ram, capacity can be cheap but i doubt most capacities are geniune online, just google the motherboard specs and cpu specs to see if you can get a better cpu or more ram support, then you could try windows 7 or 10 with enough ram

[noahdvs]

If you want a lightweight Desktop Environment, use XFCE (light), LXDE (extra light) or LXQt (pretty like KDE and almost as light as LXDE, but not v1.0 yet). MATE isn't as light as XFCE/LXDE/LXQt, but it's lighter than KDE Plasma 5, Gnome 3 or Unity 7, which are all about the same in terms of RAM usage. I recommend at least 4GB of RAM for KDE/Gnome/Unity.

[Wild Penquin]

As already stated, it's more of a question about the DE than the distribution.

 

That being said, it makes more sense to install a distribution (or a variant of one) that already comes with a lightweight desktop environment. That way you won't fill the HD with unecessary junk, the download is smaller etc... Also, some distributions might have services already enabled that eat up RAM. It is usually not much, but given the PC in question is ... challenged on the RAM side, you might want to choose a lightweight distribution in this regard, since every megabyte freed might count. That means: Arch Linux, Manjaro (some variant with a lightweight DE), but those might not be the easiest distributions to handle.

 

I think some of the DEs have been summarized already. I can't comment on those too much, since I don't use lightweight DEs currently -  but Google will find loads of more. At some point walking on the lightweight DE route, you will find you are missing some usability features.

 

Even for a lightweight distribution, I'd recommend at least 2GB of RAM, however. Even Firefox can hog hundreds of megabytes of RAM just by itself (or Chrome, although it is not that bad). For KDE, Gnome or any "modern" desktop environment at least 4GB. You might get away with 1GB with a lightweight DE, but do make a swap partition / file. 500MB is waaay too little for any sensible work. With a very minimalist DE and opening just 1-2 applications at a time (or some kind of X.org environment meant to run just a specific task), you might get by with that little (or even less).

 

Hope this helps!

 

p.s. I don't play League of Legends, but I've understod it is quite a modern game. I've noticed as a general rule of thumb, that since average CPU speed and RAM amounts have risen, so has the bloat in even the simplest software. Even simple (indie) games (that could have made to run on a Pentium 100MHz with 16MB of RAM) - if/when made today, consume 256-512MB of RAM, and put a Core2Duo to it's knees.

[domandric034]

Windows ThinPC is best solution

[WindirBear]

Vista