Which distro for old laptop?

[Arika]

So i know next to nothing about Linux hence why I'm posting here since i have no idea where to start.

 

I was cleaning out a few cupboards over the weekend and found my old Toshiba M780 tablet PC. i loved this thing when i got it, however it's a bit too old now and can't really run W10 these days (it came with W7 but it was my test machine before i moved my desktop over to W10). I'm wanting to give it a new lease on life as just a light usage machine, general internet browsing, media consumption etc. I don't need to use it as a server, it's more going to be a client to the rest of my network.

 

From memory it has 

i3 M 330

3 GB Ram

some shitty HDD which i may end up replacing with an SSD

 

which Linux distro would you recommend for such old hardware and for someone who has basically no experience with Linux

 

 

[Crunchy Dragon]

Linux Mint or Lubuntu might be a good option.

 

Maybe something even more light, since it only has 3Gb of RAM...

[ARikozuM]

I would start with Mint + Cinnamon or Puppy. 

[Ashleyyyy]

2 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Maybe something even more light, since it only has 3Gb of RAM...

Lubuntu runs ok on just 2gb of ram.. remember lubuntu from a cold boot uses about 300mb.. 

[GDRRiley]

mint 

[LtStaffel]

While Mint with the whole Cinnamon layout is probably the easiest, Lubuntu is made to be lightweight so I'd aim for it first.

[Julian5]

Xubuntu

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, firelighter487 said:

Lubuntu runs ok on just 2gb of ram.. remember lubuntu from a cold boot uses about 300mb.. 

Never personally used either one, so I was kind of guessing. I know Lubuntu was lightweight, I just didn't know by how much.

[Ashleyyyy]

3 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Never personally used either one, so I was kind of guessing. I know Lubuntu was lightweight, I just didn't know by how much.

yeah Lubuntu is crazy light. i've ran it on a netbook before and it was fine as long as you adjusted your expectations a little bit.. i mean that laptop was about half the speed of a decent pentium 4 cpu.. 

[Julian5]

I dont personally know much about Lubuntu but I have used Xubuntu on laptops with 1gb of ram no problem, Honestly whatever the OP prefers since they seem to be similar OS's

[Arika]

10 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

I would start with Mint + Cinnamon or Puppy. 

8 minutes ago, LtStaffel said:

While Mint with the whole Cinnamon layout is probably the easiest, Lubuntu is made to be lightweight so I'd aim for it first.

 

wait...what? Mint WITH Cinnamon? there's subdistro's within the existing distros? goddamn. im guessing it's just a direct download from here

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3457

instead of having to download them seperately and somehow merge them?

 

I might start with Mint and depending on how well it runs ill either keep it, or drop back to Lubuntu if it struggles

[ARikozuM]

3 minutes ago, Sierra Fox said:

 

wait...what? Mint WITH Cinnamon? there's subdistro's within the existing distros? goddamn. im guessing it's just a direct download from here

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3457

instead of having to download them seperately and somehow merge them?

https://linuxmint.com/download.php

 

Here's the page. 

 

Spoiler

I hope no one clicks on the picture thinking it's an actual download link. 

 

[ARikozuM]

And yes, it's LINUX-CEPTION! 

 

 

[Sauron]

28 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Linux Mint or Lubuntu might be a good option.

 

Maybe something even more light, since it only has 3Gb of RAM...

There isn't much that is lighter than lubuntu unless you go for a pure window manager, either way 3gb are plenty for it.

[BigGreenThing]

3 minutes ago, Sierra Fox said:

wait...what? Mint WITH Cinnamon? there's subdistro's within the existing distros?

 

Mint is the distro, Cinnamon is the desktop environment. Cinnamon is more windows-like than some of the others; it's easy to get used to if you're already comfortable with windows. Others options include Mate, Xfce, KDE etc.

 

Feel free to experiment. Linux is free after all. If an installation goes wrong or you just don't like the distro, you haven't lost any money if you decide to start again and try something else. As long as you have a backup of anything you want to keep before you start you're good to go.

[Radium_Angel]

45 minutes ago, Sierra Fox said:

So i know next to nothing about Linux hence why I'm posting here since i have no idea where to start.

 

I was cleaning out a few cupboards over the weekend and found my old Toshiba M780 tablet PC. i loved this thing when i got it, however it's a bit too old now and can't really run W10 these days (it came with W7 but it was my test machine before i moved my desktop over to W10). I'm wanting to give it a new lease on life as just a light usage machine, general internet browsing, media consumption etc. I don't need to use it as a server, it's more going to be a client to the rest of my network.

 

From memory it has 

i3 M 330

3 GB Ram

some shitty HDD which i may end up replacing with an SSD

 

which Linux distro would you recommend for such old hardware and for someone who has basically no experience with Linux

 

 

I have direct experience with this.

Bear this in mind: A lot of current distros really struggle with on-screen keyboards. Which is a real bitch when you turn on the tablet, try to run it in pure slate mode, and find the on-screen keyboard will not auto-load, so you can't log in to the machine. So you have to flip it back around, use the real keyboard to log in, then flip it back around into slate mode to use it.

 

There is a lot I love about linux, but there is a lot of work left to do on the small details like this.

I solved the issue with peppermint linux, but it wasn't my 1st choice of distros to run.

Of course you can have the system auto login for you, but it kinda bypasses part of the security that is linux.

 

Just something to be aware of

[Arika]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

I have direct experience with this.

Bear this in mind: A lot of current distros really struggle with on-screen keyboards. Which is a real bitch when you turn on the tablet, try to run it in pure slate mode, and find the on-screen keyboard will not auto-load, so you can't log in to the machine. So you have to flip it back around, use the real keyboard to log in, then flip it back around into slate mode to use it.

 

oh, i wont use the "tablet" part of it, just as a laptop. It's a tablet in the way of pen input only, not touch

[Radium_Angel]

3 minutes ago, Sierra Fox said:

 

oh, i wont use the "tablet" part of it, just as a laptop. It's a tablet in the way of pen input only, not touch

Then feel free to ignore everything I said.

[LtStaffel]

2 hours ago, Sierra Fox said:

 

wait...what? Mint WITH Cinnamon? there's subdistro's within the existing distros? goddamn. im guessing it's just a direct download from here

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3457

instead of having to download them seperately and somehow merge them?

 

I might start with Mint and depending on how well it runs ill either keep it, or drop back to Lubuntu if it struggles

did I make a mistake? I thought cinnamon was a desktop environment that came by default on mint

Edit: No, I was right. Cinnamon is just a desktop environment that runs on Mint by default

 

See here:

Spoiler

 

[Arika]

5 minutes ago, LtStaffel said:

did I make a mistake? I thought cinnamon was a desktop environment that came by default on mint

Edit: No, I was right. Cinnamon is just a desktop environment that runs on Mint by default

yeah, it seems to just be a different version of mint, which i wasn't expecting, you can blame me for that haha.

[kokakolia]

1 hour ago, BigGreenThing said:

 

Mint is the distro, Cinnamon is the desktop environment. Cinnamon is more windows-like than some of the others; it's easy to get used to if you're already comfortable with windows. Others options include Mate, Xfce, KDE etc.

 

Feel free to experiment. Linux is free after all. If an installation goes wrong or you just don't like the distro, you haven't lost any money if you decide to start again and try something else. As long as you have a backup of anything you want to keep before you start you're good to go.

I am a new Linux user. I have tried many distros with different desktop environments. It’s frustrating! Really. There are a lot of hyped up distros that just fall short on performance and polish (by that I mean aesthetics and bugs). Ubuntu Mate is just that. So far, Linux Mint Cinnamon 9.0 BETA is the only thing that cuts it. Although Ubuntu 18.04 isn’t so bad. I haven’t tried Manjaro or KDE Neon yet but I am just tired of reinstalling my OS. I just need something to run Firefox for crying out loud! 

 

And yet...Linux Mint Cinnamon just looks bad aesthetically. I don’t like the grey on grey theme with skinny task bars, small text and skinny window controls. It just makes using the thing harder than it needs to be. A more high contrast and “flat” aesthetic would go a long way.

 

I personally don’t like XFCE because it’s a text overload. The launch menu could be beautifully simple, but the folks making XFCE think otherwise: “MOAR TEXT!” they scream. Every single app icon is mirrored with a block of text vaguely describing something. It’s insulting! Everyone knows what the apps do if they’ve used them once or twice. And it drives me nuts because I am reading this useless text every time I use the launcher. Further, Mint XFCE used 900mb of RAM with no apps open (it’s the same story with all distros). And it seemed sluggish compared to Linux Mint Cinnamon (9.0 because 9.0 > 8.3), or even Windows 7. The other annoying thing about XFCE are the numerous vague customization apps that don’t seem to do anything. The panel app is the most infuriating because it just lacks a lot of functionality and you’re left with a blank panel and you can’t even drag your favourite apps onto it. 

 

I really just HATE XFCE for being a weird clunky mess. It’s built by Linux power users who use the terminal 90% of the time no doubt. 

 

 

[Linus_torvalds]

On 6/18/2018 at 4:08 AM, Sauron said:

There isn't much that is lighter than lubuntu unless you go for a pure window manager, either way 3gb are plenty for it.

Actualy i have tried many linux distros including lubuntu on low end hardware and lubuntu still used more resources then for example arch with xfce. I know arch is hard to install but you can install Manjaro xfce and i think it will be close to arch + xfce. It will consume ~400 MB RAM, so 3 GB is plenty for that setup.

 

I myself use arch + i3-gaps and it's using 190 MB RAM on fresh start

[Sauron]

On 6/21/2018 at 11:08 AM, mate_mate91 said:

Actualy i have tried many linux distros including lubuntu on low end hardware and lubuntu still used more resources then for example arch with xfce. I know arch is hard to install but you can install Manjaro xfce and i think it will be close to arch + xfce. It will consume ~400 MB RAM, so 3 GB is plenty for that setup.

 

I myself use arch + i3-gaps and it's using 190 MB RAM on fresh start

Arch with XFCE is only lighter if you ignore the many applets and background services you often need to actually use it. Of course you can custom tailor your Arch system depending on what the system will be used for, but if it's supposed to be used as a normal desktop the memory usage goes up pretty quickly.

 

I use i3-gaps too on my laptop, but with nm, mpd, telegram and a couple other services I need it easily eats about 650MB.

[noonlord]

You can also try Solus. Solus is also lightweight, looks good and you can actually use it without even opening the terminal. Spotify etc. they are all in their software center.