For a old laptop with Intel atom processor and I think 2gb ram.

  • throwawayish@lemmy.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    As other have already alluded to, any distro with a lightweight desktop environment should work on that laptop. However, we don't know if it would work out for you; simply for the fact that you haven't given any other information.

  • banazir@lemmy.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    You can do a really slim install of Debian that should work. For DE I recommend LXQT.

    If you're feeling adventurous, Alpine might be slightly lighter. It's a good distro.

    Those specs are not going to get you a terribly fast experience, but my laptop runs Debian ok and it's in the same ballpark.

  • Maxxy@lemmy.zip
    ·
    1 year ago

    I've been using Peppermint on my garbage laptop and it made it usable again.

  • crunchpaste@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    ·
    1 year ago

    What would you use this laptop for?

    I've dealt with similar hardware, using Qtile over a Manjaro base, but had to mostly use CLI/TUI apps. Anything related to web browsing is a pain.

    • heehaw@lemmy.ml
      hexagon
      ·
      1 year ago

      Not sure. But I have other primary laptop. And this laptop is just sitting so I wanted try something with it.

      • crunchpaste@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        If you just want to play around with it, I highly recommend some arch based distro (because you can find plenty of obscure TUI apps in the AUR) with a window manager (be it tiling like Qtile or stacking like Openbox).

        If you want something preconfigured, I've recently found instantOS, which seems to work fine for that usecase.

        I use this small laptop mostly for ebooks (using the excellent epy) and music, using one ot the TUI YouTube frontends.

        • heehaw@lemmy.ml
          hexagon
          ·
          1 year ago

          Yes I can use it for reading. thank you for the suggestion. I will try instant os.

  • space@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    ·
    1 year ago

    It's not worth it. Ram is dirt cheap, you can get 8gb for like $30. For $150-$200, you can find an used Thinkpad that will perform 1000x better.

    I would only use such a machine for playing with old software like Windows 2000 or XP, old Linux distros.

  • makeasnek@lemmy.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    DietPi is always a good option. It's designed for raspberry pi, but you can absolutely run it on a laptop and install your desktop environment (XFCE etc)

  • HerbalGamer@lemm.ee
    ·
    1 year ago

    You know those Acer mini laptops from around 2010 back when tablets weren't really a thing?

    Linux Mint runs on those bad boys.

  • flashgnash@lemm.ee
    ·
    1 year ago

    I've heard Debian and Alpine are good lightweight distros

    I think most distros will run fine on most hardware though (please correct me if I'm wrong) it's the software you run on it (as in, going with a GNOME desktop environment is going to be much more demanding than xfce for example)