So i have a bunch of pc’s/laptops/computers and such that my family members refuse to depart with even though there really bad. so far they mangae to keep 4 bulky computers in total, we do have some new-ish ones but theses ones im talking about need some loving.1 computer is 32 bit and has 2gb of ram, the other 3 have 64-bit and range from 1gb of ram- to 2 and one of which has only 75 space hardrive.
are there any linux distros that might work becasue im a noob who uses windows so im very lost. any tips or suggestions or something would be great.
also if im posting in the wrong plac eplease let me know in the comments.
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Try mint with Xfce - on 64 bit machines and then go lighter.
alright and are you sure that is the best starter option? also what can i do on linux compared to windows?
best option
Ubuntu is popular and new-user friendly. And xfce is generally lighter on resources. It’s a good choice.
What can I do
Almost everything.
Some proprietary apps you’ve used from windows may not be available, but equivalent ones would be available on linux.
Stuff like browsing the web(provided that you don’t open too many tabs, because you have low ram) and watching movies n all is quite good.
What all things fo you intend to do on it? I think it’ll be easier to check that the things you want are there.- Gaming is less stable overall but it’s exponentially better now thanks to Valve and the Steam Deck driving support. Like seriously, from a cointoss whether it even launches a couple years ago to 74% Gold or Platinum on the top 1000 games on Steam.
- Programming is easier (you can ask your commandline to install all you need at once instead of having to painstakingly individually install and set up requirements or addons to programming languages), but you don’t have access to Visual Studio if you’re working on C# or C++.
- Web browsing is identical, watching movies too. I’ve never had a problem using LibreOffice and OnlyOffice as a replacement for Word and PowerPoint, but I don’t use many complicated features in Word or PowerPoint so your mileage may vary.
- Photoshop, Premiere, etc are a pain to get good replacements for, OBS for recording and DaVinci Resolve for editing is a really powerful pair though.
- I vouch for Mint with XFCE too. It was very fast on my laptop and some of the themes now are pretty. It barely uses any RAM. It has a Windows-style start menu and taskbar.
Just be warned that your family members will probably have (usually solvable) issues if they want to do anything beyond web browsing. It’s a different operating system after all and it works differently in a lot of ways. Definitely recommend looking up some videos about Mint, XFCE, transitioning from Windows to Linux.
I think Pop OS is a great place to start. I haven’t personally used it but Linux Mint is commonly recommended to people who have only used windows before, it tries to have a similar UI experience.
Linux can do most things windows can, except it’s free. The best thing about Linux is the depositories, unlike windows you rarely download apps from the Internet, instead you can download them from a repository. In Pop OS it’s called Pop shop, it’s different depending on which OS you are using.
It has everything you may want to use - LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird …
Some programs aren’t supported for Linux but you can find replacement. For me it has 100% of tools that I need.
When you go from windows to mint - they feel similar (UI), but some things are different (installing programs, settings…)
It is just solid out of the box experience. You don’t have to customise it to be usable, complete suite of programs and it is stable.
Some of really light distros for old PCs are missing lot of these things but you may need to explore those options if it doesn’t run well.
Think of it as Windows 7 in terms of functionality but with a Windows Vista/XP GUI.
That said, your CPU’s performance will increase noticebly on Linux.
There’s very little windows can do, which linux can’t also. The difference will be in how, and how easily.
Often the answer is just “install the same program, and just use it like normal”. Other times, you have to go out of your way to get something running using wine.
For this, bottles is a GUI manager that can make life a lot easier.
Something that uses XFCE is a really good starting point for weak hardware. And mint is a good option for someone new to linux. It is based on ubuntu, and there is plenty of info online on how do things on ubuntu.
It also has good default repos, meaning you’ll be able to find and install most software you might need, without having to start fiddling with custom software repos.
Mint is a great distro for people who want their PCs to “just work.” Very little to no tinkering past initial setup, it has a solid base and won’t need daily or even weekly updates, you should experience very little in the way of hardware issues – especially since you’re working with older hardware.
Mint is based on Ubuntu but has been largely “de-canonical-ified” which I feel is important, especially if you’re looking for performance. But that basis in Ubuntu means a wide, wide, wide array of software available to you will little to no fussing about.
XFCE is a perfect choice for older hardware (and older people, lol) because it’s simple, but familiar. It doesn’t try new things, it’s not fancy, it’s not innovative in the design space. It follows the design paradigm most folks are used to. Task bar, start button, desktop, done. That’s not to say it’s ugly or outdated, it can still be a gorgeous desktop environment. But it doesn’t overload you with bells and whistles no one needs and it sips resources compared to, say, Gnome or KDE.
Linux Mint with XFCE is also my vote.
This is good advice, and alpine/nix for 32 bit
I, personally, would suggest Debian 12 especially since they still supply 32 bit ISOs. (Also 64 bit, but that’s kind of a given at this point)
- Debian is rock stable due to testing like crazy
- Adding a lightweight desktop like XFCE would help with not overloading the PC
- If I remember correctly, updates for the next 5 years since it’s a long term support (LTS) release
- I am guessing you mean 75 GB which should still have, at minimum (absolute worst case everything went wrong kind of wrong), 60 GB left for programs and files
Since they provide both 64 and 32 bit ISOs and run the same thing, all support issues can be done exactly the same on all the computers since, I assume, there is no dedicated graphics card (Nvidia, AMD) in any of them.
Here’s a link to the downloads: https://www.debian.org/distrib/
Download from the “complete installation image” area on the left, second section down.
Edit: If you can use a DVD or USB then use the DVD link, but if they can’t then the CD image will also work.
Fully agree on Debian, as long as you’re up for a learning curve. In terms of performance it’s fine; I’ve run it on a machine with a 40MHz processor back in the day with no GUI and it worked fine. If your machine can do XFCE then so much the better than that. Just be aware that there’s a bit of learning curve - if you’re unfamiliar, just expect that there’ll be some adjustment period and learning / things not working right while you figure it out stage, and expect to read documentation and have technical challenges involved.
I would also recommend if you do go this route to do small images instead of complete images. “Complete” is for if you expect to have no internet (so have to download everything you might possibly need.) Small is fine in 99% of cases. Installing from the internet is exactly as easy as installing from disk, except that you don’t need to find the disk and you don’t need to download a big honkin’ disk image with 5% of packages you’ll use and 95% which you won’t ever touch. Debian is big.
thank you also your guesses are correct and thanks for correcting me here and there.
No problem, I’ve been using Linux for a long while and I fully want to help people get into it without it being some overwhelming change. 😊
One more thing:
Before going forward:
- if they use windows applications (TurboTax or some specifically windows game downloaded from steam or the like) make sure to download appropriate compatibility apps.
- proton for games, wine for apps
- make sure to back up any important files to a USB or some other media before starting so nothing important is lost in case of mistakes
Here’s starting commands to run after an install:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo shutdown now -r
sudo apt update
sudo apt install wine winetricks proton vlc
With that you should get a nice start (will edit if formatting is weird)
This answer is getting down voted, but Debian is the answer because it is user friendly and supports 32bit. If you need to seriously bring new life to these machines upgrade the RAM and buy SSDs. Using a lightweight desktop environment like MATE is a good option.
Don’t give users unfamiliar with Linux a window manager or Arch.
Puppy Linux runs on a potato of any architecture and is super user friendly (grandpa certified)! Only 300 MB or so. https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/
I know a lot of people recommended Mint, which I personally use on my very modern budget gaming pc, but you should really try Puppy Linux, it’s meant for the exact use case you’re describing.
I’ve used Debian on an old netbook with an Intel Atom and onyl 2GB RAM. The experience wasn’t so bad but web browsing was definitely a pain. Video calling and watching YouTube (Firefox) was very sluggish and annoying to deal with. It’s fine for working with documents and watching low resolution videos locally but that’s about it.
I’ve also tried antiX but a lot of the defaults were annoying. If you (or your family members) can deal with it, then it’s probably the best lightweight Linux distro out there.
are there any linux distros that might work becasue im a noob who uses windows so im very lost. any tips or suggestions or something would be great.
In this case, I recommend just leaving your family members to do their own thing. From my experience, it is very hard to manage other people’s Linux issues if you don’t have decent knowledge on it yourself. If they don’t want to upgrade, that’s their problem. Not yours.
Did you use a 64 bit version? Running at least a 32 bit browser makes using the internet viable with 2gb.
I don’t remember but I might have. I think the netbook’s processor itself performed poorly though. I managed to watch the entire Mandalorian on it with VLC back then but watching something on YouTube made me want to throw the poor thing across the room.
Browser choice is probably going to make just as much difference as distro choice. Modern browsers kinda need at least 1 GB to be usable, ideally more. Depends what you do with it of course.
Try Pale Moon, Falkon and Konqueror.
In my experience, palemoon struggles a lot with modern JavaScript-bloated sites and becomes much slower to use. My suggestion is to use 32bit firefox.
I’d suggest Linux mint Debian edition, at least for the 32bit machine. Many distros have stopped supporting 32bit lately.
It should be fairly user friendly.
alright
I’ve said my peace about distro and desktop environment in another comment, but to answer the piece about what you can do as compared to Windows, Linux can do the vast majority of all your daily tasks. There are a couple of big sticking points, generally.
Microsoft products, i.e. Microsoft Office. There are alternatives available in the Linux space that do a great job and are good enough for probably 95-98% of people, but there are cases where they don’t quuiiiite match up. Formatting PowerPoints, for example. You may save a *.pptx from LibreOffice and a colleague will open it in Microsoft PowerPoint and it doesn’t look the same at all.
The other major software suite that keeps people in Windows is Adobe. Photoshop? Lightroom? Premiere? Not available on Linux. Again, there are alternatives, but they’re never quite as good. I say this as a photographer that runs 100% Linux all the time, I miss my photo editing software! I used Capture One, but the same principle applies. There’s no Linux release, and you can’t get it running on Linux no matter how much you tinker.
The third biggest sticking point is gaming. You can game on Linux. It’s better now than ever. I run AAA brand new releases on my PC, and again I’m 100% Linux. BUT! It does frequently require a little more elbow grease to get working than people are used to, and often times you can never get it to work 100% as well as it would in Windows.
Sorry for the big wall of text. But finally I just want to say, none of this is to dissuade you from putting Linux on those machine. Quite the contrary! I want you to be aware of what the pitfalls may be, so you can look out for them. I’d hate for you to go in expecting everything to be 1:1 with Windows, only for something to not work and it feel like a bad experience in the end.
Puppy Linux is made for old machines and generally just works. You can boot it up on a live USB and see what you think. Lots of flavours to choose from.
that is good to know.
Have a read of this:
And one more thing. It’s something you can experiment with on your own machine before you try it on your relatives machines because you won’t be altering anything about your Windows set ups.
in fact most people don’t even do a full HD install. They do a frugal install (which saves your workspace to your hard drive) and just boot off the USB. So you don’t even need to be concerned with a full install. So it’s risk free - you can’t muck anything up.
For a more “friendly flavored” distro, MX Linux is Debian-based and comes with a bunch of quality of life tools
MX Linux seconded. It’s available in 32-bit versions, too.
I haven’t used it on a machine with less than 4GB though, but it runs well on an old Dell laptop from 2009.
Anything with Xfce or MATE, such as Mint Xfce or MATE
Considering that you’re planning to use this with family members who aren’t tech savvy, and as you’re essentially new to Linux yourself, I would suggest something like Zorin OS. The familiarity and ease of use should help you get started fairly quickly, even for newbies. There are a lot of other great distros, of course, some of which were mentioned here, but the learning curve for those can be just a bit steeper. As someone who’s essentially the “tech guy” of the family, believe me when I say you don’t want them to keep bugging you about questions or tech help because they “don’t understand” Linux. You want something that you just install and leave be.
Speaking of something that you can just install and leave, this isn’t strictly Linux, but a great OS to use for non-tech savvy family members is Chrome OS. Get Chrome OS Flex, install it on an old laptop, give it to your family members and call it a day. I’ve had success with it for some of my family members who’ve wanted to revive old laptops. It’s a lot more limited than full featured desktop operating systems, of course, but it’s perfectly suitable for the basic stuff. Best of all, it’s so easy to use that you usually wouldn’t even have to play tech support for your family for it.
There are some distros out there intended for low power machines, but usually you’ll be fine installing whatever distro you want and using a lightweight desktop environment for it. Any distro running a DE like Xfce or LxQt should feel pretty decent on older hardware.
I actually run Gentoo Linux on a laptop from 2008 with 2GB RAM, 80GB HDD, and an early 64-bit AMD processor, but it isn’t my primary device and I’m experienced with Gentoo in general. Go with Puppy Linux—it’s intended for your use case.
Gentoo still supports i486 and i686 which means it’s practically impossible to have a computer so old and shit that it won’t run. Be warned that emerge relies heavily on python versions and if you don’t emerge sync for too long you can permanently bork it so badly not even the Gentoo developers can fix it. I learned this the hard way when the only way to unfuck the Gentoo installation in my Athlon XP was to reinstall. It took 2 months to install in the first place + longer than that to get all the server stuff installed and tuned correctly.
Would also recommend Debian or Puppy. Maybe also take a look at Distrochooser?
Lubuntu!
I put Lubuntu on a Chromebook with only 16 GB storage. It’s a great OS for shit systems.
Back when netbooks were all the rage I threw that distro into everything haha
