Top 5 Linux Distros For Older Hardware

Alpine Linux or NetBSD would be my choice.

I have Debian xfce running on a AMD Athlon II system w/ 4GB ram, 512 MB video. Works great.

I found Zorin OS Lite lightweight and better than Linux Lite. I am using Zorin OS Lite 17 now on my Lenovo T400 ( intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 8 GB DDR3 RAM, 240 GB SSD + 500 GB HDD). I wanted a Debian/ubuntu based distro to use and that is why I have chosen this distro. Working fine till now.

Linux Lite is not as light as stated because it uses more or less 1GB of RAM upon boot up. Linux Mint and MX Linux will do better in terms of minimal memory consumption. Yes, Bodhi needs less RAM but its Moksha environment is not as user friendly for converts from Windows. Glaringly omitted from the list was AntiX Linux that uses only between 198 to 250MB of RAM, despite its toned-down graphics.

HP Elitebook 8470p with Broadcom WiFi card. B43. I can't get this to work with Linux Ubuntu Noble Numbat, and I'd like to boot things up, so I can figure out how to upgrade things a little bit more. Help.

Just installed Puppy and Kodi on a 2009 N130 laptop. Runs like a charm ! Great video, thanks !

Try Solus XFCE, it's rolling release, fast, light and very stable!
Solus has XFCE 4.18, but once XFCE 4.20 is out in mid December 2024, Solus users just have to install updates and restart to upgrade, no need to reinstall Solus itself 👍
Check the forum for the weekly sync update every Friday usually.
(Posted on Thu 3 Oct 2024 at 02:47 UTC)

which one is best for a dell wyse 3040 thin client? mine has 2GB Ram and a 8GB eMMC SSD.

I am using sparky linux on my 32 bit old system it runs smooth and fast , devuan 5.0 is also good

Trisquel GNU/Linux is great

How to install network, sound, and intel graphics drivers on linux?

Void linux is great too. It uses aroud 300 mb ram .

Thanks for this video! Love lightweight distros for my old computers. But just have to say that computers from 10 years ago is not ancient or potato. Most of my older laptops like Thinkpad etc are from 2000. Some even older.

Can I use one of them ?with my hdd pc and the ram is4

Mine is 64bit? What's the best option that eill allow me to use more applications

Bodhi 7?

I just discovered q40s a debian dased os that comes in 32 and 64 bit. Runs great and is very lightweight

Try Q4OS plasma with Q4OS pre installed theme , amazing

i have a dell smartstep 100n with 128 mb of ram wish me luck fellas

I managed to get an 2005(ish) emachine to boot in less than 30 seconds with Tinycore (although tinycore is buggy). usually my gotos for everything is debian and slax.

"Old", has it's limits though. Many distributions are stopping support for 32bit architecture. I have an old Pentium 4 computer, running Windows XP, that's about 20 years old now. It still runs fine, I don't believe it's very secure though.

You should review mini OS 4. It was released this week.

Well done mate, good job !!! Thank You.

My 5 year old Samsung smartphone is able to run Windows 7

Puppy Linux stands out to me because it runs off RAM. Are there other distros/distro families like it?

My first impressions running a live USB of it on a potato laptop are surprisingly good.

Look, I'm no White Knight for Microsoft, but on my Acer Aspire One, Windows XP runs circles around every Linux distro I have thrown at it. I don't know what it is, but Linux runs horribly on it. That is with an SSD replacing the old HD too.

what about Lubuntu?

Thanks very much! Definitely helped me choose 🤔

PuppyLinux, despite its cute design, comes in so many flavours that are so damn confusing and downright traumatizing for the novice. Please advise which one to install.

ummm, can one upgrade to a new release with Linux Lite? like do-release-upgrade in Ubuntu?

hi Dt , are you suggest this distros right now???

and this is where new users learn the hard way that there's a difference between "fast enough for 20-year-old hardware" and "actual driver support for 20-year-old hardware".

Im currently running a 32 bit version of Linux Lite on a 2009 gateway netbook, and it works like a champ. Ive installed many other flavors of linux, and none of them worked as well for me. I kept nuking it and going back to Linux Lite. Its a great little emulation box for DOS and older systems like the NES.

Every time I've tried linux distros, I usually come unstuck when my wireless doesn't work...

Any sane person: Why are you looking for a lightweight Linux distro? Your computer has 32GB of RAM, an SSD, etc...
Me: ...

But for real, I like the idea of using a light(er) OS as my daily driver. I've been back on Windows for at least a couple of years (after using Bodhi Linux as my daily driver for quite a while), but with the direction they seem to be going, I am anxious to switch to Linux for any purposes that I can (easily) use it for. And by the way, you forgot about Bodhi Linux! And, of course, Lubuntu... but the ones you did choose are good distros anyway!

Correction, Windows runs slow, despite of old or new hardware

I use linux mint xfce (not a begginer) on my laptop from 2006. 2g ddr2 120gb ssd, intel core 2 duo. its my home server, also tiny core runs like

































fire

how about tiny core

man I remember #!
good times. Good to see people are keeping it alive

Process - intel (R) Pentium (R) CPU N300 @ 1.60Ghz 1.60 GHZ.
Ram - 4.00 GB , no graphic card

Please anyone guys suggest me low end operating system I almost try every window no window or os run proper in my patato pc

Crunchbang was great! IT ran on my (then) old laptop without any crunches or bangs

What about Fedora?

I want to buy a Linux laptop but it is not available in India, what should I do sir

another Linux distribution I want to add is Linux Mint. I have a laptop from 2007 with an intel pentium T2410, 2GB DDR2 RAM, 250GB HDD, and with Linux Mint on it, it's weirdly acceptable and usable for 2025 standards.

I am using Bunsenlabs on my old HP G62. I've tried Arch with Sway, Antix and a few others but will definitely try out Mabox,

Nice video. Thanks for going right to the point. Great info too.