Ziggy587 wrote:Does anyone have an opinion on light weight Linux distros for older hardware? I've Googled already, so I know what the top X distros are. I'm just wondering if anyone here has any experience with them and could recommend one. I've been running Mint on an old desktop and it's OK, but it could definitely be snappier. I think I want to switch to something else.
I like xubuntu and think it's good. More lightweight than Lubuntu.
I did read up on LXLE today since you posted. I haven't tried it out yet. However, I do want to check it out. If you want I can install it on my crap pc and see how it does.
My parents had a couple of old laptops that I went through to clear data/recycle. One of them was an old windows 8 machine and was a decent candidate for revival. I installed Linux Lite and it works like a charm. Yeah, the battery is kinda crap but it works! They can at least have another device for basic web browsing and youtube.
Thanks, opa. I forgot to reply to this thread when you last replied. I was leaning toward Xubuntu, I'll probably go with that when I get around to it. It's kinda low priority right now though.
What kind of hard drive was in that laptop? And how fast was the start up time?
I have an old slim line Windows 8 PC (wow, saying "old" and "Windows 8" kind of sucks) that I've dual booted with XP and Linux Mint. XP starts up extremely fast, but Mint really takes a while to get to the desktop. Then once on the desktop, it's chugging for a minute until all the background stuff is loaded. It's fairly annoying being that this is my workbench PC, hence why I'm looking for something a little snappier. That's why I ask about start up time. I had thought about putting a cheap SSD in there, thinking that might help the boot up time. But since XP starts really fast on the stock mechanical drive, I know it's not exactly the drive that's the problem. That, and I rather keep the mechanical drive in there if I can.
It has a standard laptop hdd. Start up time with linux was about 20-25 seconds. But once it loaded everything seemed pretty snappy. Chrome worked fine and youtube had no issues playing 1080p videos.
An ssd could help, potentially. If you have a spare one laying around you could check it out.
Edit: I do want to add the laptop is very low-spec. 2.9 gHz / 4 gb memory. I don't remember the cpu.
So I've decided to do some upgrades to my slimline desktop (the one that I dual boot XP and Linux on)...
It's a crappy low-end Dell that has a Pentium D and integrated graphics. I'm sure the CPU doesn't do me any favors on a modern OS, but I was always guessing it was also the integrated graphics that held back performance. But I've decided to do some upgrades, mostly for fun but also because it's cheap. It seems the best CPU I can get in there is a Core 2 Duo E8600, which from looking at benchmarks will be a good improvement over the Pentium D that's in there now. It has a stock 250w PSU, but it looks like I can get a used SeaSonic 300w for fairly cheap, so I think I'll do it.
So if I get the slightly better PSU, then maybe I wouldn't be too afraid to put an actual graphics card in there. The motherboard has a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot available. Thing is, it'll have to still be relatively low power and also needs to be a half height or small form factor or whatever they call it. Anyone have any recommendations there? I'm not looking to game on this, obviously. Just something that'll outperform the crappy integrated graphics for better desktop performance, and YouTube or possibly DVD playback.
Anyways, the real upgrade is the SSD I decided to get. The motherboard actually has 2 spare SATA headers, and the case has a spot for an additional drive. I found a Kingston 120GB SSD on Amazon for $18.99, so I figured why not?
So now the question is... Which Linux should I put on it? I was going to go with a light duty Linux, possibly Xubuntu. But now that I have an SSD, and possibly will upgrade the CPU and graphics, should I try a regular distro instead of a light duty one? This is really just for web browsing and maybe YouTube or DVD playback. I just didn't like how sluggish Mint was on the stock computer. It took too long to load the desktop, and then opening apps and such was sluggish. But maybe it'll be better with the upgrades?
Any upgrades you make will definitely improve the system. I used Lubuntu quite a bit and enjoyed it. Loaded pretty quickly (granted the PC I'm using isn't as old as yours). Not sure I'd go for a GNOME environment but there's no harm in trying out regular Ubuntu! It doesn't take long to install a different distro. If you don't like the performance just swap to something else.
opa wrote:It doesn't take long to install a different distro. If you don't like the performance just swap to something else.
Normally I wouldn't mind doing this. But since I'm dual booting this with XP... When I install Linux for the first time, it'll detect the XP install and create a boot loader that will allow you to select between Linux and XP at startup. But if I go to install a different Linux distro, will it still detect the XP install and make the appropriate boot loader for me? It's just that I've dealt with boot loader problems with multiple OSes in the past, so I'm trying to avoid that headache now.
Hmm, I suppose I could use GAG boot manager. It's been many years since I've used it, but IIRC you can easily remove and set up a new OS.
You mentioned a few posts back that you were installing the latest version of Ubuntu... How has your experience been with it? I haven't used Ubuntu in many years. But I watched a recent YouTube video that was complaining that the OS isn't very snappy.
Yeah, if you're trying to keep that XP partition you'll need to be really careful when you select the disk space to install to. I typically don't dual-boot (because of the headaches it can cause). Sorry I don't have much advice to offer there. I think it'll detect your OS's but just be careful you're only overwriting the Mint partitions.
Ubuntu 22.10 seemed pretty snappy to me. For reference I installed it on a system with an Intel i5-4570T @ 2.9 ghz; 8 GB of ram. Granted, I only used it for a few days. I planned on doing a clean Windows 10 install on that system anyway- so I just messed around with Ubuntu for a short time (not doing any intensive tasks or anything). Once MS drops Windows 10 support I will be swapping it back, however.
Hmm, I think I'm gonna do a normal Ubuntu LTS install and see how it runs. I mean, WORST case scenario is that I have to reinstall XP again to fix the boot loader (if I can't figure something out otherwise) which really isn't that big of a deal outside of a slight annoyance.
