I have an old Subnotebook (at least 10 years old I think) which runs Windows 7 atm. I would like to run Linux on it. I‘m a Linux noob, but would like to try and learn a few things. Any recommendations?
Debian XFCE
Idk your laptop’s specs but I’ve been running Arch with XFCE on my Thinkpad T400 for a while now and it was decent enough to do college assignments, take notes, watch videos and stuff like that a year or two ago. Debian is also decent nowadays, and heard good things about Peppermint but I have no experience with it.
Truth is, it doesn’t really matter as long as you use a lightweight DE like XFCE, lxqt or cinamon. The thing that will inevitably kill older machines is the modern JS heavy web. Youtube and Reddit were really pushing the limits of that old machine sometimes but it struggled through.
Debian with LXQt. Good luck.
Being lightweight or not doesn’t depend on the distro but the desktop manager (the graphic interface). Unlike Windows, the graphic in Linux is separated from the system so you can use different desktop managers on the same distros.
The lightest DE is LXQT but it’s pretty barebone, XFCE has more features while still being very light, avoid GNOME and KDE.
That being said, I suggest you try Linux MX XFCE or Mint XFCE first, if that’s not light enough for your liking, try Lubuntu, that’s Ubuntu with LXQT as default DE.
Artix or archbang. For the debian side, antix linux.
Thank you for all the suggestions, I don’t have access to the laptop right now, so I can’t get the specs, I’ll try to post them tomorrow
Kind of two parts to this question: Linux for low spec hardware? And beginner Linux?
When I got started with Linux in 2017, I started listening to a lot of Linux related podcasts which was really helpful to get my head around a lot of terminology and Linux technologies. A friend of mine runs Arch so I knew I wanted to get there eventually, but for the first couple of years I ran Linux Mint, then Ubuntu, and for the last year or so I’ve been on Arch.
Regarding the low spec hardware thing: I have an ASUS net-top with a Celeron CPU & 1GB ram & spinning disk HDD. I’ve run mint xfce on it with a lot of success. Tiny core Linux is extremely performant on really old gear, but it’s very old school & different to popular distros
If nothing else works(Mint, Arch, Elementary, Fedora) for you use Alpine. It’s a bit weird with how small it is and it won’t be full features but the whole OS is measured in MBs. There is an option to install a desktop client.
You can use quite a number of “underlying” distributions, it mainly depends on what you like (Arch-based ones, Debian-based ones, etc).
As a desktop environment, have a look at XFCE or LXDE.
Mx Linux or Antix Linux. If you need more GUI and handholding try OpenSuse Leap
I daily drive a netbook and I use Debian 12 with KDE Plasma on it. The netbook is a 2014 ThinkPad 11e with a Celeron and 4GB of RAM. I find it comfortable for writing and even some Python and JavaScript development. I remote into my servers/cloud infra for more intense development tasks.
+1 for upgrading whatever you can before installing linux. An SSD in particular will go a long way to make it feel snappy.
Mint XFCE
This is first stop, if this is slow than try something else.
My guess is it will be too slow, but it is worth a try.
exactly the way I see it too it’s the lightest of the no compromise linux environement, after that you’re starting to see the gears
I have successfully run Arch with Openbox as WM on machines even older than that. Arch has a learning curve, though.
And therefore it should not be recommended to Linux beginners… It is not a beginner distro.
There is no such thing as a “beginner distro”. There are distros that need little to no intelligence to set up and maintain. Arch needs you to read and follow instructions. It is a myth that it is impossible for beginners to use Arch. There are several good installations instructions in the wiki, select one and follow it till the end.
There are also plenty of Arch derivates that preconfigure the system for you.
It’s not impossible, but it’s unnecessarily tidious… Especially when with other distros you can just follow a 4 Step wizard and get a similar result.
You’re way too deep in the linux world lol.
There are distros that need little to no intelligence to set up and maintain.
One might call that… suited for beginners.
You’re way too deep in the linux world
Yep.
beginners
Beginners need to learn anyways, why not skip the “not-for-beginners stuff” and go all in? :)
Beginners need to learn anyways, why not skip the “not-for-beginners stuff” and go all in?
Because most people will likely want something that works out of the box so they can learn over time
something that runs xfce
Manjaro XFCE ftw
Peppermint OS!!! running it right now and its SMOOTH! lightweight and looks sexy while doing it!
