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.

  • 20gramsWrench@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    those are very low specs for every day distros (meaning usable for the general public), you might get away with linux mint xfce, if it ends up usable on those machine and not lag too much then don’t bother with anything else, otherwise you might have to install lighter stuff like antix or lxle. If none of the above are usable you can always install puppy linux, it can run on a toaster but is not very pleasant to use. note that regardless of distro, surfing the web is going to be a chore due to half of the modern internet being heavy as fuck and hard to run, you might want to look for alternative frontend to websites like piped for youtube, urlebird for tiktok etc.

  • silent_clash@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • ppp@lemmy.oneEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    AntiX is quite good on older hardware but beware of the fact they don’t use systemd. Nice effort to try and use newer init services but a lot of things really depend on systemd being installed.

    WattOS (which uses systemd) is also very performant on old rigs but it needs more tweaking OOTB I’d say.

  • rimu@lemmy.nzEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • ShySpark@lemmy.fmhy.mlOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      alright and are you sure that is the best starter option? also what can i do on linux compared to windows?

      • aMalayali@beehaw.orgEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • PEnorman@beehaw.orgEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago
        • 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.

      • Granixo@feddit.clEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        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.

  • bbbhltz@beehaw.orgEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Alpine Linux is one to look at.

    MX Linux works good on old hardware.

    If you’re looking for a DE, XFCE might even feel sluggish on older hardware. You can go lighter with LXQt or use the Pixel Desktop that Raspberry Pi OS has (which is modified LXDE).

  • Little Trans Punk@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • mo_ztt ✅@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • Parallax@kbin.social
    0·
    1 year ago

    I’d like to do something similar on my Pentium 3 box. Maybe Debian with a really light WM would be a good fit, maybe IceWM? It only has 512MB of RAM though so I might have to go even lighter than Debian. I also have an Athlon XP box with 2GB of RAM, but that’s too new to be fun. :p

  • keet@kbin.social
    0·
    1 year ago

    I would suggest Mint. Considering the hardware, the XFCE version. Have you looked into any hardware upgrades for these machines? I’ve found that a simple ram or hdd–>ssd upgrade can be rather inexpensive these days.

    • Sorchist@kbin.social
      0·
      1 year ago

      There are a lot of distros which are more focused on old hardware than Mint, but Mint definitely wins in the “this distro will be familiar and discoverable to people who are used to Windows” department. If it works, it’s great for that reason.