antiX I've used this before on an old laptop (also an atom and 2gb RAM) and it's very lightweight. It just doesn't have defaults that I prefer but if you tweak it enough, it should be fine.
this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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Might be overkill (or underkill), but Tiny Core Linux is the most lightweight I know. While having an up to date kernel (6.1.2) and glibc (2.3.6).
What are the minimum requirements? An absolute minimum of RAM is 46mb. TC won't boot with anything less, no matter how many terabytes of swap you have. Microcore runs with 28mb of ram. The minimum cpu is i486DX (486 with a math processor). A recommended configuration: Pentium 2 or better, 128mb of ram + some swap
I want to daily driver this for fun for a while. Only problem, just installed Arch, so I need to wait a bit
Also, I'll just mention that it all means nothing as soon as you open a browser window. Then all your RAM is gonna be used up anyway.
Can I introduce you to Lynx?
Sure, play your youtube videos on Lynx.
We all know that's one of the main things people use browsers for, that's not work, these days. ;)
I oftentimes play youtube videos in mpv.
I always play youtube videos with mpv.
Do you just drag and drop into mpv or how does it work? With youtube seemingly trying to prevent the use of adblockers, I have to look for alternatives ahead of time.
I must admit I copy paste the link to the terminal, so it's not a seamless experience. I don't watch enough videos to have done anything other than write a wrapper script with my preferred settings for youtube videos and to convert invidious links to youtube links.
I just tried running mpv --idle=yes --force-window=yes from the terminal and drag a youtube link to the window. It plays like it should. yt-dlp is installed locally for my user in ~/.local/bin and that directory is appended to the PATH environment variable. I also have yt-dlp symlinked to youtube-dl for mpv to pick it up. I guess what's missing is my preferred options for youtube videos, which I could set up in ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf. Everytime some site breaks, you run yt-dlp -U to update and cross your fingers.
Honestly, I don't even use Lynx
You can do a really slim install of Debian that should work. For DE I recommend LXQT.
If you're feeling adventurous, Alpine might be slightly lighter. It's a good distro.
Those specs are not going to get you a terribly fast experience, but my laptop runs Debian ok and it's in the same ballpark.
As other have already alluded to, any distro with a lightweight desktop environment should work on that laptop. However, we don't know if it would work out for you; simply for the fact that you haven't given any other information.
Debian with XFCE or LXDE.
Isn't LXDE basically discontinued? It got combined with RazorQT or something back in the day and became the LXQT we know today if I'm remembering right.
Seems like you're right, I just remembered trying it a while ago and thinking it was quite decent.
Yeah it was a good middle of the road option. There's much lighter, but it gets a lot more involved at that point.
You can use whatever distro you want that you can install on it (btw it is a eeepc?), just avoid to install heavy programs and/or DE.
IIRC there should be a Debian derive distro for atoms, I used it on a eeepc, don't know of still a thing
thank you, I will check it.
If you want to take it to the extreme, Alpine is probably one of the best options.
It's not worth it. Ram is dirt cheap, you can get 8gb for like $30. For $150-$200, you can find an used Thinkpad that will perform 1000x better.
I would only use such a machine for playing with old software like Windows 2000 or XP, old Linux distros.
In my personal experience void linux ran the smoothest on all my old laptops (compared to stuff like arch and antiX, I defo didn't try everything).
I'm running it on a dual core 2.5ghz with 1800MB of ram, no complaints!
I've heard Puppy Linux is good, never tried it myself however.
Arch, with a lightweight desktop environment. If you have time and dedication, obviously.
What would you use this laptop for?
I've dealt with similar hardware, using Qtile over a Manjaro base, but had to mostly use CLI/TUI apps. Anything related to web browsing is a pain.
Not sure. But I have other primary laptop. And this laptop is just sitting so I wanted try something with it.
If you just want to play around with it, I highly recommend some arch based distro (because you can find plenty of obscure TUI apps in the AUR) with a window manager (be it tiling like Qtile or stacking like Openbox).
If you want something preconfigured, I've recently found instantOS, which seems to work fine for that usecase.
I use this small laptop mostly for ebooks (using the excellent epy) and music, using one ot the TUI YouTube frontends.
Yes I can use it for reading. thank you for the suggestion. I will try instant os.
Any modern browser will probably kill your setup anyway.
I've been using Peppermint on my garbage laptop and it made it usable again.
I was on the same boat few days ago, I pulled out my 2010 CR48, Atom processor and 2GB ram.
I end up with Archlinux with xcfe DE, a tad slow but completely workable.
Just toss it.
DietPi is always a good option. It's designed for raspberry pi, but you can absolutely run it on a laptop and install your desktop environment (XFCE etc)
You know those Acer mini laptops from around 2010 back when tablets weren't really a thing?
Linux Mint runs on those bad boys.
I've heard Debian and Alpine are good lightweight distros
I think most distros will run fine on most hardware though (please correct me if I'm wrong) it's the software you run on it (as in, going with a GNOME desktop environment is going to be much more demanding than xfce for example)