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?
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.
Mint XFCE or Lubuntu. I would try Mint Cinnamon first, to see if it runs properly. If not, try one of the above.
Mint xfce! Its a res spell for old hardware
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
Debian XFCE
Debian with LXQt. Good luck.
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
something that runs xfce
Manjaro XFCE ftw
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.
Artix or archbang. For the debian side, antix linux.
- Lubuntu
- Linux Lite
- Zorin OS Lite
If that is still not enough you could try Chromeos Flex. It’s not Linux but it could at least maybe make your old Laptop usable again for casual web browsing.
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.
I spent a few weeks learning the arch installation for my old laptop and it’s had the same installation now for about four years. It’s awesome and I have only the packages I need, no more, no less.
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.
I would just buy a cheap RAM stick and install one of the mainstream distrobutions with KDE Plasma on it. You can turn off most of the desktop effects and unnecessary background services.
