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.
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.
something that runs xfce
Manjaro XFCE ftw
Debian with LXQt. Good luck.
Artix or archbang. For the debian side, antix linux.
ZorinOS Lite
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.
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
Debian XFCE
MX Linux!
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.
I beg to differ and say, even when the Arch wiki is a great source of knowledge, setting up own Arch system and maintaining it requires keeping on track with updates, to understand what is wrong with your system to look up the right keywords and so on. In my opinion it is better to stay on a stable, periodically released distro with tested repos like Debian, Mint or Ubuntu at first. Afterwards, you can still switch to Arch.
There are distros that need little to no intelligence to set up and maintain
It’s not a matter of intelligence but prior knowledge, Arch wiki is the best thing ever for everyone, even if you don’t use Arch, BUT you need some Linux knowledge - at least Linux “lingo” - to be able to understand it.
That’s something a Linux newbie doesn’t have yet, exactly the reason why Arch is not recommended for newbies.
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
Any (Arch) based distro + Sway
@Fungus I have an old Gateway laptop with a single core CPU which happily runs Zorin (32 bit version). Easy OS for beginners.
by GUI, you mean with GUI installer right ? if yes then i recommend Debian
