For a old laptop with Intel atom processor and I think 2gb ram.
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
Okay, yeah that’s a bit much lol
I’d go for Alpine Linux in such case.
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.
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.
Debian with XFCE or LXDE.
A request was made to sticky it
I checked this yesterday, but could not decide. So had to ask.
Debian stable or testing, with MATE or XFCE or something crazy like WindowMaker (wmaker)!
If you want to take it to the extreme, Alpine is probably one of the best options.
With the Atom processor, I had “best” result with Puppy linux whether from USB or actually installed to hard drive. I could run Lubuntu, MX, etc., Tiny core, for me, was a little too little and certainly not “fit and forget”. When I bought a new (to me) laptop with more RAM and later chipset, I still stayed with Puppy. There’s very little that can’t be done with it.
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!
If it’s 32-bit, your options dwindle somewhat.
Armbian is lightweight, and has an x86 version.
You know those Acer mini laptops from around 2010 back when tablets weren’t really a thing?
Linux Mint runs on those bad boys.
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)
Any modern browser will probably kill your setup anyway.
arch with i3
