Unix and Linux → looking for a light operating system

looking for a light operating system for my old desktop. Currently I have Window XP.
I read in PC World that LXLE32 would be ok to run on old computer with 512 mb of ram.

any suggestions?

Thanks

I am a n00b myself and have not tried Linux on a small amount of ram but I have found Mint and Ubuntu easy to use as soon as I first seen them.

»www.zdnet.com/linux-mint ··· 0028049/
»www.linuxmint.com/

Do not try the LMDE version though, it is for more experienced users.

»www.ubuntu.com/download.

These are "full" versions with most every program you would want and the will take about 5.5 Gb of space. There are some stripped down Linux versions that use a lot less space.

Zorin also is nice and easy to get used to. »zorin-os.com/

You can burn these to a DVD and try them first. If you do not have a DVD burner some distro's will fit on a CD. Also for a few dollars they will send you a disk.

I'd recommend Puppy Linux.

This brand new distro was just mentioned earlier today on this very forum. Seems to be something you might want to look at. »New distro MX-14 -- Debian stable with Xfce

Any of the major linux distros with the Xfce desktop environment would probably be suitable for an older machine. Xubuntu for example, or Linux Mint with Xfce, a Debian release with Xfce, any of the more popular ones. Xfce is much lighter than Gnome or KDE generally speaking...

I highly recommend going with light weight WM. That said, I also highly recommend upgrading your RAM or getting another machine—any modern/useable web browser will gobble up what little RAM you have quickly, and then you’ll start to swap, which will make everything painful.

I did an install of Linux Mint 13 XFCE for someone recently with only 512 MB (actually less due to the built in graphics adapter use of memory). It works for having a couple apps open.

There is also a bit of an experimental hack which helps when you have very low memory. The name escapes me but it is in kernel staging and it basically swaps out some area of memory so that it is effectively like having 100 or 200MB more than you have in most use cases. Hopefully someone recalls the name of what I'm speaking of. If I come across it again I will reply again.

edit: The name is zram. See »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zram and »sites.google.com/site/ea ··· ble-zRam -- also it was removed from staging and merged into the mainline about a week ago according to Wikipedia.

I would also look at an LXDE-based distro. I used to use XFCE for older hardware but have switched to LXDE. I find that it works without fuss much better than XFCE. As far as being light goes, both work great.

I am running Anti-X on a Windows 98 era desktop with 512Ram. Find it at DistroWatch.

Hi,

While it's commendable to re-use old hardware, its PSU is probably grossly inefficient and the box is undoubtedly under-powered (low end CPU, disk, etc).

What I'd suggest you do is take the box to get it recycled and pick up another, not so old box. You probably can score a far better computer for under $50.

Cheers,
-pablo

In addition to the distros mentioned so far, I'd say look into Damn Small Linux.

Personally, I like Xubuntu.

said by pablo:

---

While it's commendable to re-use old hardware, its PSU is probably grossly inefficient and the box is undoubtedly under-powered (low end CPU, disk, etc).

What I'd suggest you do is take the box to get it recycled and pick up another, not so old box. You probably can score a far better computer for under $50.

---

I suggest you totally IGNORE or better take it to the compost heap where it belongs, the post quoted above. We've been through this exact conversattion in the past.. and Linux is perfect to repurpose all kinds of old hardware.. to be used for all kinds of things...

Post a model number or specs..

You may have to use one of the lighter distros as mentioned above.....

DO NOT CHUCK IT!

Window Maker.

What was the question again?

Here are the specs. for my old computer.
Intel pentium 4 with 2.00 GHZ
512 ram.
Windows XP Pro service pack 3.
I want to use the above just for newsgroups. also I use Newsbin Pro with that machine.

I have a laptop with Windows 7 that is my primary machine.

Thank You

Install 32-bit Debian with Openbox window manager. Or something like 32-bit Crunchbang Linux, which is effectively the same thing. I have heard of systems like this running in less than 50 MB of RAM, with some people claiming much less. A great forum for learning ultra-light configuration strategies is linuxbbq.org/bbs

Tim

"and Linux is perfect to repurpose all kinds of old hardware.. to be used for all kinds of things..."

You are wrong. I inherited a laptop with Windows 95 as the OS. Tried installing sevral linux distributions with no success. Amazingly enuf though, I was able to install Windows 2000. Freaking slow though.

I can vouch for the utility of Puppy on old and new hardware. I took Precise Puppy 5.4.3 on an 8GB usb key for a 30-day visit to Vietnam. That enabled me to get internet and check my emails, my accounts, my business concerns on any computer I came across.

For some years, I've had the "small" version of Puppy 4.3.1 on an old IGEL thin client, serving (small) websites for my business and that of girlfriend. Small version as this machine is limited to 256MB memory, has ~300MHz Geode for the CPU, and initially had a 512MB CF card in a 44-pin adapter for storage, albeit it now sports a roomy 4GB DOM.

I just let it run headless, after hooking up a monitor, mouse, and keyboard to do the installation and subsequent tweaks. Of course, it's slow for the more demanding tasks like refreshing software repositories, but it has a usable gui that is designed for small hardware, Puppy's strength. Some terminal output from ssh session:

# cat /proc/cpuinfo 
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : Geode by NSC
cpu family      : 5
model           : 9
model name      : Geode(TM) Integrated Processor by National Semi
stepping        : 2
cpu MHz         : 297.019
cache size      : 16 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 2
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu tsc msr cx8 cmov mmx cxmmx up
bogomips        : 594.03
clflush size    : 32
power management:
 
# cat /proc/meminfo 
MemTotal:         250352 kB
MemFree:           18536 kB
Buffers:           17884 kB
Cached:           184672 kB
SwapCached:            0 kB
Active:            89336 kB
Inactive:         128792 kB
Active(anon):      16288 kB
Inactive(anon):        0 kB
Active(file):      73048 kB
Inactive(file):   128792 kB
Unevictable:           0 kB
Mlocked:               0 kB
HighTotal:             0 kB
HighFree:              0 kB
LowTotal:         250352 kB
LowFree:           18536 kB
SwapTotal:        523256 kB
SwapFree:         523256 kB
Dirty:                48 kB
Writeback:             0 kB
AnonPages:         15572 kB
Mapped:            13148 kB
Slab:               9884 kB
SReclaimable:       6360 kB
SUnreclaim:         3524 kB
PageTables:          428 kB
NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
Bounce:                0 kB
WritebackTmp:          0 kB
CommitLimit:      648432 kB
Committed_AS:      39352 kB
VmallocTotal:     774136 kB
VmallocUsed:        2308 kB
VmallocChunk:     768644 kB
DirectMap4k:      258048 kB
DirectMap4M:           0 kB
 
# uptime
 21:26:42 up 128 days, 21 min, load average: 0.31, 0.35, 0.30
 

said by NoGodud :

---

"and Linux is perfect to repurpose all kinds of old hardware.. to be used for all kinds of things..."

You are wrong. I inherited a laptop with Windows 95 as the OS. Tried installing sevral linux distributions with no success. Amazingly enuf though, I was able to install Windows 2000. Freaking slow though.

---

Politely, no your wrong!

If you whipped out the latest and greatest distro with KDE 4.x or something your likely to fail miserablly.

You need to tailor the distro to the hardware...as stated in this thread... things like Puppy and several others are designed for this...

Sadly most to all of the major distros have forsaken older hardware to the point you may not even be able to run the installer or even the alternate installer...here Linux has turned its back on its roots.. sadly....

Using various old hardware for tasks suited to them can be great fun.. and it brings a line of hardware to my doorstep that would otherwise go to the garbage.. (And just a note I could not give a flip about any greenie weenie nonsense in re stuff headed to the garbage.)

Junkers and clunkers that are underpowered to run a full X interface make great servers to pull in various things update a SQL data base to being thin clients on my LTS system for those that can handle it...

The right distro for the hardware with the right task for that hardware and distro...Not everything needs a dual 8 core CPU setup with quad graphics cards...

Sometimes the ancient 486 can do just as good or like a post above some of the Geodes etc...

You can learn a lot about hardware and Linux when you dive into repurposing things...plus you can get these things for free!

Do not mistake anecdote for proof. I have stack of old laptops that run various versions of Linux. Of course, they too are slow but today's standard, but they are slowly running up to date, supported software as well as they ran Windows 9x in their haydays.

About old hardware, do not forget that you can often repurpose even a 1GHZ 512 MB system to be a superior router or firewall. Even those specs are far beyond most consumer routers these days (often 128 MB RAM and 600 Mhz). Check into say IPCOP or pfSense. The catch is that of course power usage is greater.