The laptop has a 20gb HDD, 1gm of RAM and a pentium 4M.
Looking to get into linux and was wondering what distro you would recommend running on it? Not going to be my main machine more for playing around with than anything else.
This will be my first real go on linux so nothing thats over complex please :)
Any suggestions appreciated :)
Manjaro with the XFCE desktop environment is lightweight & easy to use
Cheers guys, shall give them a go. Hear Ubuntu is a good option too?
Ubuntu is okay if you use Minimal CD, the base version is soo bloated its unreal, and old laptops perform better with nothing on them, I recommend any net install or minimal cd with LXDE or a WM like bspwm or TinyWM.
If it was me, I would install Arch Linux then swap NetworkManager for Wicd, TinyWM, I would disable multilib as old laptops normally do not have more than 4GB RAM.
I wouldnt use Chrome or Firefox, there heavy on RAM, if you have nothing but a web browser, then fine go for Chromium, but if its a general Linux machine go for something like Iceweasel or Midori.
I am running peppermint xfce on a 10" atom emachine. It is not powerful by any means, but this install is going well.
http://peppermintos.com/
Check out http://distrowatch.com/
You'll be sure to find something that will suit your laptop.
+1 It's not the absolute best choice but if you've never used a Linux OS before then mint is a great starting point.
Opensuse with xfce is also a good route
I started on Mint... Only used it for a few weeks until I started using Crunch bang, then I jumped to Fedora. Korora is what I recommend starting on.
Peppermint is just awesome on older hardware due to integration with the cloud.
This is your best option IMO.
Necromancer casts Raise Dead
I've used Lubuntu (with forcepae) on my T42 (PentiumM 1.7ghz, 512mb) and I finally got pcmia wireless working and it's good enough for light use. If I want to actually work on something (like gimp or a game or whatever) it's worthless.
I don't understand why there aren't more documented older distros that are still useable.
Ubuntu has gone to shit with this bloatware and amazon crap, no surprise if it gets bought by fucking facebook for stealing advertising data off unknowing users.
If you go with Manjaro you can also transitition more easily to the more customizable (and complex) Arch linux
Necromancy +1
I don't know about the latest releases but ubuntu minimal install would intimidate new users to hell: manual partitioning and all in NCURSES... I say stick with the Mint recommendation, it's based on ubuntu after all.
Besides XFCE you can try LXDE which could prove a bit more familiar to windows users. It looks kind of a weird XP but you can theme it to give it a nicer look.
if you gottagofast and want to try something that windows could never achieve, try running puppy linux or KolibriOS. they are stupid small and aren't fully featured but you can run them from a USB key, a CD or even a 3,5" floppy!
486 DX4 running Puppy from a Zip drive (no HDD): that's necromancy++
A pretty new option, is a new Arch-based distro called Quantum OS. It's not really finished yet, but you can already use it, if you know how to boot manually. It's pretty minimal Arch based, so fast as fuck, and the GUI is heavily inspired by Android 5, but for Desktop use. I think it looks great, and it's pretty lightweight, because it's based on Qt5 and QML, and has no compositing going on, just like on Android 5 phones.
A different take on the same theme, is the new distro Chromixium, which mimics ChromeOS, but with all open source software, without nasty Google spyware, and the whole thing is based on OpenBox, which is very lightweight, even though it uses compositing.
If you're still not getting the performance you would have liked, and you don't want the basic feel of Puppy Wary, you could go for another Slackware based distro called Vector Linux, which offers an XP-like interface with extra trimmings like a dock and everything, but it is made to run on systems with extremely little resources, and it will be very fast on a P4 with 1 Gig of RAM.
https://quantum-os.github.io/
Looks cool man
Yeah I thought it was a great idea, very modern, and underneath it's just Arch you know, you can do whatever you want with it. Qt5 sometimes amazes me by its performance, the code is not quite optimized for performance, and yet everything is pretty smooth already, I like it.
Hey Zoltan,
When you tried it, did you get a chance to check its accessibility features? I was wanting to compile the desktop on SUSE, but it does me no good without a mag.
Not that Cinnamon isn't good enough, I just want to try something that isn't solely based on gtk.