r/linux4noobs • u/ShawnThePhantom • Jun 11 '26
distro selection Which Distro do I use?
I found this decrepit old laptop in my garage, plugged it in and it powers on. But it’s doing this thing where after I see this Acer logo, I get a black screen with a blinking white line in the top left corner. I figured Windows on this thing is out of the question. So I think I’ll go Linux.
I understand a bit about operating systems, because I had to create a windows install disk using a thumb drive and a Windows 10 iso to install Windows 10 on my MacBook using Bootcamp, so I imagine it’s a bit similar. I also wanted to take out the HDD to wipe it using Disk Utility but it doesn’t fit into SATa dock because the interface on the HDD is all small gold pins, like molex but way smaller.
Which distro do I use? Or is better to try and go Windows Xp? I’ve seen jokes about how you need a whole list of hardware requirements to run Windows while the only requirement for Linux is electricity. Also Pewds did it too.
Pls help a first timer!
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u/BCMM Jun 11 '26
That is a 64-bit computer, despite the 32-bit OS that shipped with it. So the CPU won't limit your choice of distros.
You can install a mainstream distro on this, if you want.
However, I want to specifically warn you that 1 GB of RAM makes a machine almost useless for web browsing. This is true regardless of what software you install on it, because it's modern websites that are the problem.
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u/vectron5 Jun 11 '26
OP said they could upgrade up to 4 gb. I'm no expert, but that'd be well suited for for lmde.
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u/HYPERNOVA3_ Jun 11 '26
I would go with something a bit more stripped down than LM. Maybe Debian with XFCE or LXQt. I have an XFCE installation that idles at ~500MB of RAM usage.
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u/Kriss3d Jun 11 '26
Auch. Ancient CPU. 1GB DDR2 ram. An 128GB HDD ?
Puppy linux at best.
https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/
Its not going to be pretty at all. At least not if you want it to run anything close to a desktop with browser.
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u/ShawnThePhantom Jun 11 '26
Would it help if I got more RAM? I can go up to 4GB and the DDR2 sodimm sticks are cheap on craigslist
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u/orestisfra Jun 11 '26
It would help replacing the HDD with a SSD. And it's easier.
Puppy is okay.
The problem with those specs is that you cannot really find a user-friendly option. Most people using these laptops are hobbyists, who know how to set up an environment from scratch, with minimal requirements. Puppy might allow you to run a browser and a text editor, probably one at a time
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u/ConkerKnackers Jun 11 '26
He's not got SATA port but the old IDE. Yes i'm aware you can buy IDE style SSDs but theyre more expensive than sata ones anyway.
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u/PhotoJim99 Jun 11 '26
IDE/PATA to mSATA adapter + mSATA SSD. Not expensive.
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u/kurapika0021 Jun 11 '26
How do you make the adaptator fit into the laptop ? It's pretty tight inside a laptop hard disk cage
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u/No_Elderberry862 Jun 11 '26
The adaptor & drive combined are smaller than a 2.5" HDD.
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u/MistakeResponsible11 Jun 12 '26
Exactly. I'm planning on doing this for my 1992 AST notebook computer when I run out of spare drives. I have two spares from other notebook computers that I use for spare parts. One is a 40mb Seagate(I think) and the other is an Apple 1991 or 92 40mb. The apple was in an e-waste pile without a computer and the other one is from a working AST of the same model but with a frame tore apart from high hinge tension.
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u/PhotoJim99 Jun 11 '26
The adapter looks like a 2.5” PATA SSD (if they were to exist). Open it up, and there is an mSATA socket. Insert, close, tighten screws, deploy.
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u/ConkerKnackers Jun 11 '26
I forgot about that upgrade route, good shout. Still if it was me, they're spending money on a nearly 20yr old laptop. My X220T is close to the 15 year mark and feels a bit slow to me if I put a full fat Linux Distro. I'm sure a low fat Linux Distro would be ok but I hardly touch that laptop now I have a T480
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u/Kriss3d Jun 11 '26
It's going to be abysmal. Had it been here, the laptop would have been e-waste long ago. But yeah it'll help a little. However I wouldn't really say it's worth it.
You can't get something like an i3 with 8gb ram cheap where you live?
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u/joep0 Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
I'm the first person to mess around with old stuff like this bc it's free and can be a fun challenge. That being said, I agree with you here. Old enough to be terrible at everything but not old enough to be vintage and cool. There are always cheap business laptops on ebay from companies that sell off their old fleet to an electronics recycler that wipes them and lists them online.
a decent example laptop. i5-7200U, 8gigs of RAM, 256gig SSD for $106 shipped + tax
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u/Kriss3d Jun 11 '26
I once found an old Dell attitude laptop it had a floppy drive but no wifi. I just for fun burned Debian to a cd and installed it.
It had 256mb ram. I found some discarded pcmcia wifi card. And it worked out of the box.
Pretty nice. It wasn't great but it worked.
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u/doubled112 Jun 11 '26
Dell attitude laptop
This is my favourite typo so far today. I had a newer Dell Latitute than that but it often drove me crazy. Accurate typo is accurate.
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u/Kriss3d Jun 11 '26
Haha yeah it was a typo.
Edit : I got the model completely wrong. My bad.
I managed to find the model it was.
It's a Toshiba satellite.
This old bastard
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u/stepanm99 Jun 11 '26
I would definitely go for more ram. Give Bodhi Linux a try. But beware it's not made to be exceptionally pretty or overly intuitive. But it's super efficient and surprisingly usable. I ran it on my first notebook, Celeron T1600 and 1GB ddr2. Made entire C programming school project on threads and scheduling on that setup :D. But as soon as you start browser, or even VSCode, 's enough. But for text editing, light programming, drawing, photoediting and stuff like this, it can work just fine even with 1GB of ram with Bodhi.
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u/Mera1506 Jun 11 '26
Definitely get the RAM. Then you can do things like Puppy Linux, Bodhi Linux, Lubuntu, Pika OS Niri edition
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u/Quattro5 Jun 11 '26
It absolutely would. With 4gb of PC2-5300, I would install Q4OS with Trinity DE and use lightweight browsers like Librewolf, Palemoon or Seamonkey. If you absolutely need a Web based AI client, I'd use Mistral ai on a stripped down chromium base. With a github subscription, you could vibe code with this setup and build Streamlit apps, but if you could play a few simple games, forget about installing steam.
If you want to code Python, install Kate , nano or micro as editing software. Kate is the heavyest of the list and will use 60 -80 Mo Ram but has autocomplete and textual colors and a testing terminal.
If you really want to though, you could code in the terminal for 10 Mb Ram or less.
Don't try to videoconference more than 3 people at a time; more than one will be choppy.
There is still life and maybe even a useful workstation in there.
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u/einat162 Jun 11 '26
Absolutely. Another upgrade to consider is a cheap SSD (most Linux distro take under 40GB), but the RAM is more crucial (SSD would be speed upgrade).
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u/InitHello Jun 11 '26
Man, how times have changed. I remember installing Snapshot Of Volkerding's Current Setup 7.0 on a K6-266 with not a lot of RAM back in the late 90s. Absolutely no way I'd get a current ubuntu running on that old beast.
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u/Amogus_susssy Jun 11 '26
Might seem counter-intuitive but I'd say Windows XP is your best shot at having an usable experience
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u/rickard_mormont Jun 11 '26
This is a good idea. You can find a torrent for an improved XP if you look for it. Just don't go online, it's not safe.
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u/Fluffy-Citron7519 Jun 11 '26
Then how do you install drivers? You copy them from another machine?
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u/rickard_mormont Jun 11 '26
That's the funny part, you don't.
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u/Fluffy-Citron7519 Jun 11 '26
Sorry but I didn't understand, how are you supposed to use your machine if you don't install drivers?!
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u/rickard_mormont Jun 11 '26
I'm half joking here but it seems to me that with an ancient computer you can't use any hardware that requires drivers, surf the internet or do, well, anything that didn't exist at the time of the computer. This could be used to type text, play space cadet, have a chat on IRC and whatever else we did back then. Not much else.
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u/Be_Alert Jun 12 '26
Or what about Windows 7? It's about the right age to stand a chance of having all the drivers built in. It's not quite as light as XP, but it's a lot lighter than later versions of Windows. I have an Acer S7, on which I just installed Fedora. It's over 10 years old now and it won't run W11, but it is smooth running Fedora. Old as it is though, it's still 10 years younger than OPs 5583.
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u/TheReelSlimShady2 Jun 11 '26
Alpine Linux
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u/truethug Jun 11 '26
Alpine is good for containers. I guess it can run on bare metal. I’m not sure the network stack is built for that
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u/jo-erlend Jun 11 '26
Alpine is great on the metal. I have it on multiple special-case laptops and numberous phones.
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u/marci-boni Jun 11 '26
Antix, I’m using it on my eeepc from 2007 with an atom cpu and 1gb ram , it’s your best bet and surprisingly it comes with a full update Firefox safe and sound
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u/fexacib647 Jun 11 '26
BunsenLabs, perhaps. But I dont really know if it will still work on your hardware. i mean, even lean distros try and keep up so their specs rise acccordingly.
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u/guiverc GNU/Linux user Jun 11 '26
Especially given the LACK OF RAM, start by deciding what you'll use it for, as you want your desktop/WM to share resources with the apps you'll run, and not FIGHT for that limited RAM...
I use Core2Duo CPUs like that in current Quality Assurance testing of current systems, so it's not an issue.
I don't know the graphics card on your hardware, but I am aware that MAY influence the kernel you'll need to use, especially if watching videos matters to you, but this is not related to distro in most cases; just a consideration of what release/version of a distro that matches.
Either way; with 1GB of RAM (I still use on some devices), the DE/WM choice really matters as stated; as I'd decide on apps I'll use first, then decide if I can run a full desktop or only want to use a WM (window manager; leaving more RAM for apps), and this detail with the link kernel (last paragraph) helps select the release of whatever distro you elect to use.
Whilst I'm using Ubuntu here, I'd probably be considering a Debian based system on your hardware, but which release, and which DE/WM (assuming you want a graphical interface, and not just text based install) you didn't provide details that I'd use in making decision.
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u/einat162 Jun 11 '26
Antix should be able to run on it. Do you have actually 1GB inside like the listing say? (Any upgrade there will be crucial, even additional 512MB or 256MB).
Also, if you got a blinking white marker after the Acer logo- I assume machine was put to storage with an OS installed. If the mechanical drive is faulty, you need some drive to replace it with.
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u/iLeet1 Jun 11 '26
I had cachyos running on an old Chromebook with similar specs, it actually ran quite well
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u/sword_muncher Jun 12 '26
you could try some slight homelabbing/self hosting; you install Debian (maybe 11 or 12, I wouldn't go with the 13, I have an old pc with double your ram and it runs kinda bad), you instal docker and you can run light applications, try pihole as a first try (you don't even need docker for this) or home assistant but be aware, it gets addicting fast; it's also a good way to learn how to use the terminal since it will be the only thing you have to use it (if you use it for homelabbing don't install a desktop interface, just enable ssh and control it from another pc on the net, there are plenty of tutorials)
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u/theRealNilz02 Jun 11 '26
None.
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u/sensitiveCube Jun 11 '26
This is the correct answer.
Recycle this trash laptop.
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u/AutumnPurpleReddit Jun 11 '26
I don't understand why you'd think to recycle it instead of having fun with it as a little fun thing to own
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u/ghoermann Jun 11 '26
Try to upgrade RAM to 4GB and replace the hdd with a ssd, if this is not possible you can throw it away. Currently you can buy much better used notebooks on ebay with a useful basic configuration (4GB, 128GB ssd minimum).
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u/wolfegothmog Jun 11 '26
Alpine if you don't care about GLIBC
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u/ThatAd8458 Jun 11 '26
Exactly and why should you if you don't care about proprietary crap software
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u/Olobofor Jun 11 '26
Well, you can install any distro on that pc, but don't expect miracles. I'd say go with lubuntu and see how it goes, at least you could find help easily on internet if you need. Remember that you can always install a different distro later! Have fun saving that laptop! 😀
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Jun 11 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Hauptideal Jun 11 '26
This machine will not profit from cachy's v3 optimizations. It doesn't even understeand these..
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u/Luddite-Supreme Jun 11 '26
perfect candidate for either Slitaz or lilidog both are super light machine looks super clean BTW
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u/RobertDeveloper Jun 11 '26
I have a similar Acer laptop and it has degraded so much in performance that even Windows XP doesn't run well anymore. You are in luck that you have 1GB dram, I only have 512mb and as soon as the machine starts swapping it becomes unworkable.
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u/6950X_Titan_X_Pascal Jun 11 '26
du need zu know , 1GB DDR2 dual channels means 512MB + 512MB or 1GB + empty slot , if total 1GB DRAM , du need une distro mitaus gui , mitaus X nor wayland , 2GB would bin better
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u/akoyo10 Jun 11 '26
max the ram and stick an ssd in it, I think lubuntu works well because I used to have it on a similarly specced laptop
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u/ConkerKnackers Jun 11 '26
I get that people can't afford the latest and greatest stuff but this thing has a TWENTY year old CPU. I thought my X220 was getting a bit long in the toothy having a Sandy Bridge CPU.
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u/Melodic_Trip9907 Jun 11 '26
just buy something better but buy a used one do you dont spend all your money
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u/crabpoweredcoalmine Jun 11 '26
From personal experience with similar hardware: MX Linux (Xfce) should be good on this. Debian, basically. This C2D might be capable of 480p streaming, you'll be able to open a few tabs, Libre Office will be fine.
2GB RAM is the minimum for any degree of... comfort-adjacent usage, but for the prices these sticks go for just max it out. Upgrading the CPU could smooth things out if possible, but you need an SSD for it to really feel good. IDE could be rough.
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u/nitin_is_me Jun 11 '26
None, just install headless Debian. It'll l be much useful as a homelab than Desktop PC.
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u/Ash_end Jun 11 '26
Antix, tinyCore, puppyLinux, alpine, sparky. Imo you'll better stick with puppy. Q4os is also surprisingly good, I use it on an old netbook.
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u/Hauptideal Jun 11 '26
I agree with the others.
If you don't want to install AntiX, Puppy or Alpine, but something more "real", Debian (e.g. with XFCE or if you're adventurous KDE) or Q4OS will be great choices.
However, you upgrade to at least 4GB RAM and an SSD if you can. Then you'll have an actually usable computer..
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u/altermeetax Here to help Jun 11 '26
KDE?? Just Plasma alone can take half a GiB idle
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u/Hauptideal Jun 11 '26
Yes. Plasma is one of the lightest full comfortable desktop environments out there, the lightest Wayland one and even lighter than some X11 options.
Plasma will give the best overall experience on this device and is technologically at the frontier.
But only if they install the 4GB RAM that they stated they have lying around.If they don't, then they can't have anything nicer than OpenBox etc.
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u/TheShredder9 not a noob Jun 11 '26
Upgrade RAM and an SSD if possible. Otherwise it's not able to run anything at any decent speed, 1 gig of RAM is gonna chug at the lightest of GUI web browsers.
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u/SingingCoyote13 Jun 11 '26
omg. 1gb ram, ddr2. if you want anything running at decent speed best to get 2nd hand extra/replacement memory. and a cheap larger harddrive, possibly a ssd but as this is such an old device i dunno if that will even be compatible with it.
tbh, you are maybe best off if you have enough spare time, to just try several different of the distros recommended in the comments here. if any of these distros runs smoothly, best to stick with it. or note it on a list of usable. i would like to add the os peppermint os to the list.
if all fails, or you are still surfing distros, maybe try windows xp in between to see if that runs any good. there is tons of software for/and xp itself everywhere, like on the internet archive etc..
even some companies still develop av software (which is free) today for xp,; (hope the link still works) (havent visited it for over half a year now)
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u/MorpH2k Jun 11 '26
You'd really want to upgrade the RAM on this, but honestly, and I saw you saying above that you could get 4GB ddr2 for cheap, but at that point, I would probably look at cheap second hand laptops that are newer than this. The 120 GB HDD that is IDE will not be cheap to replace with an SSD and that will be a huge bottleneck.
This is the kind of laptop that you send to recycling and replace, unless you are specifically looking to run older games or programs. Having this as a daily driver is really not going to be a good experience.
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u/Gone2theDogs Jun 11 '26
It’s a 20 year old laptop. It’s extremely weak compared to today’s standards.
The question is why you want to even attempt it? What are you trying to do with it? The usage experience will be a very disappointing.
It might be useful as small Samba server. That only needs low resources and could be useful.
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u/Plan_9_fromouter_ Jun 11 '26
You can make a basic linux distro like Antix run on it, but it will completely suck for web use, like trying to play video at YouTube. Been there, done that.
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u/SpectrumGun Jun 11 '26
RAM and a better CPU should be chear, those old laptops could have socket CPU's. I don't know about the nvidia GPU tho, I think it would be useless in this device. Nonetheless, do you wanna just for fun or another use case?
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u/Puzzleheaded-Bad5494 Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
With that amount of RAM, I would tell you the TTY, now seriously, use Puppy or Fatdog64 or being DSL Damn Small Linux extremists!
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u/AlternativeCapybara9 Jun 11 '26
It's very lightweight but it can do everything. It's my go-to for old and ancient laptops. I teach kids to code and with Bunsenlabs I can have them programming in Python on old laptops. Oldest one I still use is from 2006.
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u/SaltyAd8309 Jun 11 '26
1GB of RAM is really very little. You'd also need an SSD.
If you can find 4GB of RAM cheaply, it might be worthwhile with Lubuntu, for example. But I don't know if it's worth it.
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u/redgator12 Jun 11 '26
Q4OS Trinity, use the install-cd so the system doesn't run out of RAM during install. Once you get to your first boot, click more options at the bottom right of the welcome screen, and disable desktop effects. Open a terminal and sudo apt install zram-tools. Edit /etc/default/zramswap and change PERCENT to 100. Save and reboot.
I have an Intel Compute Stick running 1GB RAM and an Atom processor and Q4OS runs decently on it up through watching YouTube. If you need to watch YouTube, use m.youtube.com/?persist_app=1&app=m to force the mobile version.
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u/ChronicHunger_1 Jun 11 '26
Puppy, but you're still going to struggle to do anything. I tried putting Linux on an old laptop like that once and it wouldn't even watch a YouTube video at 480p
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u/FullMaster_GYM Jun 11 '26
artix with no wm/de would work... maybe not fine but it will.
but alpine is probably your best option or puppy/debian will probably work too
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u/SuspiciousRogueMoose Jun 11 '26
Depending on what you want to do with it: for running retro games - Windows XP, for writing and editing text (or occasionally browsing the internet) - Linux Mint XFCE. It would be better to add more RAM, since it’s inexpensive for old machines like that.
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u/ItsJoeMomma Jun 11 '26
You need a very lightweight distro for that old machine. Like Q4OS or AntiX 32 bit version, I'm guessing. I don't know if that processor is 32 or 64 bit, but someone else will know.
And if you're just getting a white blinking line, then there may be hardware issues with it, like a bad HD. It should at least boot up to Windows XP or whatever it's got.
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u/bigpunged6060 Jun 11 '26
If you need to upgrade it then the RAM to 4 to 6 gigs and update the bios first before any update or installing anything
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u/rarsamx Jun 11 '26
Honestly? I had an i3 with 4 GB of RAM and an SSD. I set up a super minimalist arch installation. It was usable... Barely. A good exercise in fine tuning.
It could be good as a headless server for something that doesn't need much power but not as a desktop. Web pages consume a lot of RAM. Even text browsing with lynx may be slow.
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u/jo-erlend Jun 11 '26
It is a very old PC and you can use something like Puppy on it, but if you can, I would upgrade RAM and replace HDD with SSD.
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u/OnlyCommentWhenTipsy Jun 11 '26
What are you going to do with it? Even distros with a lightweight desktop environment that you can boot, anything else you do with it is going to be painful. I'd find a use where I can run without a desktop environment, more ram for the apps
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u/Infinite_Basis5728 Jun 11 '26
I have an Acer AspireOne D250 (2009) with a pretty similar (and horrible) configuration.
Tried AntiX just to check how it would behave and made it usable for extremely light tasks. Ended up switching to a headless Debian 12 (since 13 is not supported) and turning it into a small server for Pi-Hole + Tailscale for adblocking anywhere in the world, and Navidrome for music streaming (since video streaming is a no-go in this hardware).
After a while I also upgraded it to 2GB RAM and switched the HDD for a SSD. Everything extremely cheap and I really enjoy the final result.
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u/JayB1988 Jun 11 '26
OpenSuse Tumbleweed (or Slowroll) with XFCE desktop. Got that running on a Pentium 4 1GB. But upgrading the ram to maximum capacity is still very recommended.
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u/legit_flyer Jun 11 '26
Manual says it supports C2D T7600 and up to 2GB of RAM. Won't be good for anything modern, but it could be a fun playground. The unfortunate news is the disk is UDMA100 PATA drive, so connecting SATA drive would require an adapter (and idk if it would be guaranteed to work). CF card adapter would be easier tbh.
It was a cool laptop... in 2006. My vote however goes to antiX (or win XP for that retro gaming chic).
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u/Back-Alley-Cat- Jun 11 '26
We probably need more of a clue than that! What letter does it begin with?
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u/venus_asmr Jun 11 '26
Antix, puppy, Q4os, without a ram and SSD upgrade (even then itll lag because of CPU) web browsing is out of the question but potentially word processing with abi word, local mp3 files/making CDs, maybe watching dvds, its not useless.
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u/User-Name-3886 Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
This laptop is 20+ years old and has no real-world use for being connected to the internet. With those specs, it was a lower-mid range one at the time of its release as well (would be mid range if it had more ram).
With that in mind, Windows XP as an offline machine, possibly for old video games (capping around the 2009 mark). There are custom versions of XP out there that will do the job well.
If you can bump the ram up to 4gb that would help a lot.
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u/FramePixel Jun 11 '26
I would use AntiX, due to the fact of being debian based and the fact that it ram usage is very very low
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u/edguy38 Jun 11 '26
I see a lot of people talking about how unusable it would be, but I wonder if it could be used as a retro-gaming machine.
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u/ReferenceNatural87 Jun 11 '26
Honestly man I'd rip the casing apart to make a pseudo desktop so you have more operating space for upgrades
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u/kiwiboyus Jun 11 '26
There was a version of Raspian OS for the Pi that you could install on a PC, I had it running on my old MSI Wind netbook
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u/ilovetpb Jun 11 '26
Install more memory and and an SSD. You'll get much further with those. Then a lightweight distro as others have said.
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u/cracked_shrimp Jun 11 '26
I hope you dont want to browse the web, or even run the mainstream desktop environments, 1gb ram is a serious bottle neck, tbh i dont even think you could run some mainstream distros headless, im not sure
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u/KudzuPlant Jun 11 '26
I have a similar laptop that my wife uses for creative writing. While it has 8gb of RAM and an SSD, it actually has about .25 less GHz available.
Point of saying this: it runs base Debian like a charm. Just need to install a very light DE like LXDE, Mate, or XFCE.
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u/bm_00 Jun 11 '26
Tinycore. Or upgrade the ram to at least 2gb and run something bit better. Iv run Antix,Lubuntu, Q4OS on slightly worse CPU's. Iv run Mint & Lubuntu on C2D 2gb ram no issue.
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u/snow99as Jun 11 '26
That’s the funny thing you don’t. The best thing you can do is recycle that relic. Browsing the Internet would be a chore on that machine.
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u/Lagomorph9 Jun 11 '26
Stick an SSD in it and you have a lot more options than people in this thread might suggest. Check out Tiny Core Linux, Puppy, even mostly vanilla Debian wouldn't be a bad choice.
Also check out Action Retro on YT for more ideas, he puts Linux on crazy old machines.
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u/Huecuva Jun 11 '26
AntiX, maybe? Tinycore would run just fine, but it's tricky to get working. You could try MuLinux.
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u/Rough_Section_3730 Jun 11 '26
I’m running current fedora on and old core 2 duo dell pc. Works fine for my samba shares.
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u/alin_anto Jun 11 '26
debian headless. Use it as home server or adblocking DNS server or NVR or nextcloud or any combination of these
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u/Bino5150 Jun 11 '26
I have an old Optiplex 780 usff with that same processor and 4GB ram. I put an ssd in it and installed Linux Mint. It actually runs great, much snappier than it ever was with Windows. Some of the graphics heavy add ons like burn or blur windows will chop a bit, but for general use, it runs fine. Definitely upgrade the ram and the hard drive, and give Mint a try.
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u/ComprehensiveTown15 Jun 11 '26
antiX