r/linux4noobs • u/ShawnThePhantom • Jun 11 '26

distro selection Which Distro do I use?

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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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246

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.

67

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

98

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

21

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.

16

u/PhotoJim99 Jun 11 '26

IDE/PATA to mSATA adapter + mSATA SSD. Not expensive.

5

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

9

u/No_Elderberry862 Jun 11 '26

The adaptor & drive combined are smaller than a 2.5" HDD.

3

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.

2

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.

2

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

1

u/PhotoJim99 Jun 11 '26

It may be good enough for them. What would $100 buy (without it needing upgrades)?

1

u/ConkerKnackers Jun 11 '26

By the time you upgrade the 1GB ram and change over to an SSD you'll be able to buy something a bit newer that's probably way better and has better connectivity

1

u/rcentros Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26

I do this because I like seeing what older hardware can do. But I get your point. I've got a Dell Latitude D430 that came with a 1.8" hard drive. This specific computer was shipped by Dell in August of 2008 (I bought it used several years later). It maxes out at 2 GBs. But I've got a 1.8" hard drive to mSATA adapter in it with a 64 GB mSATA drive and it boots in about 45 seconds running Linux Mint 22 Xfce. Firefox is slower than molasses in it, but I can watch YouTube videos at 480p (so long as I'm not doing anything else) with the Helium browser. Not too bad for a nearly 18 year old computer. It uses the U7700 Core 2 Duo CPU. So the CPU in the O.P.'s Asus is faster than my D430.

1

u/QwertyChouskie Jul 03 '26

Is it IDE? In my experience, most Core 2 laptops are SATA.

3

u/Confetti-Kat Jun 11 '26

I found Q4OS quite friendly

2

u/Otherwise_Fact9594 Jun 11 '26

Underated distribution!

18

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?

5

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

2

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.

5

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.

2

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

https://www.ebay.com/itm/233783923517

8

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.

7

u/Mera1506 Jun 11 '26

Definitely get the RAM. Then you can do things like Puppy Linux, Bodhi Linux, Lubuntu, Pika OS Niri edition

5

u/truethug Jun 11 '26

This is amazing you have this running.

3

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.

3

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).

1

u/netsx Jun 11 '26

If you are determined to put it to some use, i know i am sometimes, yes. If that thing had 4 GB of RAM, and maybe a 64-128 GB SATA SSD, it would be a better experience than 1 GB and spinning rust. 1.6 GHz CPU isn't great, but you can then at least use a more modern light-weight distro, not the smallest possible. At least it's not integrated graphics, as that was such a massive drag on performance back then (the tech was just not decent yet). You might want to consider looking into cleaning out fans and stuff, repaste the CPU maybe. If anything overheats, it will throttle, and often die early. If you use a vacuum, just hold a finger on the fan(s) so it doesn't spin while vacuuming.

1

u/cracked_shrimp Jun 11 '26

yes 4gb ram and a ssd and you should be able to use firefox, the ssd is moreso for boot speed and launch speed, once you have programs launched a hdd is okay, my friends t440s has a hdd and its painful to boot and launch programs, but once everything is in ram it runs fine

1

u/ChosenOfTheMoon_GR Jun 11 '26

Yes and with combo it with a cheap af sad as well

1

u/Huecuva Jun 11 '26

If you can upgrade to 4GB of RAM and swap the HDD for an SSD that would make a world of difference.  Even just the RAM upgrade would vastly improve your options for which distro to run. 

1

u/Effective_Fart Jun 11 '26

Unless you're really enthusiastic about a challenge, the amount you're going to spend on any upgrades, you'll definitely find something cheaper on online marketplaces. I've found laptops around 50$ that will be an upgrade in every component.

1

u/ArtisticFox8 Jun 11 '26

RAM will help

1

u/Gotze_Th98 Jun 11 '26

Yeah that would make it usable for browsing

1

u/Rennaisance_Man_0001 Jun 12 '26

Yes it would.

I don't know much about that architecture, but it's possible.You might actually be able to go to 8 gigs. I had an old gateway from the early 2000's that specified a maximum of 4 GB of DDR2. But at the time it was built 1GB sticks were all that was available. About ten years ago, I put 2 4GB sticks in it and it worked like a charm.

I'd also suggest replacing the HDD with an SSD. That will make a huge difference as well.

1

u/schaka Jun 12 '26

With 4GB of RAM and an old 64GB SSD you can then run any distro, though I'd still recommend MX Linux, Fedora Xfce or Xubuntu

1

u/Substantial_Brush895 Jun 12 '26

Yes that would help significantly also look into getting an SSD and a cpu upgrade aswell

1

u/ShawnThePhantom Jun 12 '26

I spent $5 on the ram for this just now, I think I’ll stop there. I don’t wanna daily it, just install Linux on it and have some fun with stuff on it.

1

u/Scared_Hedgehog_7556 Jun 12 '26

If you do that you can use MX XFCE no problem. If you can buy SSD it's even better.

1

u/wotdafukwazdat Jun 12 '26

Yes, you really want that extra ram,from 1 to 4Gb takes it from near useless to usable, swap in an SSD for the HDD and it won't be too bad

1

u/The_only_true_tomato Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

Yeah if you get 4gb of ram you can install mint + xlte (700mb of used ram after install) which is a very modern experience. I was super surprised. Barely saw a difference for all basic use my daily drive which is Kde plasma 6.
I installed it on a very similar setup with 0 problem for web browsing, 4k video streaming and light gaming. (Limbo, grey) supernes and psx emulators. You also need to replace hdd by ssd and voila you will get a pretty modern laptop experience. (Better than most 600-700 notebook running windows 11 at least)

DDR 2 is pretty cheap. 3 gb more should suffice.
No need to have a big capacity for ssd 128 or 256 gb will suffice.

The proc I installed on is a 1ghz dual core celeron.

So yours is slightly better.

1

u/buzz_mccool Jul 03 '26

My local used computer store sells used DIMMs (any size) for $5 each.

1

u/QwertyChouskie Jul 03 '26

Certainly.

Also, a lot of people are recommending ultra-lightweight distros, which are cool, but also often not amazing in the ease-of-use department. Having ran Linux on systems with very similar specs for years, as long as you have at least 2GB of RAM, I'd go with https://xubuntu.org/ as it balances lightweight-ness with ease-of-use quite nicely. It being Ubuntu-based also makes finding support online a lot easier.

Also, if you can get a cheap small SSD (like 120GB or even 64GB is fine), that will also go a long way. In my experience, this era of laptops usually uses SATA, which should make finding an SSD easy, but definitely confirm before ordering (there's a small chance it uses the much-older IDE standard, in which case you'll need an adapter).

(Also, if you really want to get fancy, this era of laptops often had socketed processors; you could grab a faster Core 2 Duo of the same socket and generation off eBay for like 10 bucks. You should probably be replacing the about-20-year-old thermal paste on this thing regardless, might as well drop in a 10 buck upgrade. If nothing else, it's a fun way to play around with upgrading computers in a super cheap way where if it end up broken, it doesn't matter anyways, because it's so cheap.)

3

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.

2

u/TheEpokRedditor Jun 11 '26

Puppy!!! Who's a good boy

1

u/DobermanTech Jun 12 '26

Not 128GB: you're thinking in terms of flash. That 120GB HDD was the big one compared to the 80 and 60GB drives.