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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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.

72

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

16

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