Linux on an OLD Laptop

The amount of times I've needed to fix this laptop... anyways let's get Linux on this old laptop to make it great again. We are going to try out two lightweight Linux distros to see what it needs.
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00:00 - The Laptop
03:10 - Windows 7 Starter
06:40 - Zorin Lite
08:51 - Antix Linux
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[@ruejr]

I remember having a similarly-specced netbook with windows 7 starter and I decided to upgrade it to windows 7 ultimate because I wanted to have customizations. Let’s just say that I had the patience of a saint at that time.

[@doughnut_panda]

You should have tried debian lxle.

[@klokibril]

Me too! I upgraded mine to Windows 7 Home Premium and I installed Ubuntu 10.10 on it, those were different times... I just booted it up again (it's been in my closet for years), and it indeed requires the patience of a saint... 😅

[@doughnut_panda]

@@qbcd yes

[@simpernchong]

LOL 🤣🤣

[@TV3TOT]

Upgrade to Linux

[@notrealecho]

They weren't kidding when they say Linux can bring life to old machines. Keep these vids coming, mate.

[@DacLMK]

I brought back to life a PC from my mother's workplace that they were considering to throw it away. She gave it to me, did a CPU upgrade (the original Celeron 420 was a joke), added a Graphics Card that I wasn't using (Radeon R7 240) installed Linux Lite, and for year and a half I've been using that PC for watching Movies, TV shows and occasionally KZbin on my TV. It doesn't struggle with 1080p playback (though with very high codecs it can sometimes chop frames). Overall a good PC.

[@dbell1894]

I don’t get it. Linux Mint take way fewer resources than windows 10 on paper, but in practice, 10 runs better on older hardware for me

[@unknown_codec_404]

@@dbell1894 This may be related to drivers, it's rare but it's possible to the built-in driver give problems which makes the system runs worse

[@Recals]

@@dbell1894 i just installed mint xfce on a compaqmini-110 which is pretty similar and its slower than win7 and ubuntu 10 which are still installed on hdd.

[@dbell1894]

@@Recals Yeah. I think Windows is more optimized than Linux advocates let on

[@shaunpatrick8345]

I had a netbook with Windows 7 Home. It slowed down over time and became unusable so I reinstalled windows. It took a day to install all the updates, after which it was as slow as it was before! MX Linux gave it a few more years of life.

[@dlittlester]

Me as well!

[@EliasOda]

Peppermint 10 raspin works very well on my 2011 laptop. There is no noticeable lag. It's great for much older hardware.

[@zmlin]

I learned these by actually tryin them out in my mini-110 as well. Antix is the best options for this kind of hardware, extremely light, many CLI software out of the box, 32-bit supported Debian base, etc.. Even the lightest DEs like xfce and lxqt or hybrid like peppermint OS would not perform as well as the WMs in Antix with this machine. However, I had to use Pale Moon because Firefox is still bloated and not fast enough for 1G RAM.

[@1pcfred]

I run a pretty light WM on Debian and my idle RAM use is about 5X what is reported in this video. So there's more to it than just the WM.

[@atemoc]

@@1pcfred Yep I have a very, very minimal installation of Arch Linux on an old Lenovo ThinkPad SL510 (the lowest configuration, non-upgraded), with a very light window manager (dwm, tho even things like Qtile don't consume much more resources...) and apps, and the absolute strict minimum of services etc, and I still sit at around 130-160 megs of RAM and 0-2% CPU usage, and even the Kernel is one that I compiled myself I don't know what Antix does to be so light, while still being 100% usable, but it does it very, very well.

[@jnharton]

Heh. The truth here is that most of the mainstream will be using a full laptop with a much more powerful CPU (like Intel Celeron/Pentium/Core i) that is 64-bit, has at least 2 CPU cores, and a base clock ~2 Ghz plus a lot more ram ( between 4-8 GB).

[@andymann6061]

What a coincidence - just a few days ago I discovered antix to load onto an old Acer netbook. Being a long time Debian fan, I love it. Bang on review.

[@proctoscopefilms]

I've watched a lot of your reviews of distrobutions. Love em. Seeing this fun stuff along with the reviews makes me want this channel on my feed all the time. Definitely subscribed. You're awesome dude !

[@fawzanfawzi9993]

Electric toothpaste sounds outlandish. Imagine if it has a DRM where it locks up for having an "unauthorized" paste.

[@TechHut]

I can't tell you how many time I used CCleaner on this thing for my grandma. Also need a toothbrush? APEX Toothbrush: bit.ly/39Evwhm Coupon Code: TECHHUT

[@TheHolaviste]

AntiX is a great distribution, I've installed many years ago in a Pentium 4 with 512 MB of RAM with IceWM desktop environment and it worked very well. Time later, mi GF and I bought similar netbooks similiar to the ones on the video, and I installed on both of them AntiX 32 and 64 bits with LXQt, using minimal edition. Both of them still working until today. Great video!

[@ObaidahNaseer]

Which one lighter on resources?

[@norgeball3971]

Isn‘t your grandma sort of the sponsor of the video, too?😄 Btw, I already recognized antix on the thumbnail by the wallpaper. It is a great distro, reducing tech waste👍

[@certs743]

Bodhi Linux is also a great option for a netbook or lower end, older laptop.

[@yellow351mustang]

I second Bodhi Linux. I run Bodhi on an old POS Dell netbook and it runs amazing.

[@molsonman7800]

Would you use Bodhi Linux 6.0 or the 5.1.0 legacy 32bit version for the laptop in the vid?

[@certs743]

@@molsonman7800 Either should be great. The big difference is with 6.0 the base under the hood just switched to Debian since Ubuntu dropped 32bit with the last LTS. In terms of use it should not make a difference.

[@paolor.479]

Manjaro xfce is also a great distro for old PC's 👍

[@MarkNF82]

Tried puppy on an old Atom but as I'm only a casual linux'er, there were some fiddly bits that were a bit too fiddly to get it where I wanted. Still a few on AntiX, but a tad more user friendly I think. I've been trying to migrate to linux for years, but usually get a driver, app or window manager screwup that pushes me back to windows after a few weeks/months. Just wanted to say a big thanks for the style of videos you do. I've completely given up on most tech channels for the long flashy openings and animations, loud music and loud, "in your face" speed talkers that seem to be the trend now. It's awesome to see people can still make calm, professional and entertaining vids. Great Job. Cheers.

[@JohanlastZa]

Would be cool to see how the laptop battery life holds out on such a lightweight operating system versus the default.

[@dlittlester]

First one lasted about 7 years. I replaced it once.

[@Flash136]

You're lucky you have the Intel GPU version of this laptop. I got one with the PowerVR GPU, and to this day it is still not supported by Mesa.

[@CFWhitman]

Yes, the Intel chips with PowerVR graphics built in are now pretty much at the extreme of uselessness for the time they came out. PowerVR will not cooperate with open source driver development, and the devices weren't popular enough for the extremes of reverse engineering required to make them functional to be worth it. Some of the chips have very rudimentary support; none of them have good support.

[@qwertykeyboard5901]

​@@CFWhitmanAnd I thought those old ATI motherboard graphics where pretty miserable.

[@Ataraxia_Atom]

I did a similar setup to my 10 year old laptop though it has 8gb of ram and around 2.2 processor. But I went with Linux mint and it runs like a champ now. I actually prefer using it to windows

[@astrawby]

Talk about a trip back to the past! I had that computer in high-school and to be fair, it's as tough as it is slow ; it fell multiple times, overheated in my backpack more times than I counted, I forgot it in a freezer at some point and other shenanigans, but it never stopped working! Plus, thanks to the metal hinges under the plastic, the screen never fell off either!

[@luarbiasawaras8700]

A freezer? 😂

[@astrawby]

@@luarbiasawaras8700 I was a dumb kid who thought it would be a good idea to cool it down quicker after it overheated

[@luarbiasawaras8700]

@@astrawby well , thats make sense to me now 😄😄

[@DeeDoctor]

This is awesome, I'm quite new to the Linux community and I really love watching these as I'm very interested to learn more of it

[@proctoscopefilms]

Me too, ever since trying the win11 beta I decided to make the switch. I liked win11, its just obvious where they got their inspiration. Might as well get the real thing.

[@kristiyanivanov7414]

@@proctoscopefilms Kind of the same situation.

[@absolutemadlad4334]

@@proctoscopefilms Heard about the rampant weird privacy issues with win 11, think you made the right move buddy hope you enjoy linux. :)

[@mto7429]

Didn't know about antix. Got an early Ultrabook with touchscreen, 2gb ram and Intel atom and even xubuntu didn't run very well on it. Gonna try it out.

[@GoldTegu]

I wasn't expecting for you to deal with such an specific problem that I actually have had to deal with! Tho, you've done way batter than I. Thanks bro. Also, I wouldn't mind an artix video at all :^)

[@ionprimus5322]

The video brings back memories. Installing Linux lite on my 2009 dell netbook all those years ago is the reason I use Linux today.

[@hindigente]

You've inspired me to bring a very old hp laptop of mine to life as well.

[@binchamers]

I installed linux on my dad’s old windows vista laptop (1gb ram, 1core, 1thread) and it works pretty well again, I’m using it to learn linux

[@Marrrrtin]

What distro did you install? Looking to do something similar.

[@triliner254]

Yeah give us some info man.

[@binchamers]

@@Marrrrtin I installed Debian, but I haven’t used it for any actual work, just messing around with linux so I can’t vouch how good it’d be as a daily driver

[@Marrrrtin]

@@binchamers Yeah, same here. I have a spare budget laptop with Windows 10 that I want to mess around with Linux on. How does Debian run on yours? I'm thinking I need something lightweight so was considering Xubuntu.

[@josephmburu9335]

@@Marrrrtin try Linux mint

[@Mr_L1n4x]

Dude this was not only my first laptop, it's also the first one I modified (not this exact model since mine used ddr3 instead of 2, but aside from that is identical) I upgraded the RAM to it's max 2gb capacity and installed windows 7 home edition to get full advantage, it lasted almost all my highschool until I replaced it

[@Ti0Luch0]

A top-ten lightweight distros would be great, including debian and arch linux.

[@LordTrashcanRulez]

Late reply, but to anyone looking at this comment: for Debian, you have a couple of good options including PuppyOS, AntiX (my personal favorite) and MX Linux ordered from lowest hardware requirements to strongest. For Arch, you have no options as most people expect you to build your own system. However, I'd personally recommend Arch with IceWM.

[@mylinuxgr5050]

Very nice test! In laptops with similar specs I install a lightweight Debian-based distro as well, usually Sparky or LMDE. Chrunchbang++ also does the job.

[@medinachete73]

Zorin is not a light distro at all, don't get distracted by that 32 bit support.

[@aisteelmemesforaliving]

I'm more pissed off at them for charging people for stuff that is otherwise free.

[@medinachete73]

@@aisteelmemesforaliving One can always get the free one and tune it up by himself, (it's a Gnome/Xfce desktop), but I think that their funding method is allowing them to be one of the top ten distros. The full edition will save you a lot of time in research, download and configuration, if you like the final result anyway. And it's very close to The Full Desktop Experience for a newbie. Seem pretty fair to me...

[@justanotherpxrson]

I just installed lubuntu on a really old macbook i had laying around. intel core 2 duo and 2gb of ram and a 120gb ssd i had lying around. honestly, im beyond impressed with how much i can get out of a machine that is so obsolete and previously seemed unusable. handles basic web browsing and video playback fantastically, and i set up retroarch for some retro games. super happy with how its turning out!

[@arturofernandez8487]

I have a HP mini slightly older than yours that shipped with xp and it run great for its specs, now it’s running lubuntu 18.04 I believe, and serving as an octoprint server. It does it’s job well enough.

[@t.w.3]

I got a few of these back when they were "new". Slapped 4GB stick of RAM and a 64GB SSD and they were not bad with a current Linux distro or Windows 7 Pro.

[@macnottsuk]

Raspberry pi os for the pc has got to be the lightest os for older kit and netbooks. Thinking about finding my 11year old netbook and giving it a spin. But would like to see you test it out before destroying windows 7 that I could keep for a museum piece lol.

[@LymanPhillips]

When browsing the web, sometimes it's not the OS or the browser, it's the website. Some sites just kill your tab.

[@asphyrx]

javascript be like

[@Qtechbh]

Lubuntu runs fine on my old C2D Asus laptop. Browsing holds up until you try videos or video calls. One thing to keep in mind for everyone trying modern OSes on old machines is to disable all the silly Spectre mitigations. You are not going to get hacked as you browse however you will gain 10+ percent performance by disabling them all. Also playing with the hardware acceleration settings in the browser might be all the difference you need...

[@cleavisnowell1240]

Spectre and Meltdown can infect older HP with Ubuntu !

[@dlittlester]

I have exactly the same netbook. First thing was doubling the RAM. Then I played with various Linux distros over the years. I'm using MX now, with Firefox browser. KZbin videos seem to take a few seconds to spool up but once they do, they're quite smooth. Mine has 250 GB storage which I'll never use. The great thing about this thing is, I've taken it with me on two trips to the UK, and all the picture I took during the day got transferred to it at night. I travel light, with just a backpack with some clothes and that computer in it for two weeks. You might think it's crappy, but I appreciate it for what it is.

[@canespastico]

yes please I'd enjoy an antix overview, it seems nice and light

[@mr.anirbangoswami]

I didn't know about this linux. I installed mint cinnamon on my core 2 duo with a cheap SSD. Will definitely look to changing over to antiX. Thanks a lot.

[@englishrupe01]

I would definitely recommend mint mate rather than cinnamon. It is way faster. I couldn't believe the difference when i switched. Mine is an old 2011 Dell laptop.

[@PyroNexus22]

Q4OS with TDE should be fine, and give you that retro feel. You can pretend you're back in the 90s

[@medinachete73]

Bloated. Bunsenlab.

[@kychemclass5850]

Yes please... More dedicated Antix Linux video. You can even put another toothbrush sponsor message inside it :)

[@sujeewa8067]

LOL that indeed was a cute tooth brush

[@mattx5499]

For an old laptop with smaller screen (like 14") or netbook I can recommend Linux Mint Mate + Materia theme (compact) + Papirus icons + Roboto 10 font for UI + Roboto Mono 10 as monospace font. Proper scalling of the Mate Panel may be 28 in heigh + mate dock applet + workspace switcher applet and of course all the tray stuff and clock/calendar applets. It will give you a nice Chrome OS like look with Material theming. You can even make yourself a simple Conky widget with system monitor displayed in Roboto 10 font, because it's very lightweight and convinient.

[@lumarlee6093]

Great video concept to help others give Linux a test run. Knowing the basic specs of a machine and the best Linux distribution to use on it, is helpful. If other Linux channels could find a way to provide info about an old laptop using a Linux distro, maybe more people would be willing to give Linux a try. Zorin 16 works well on my dell Inspiron 17 5000 series. Thanks for the informative video. : )

[@donmills2647]

I have an old Acer mini PC thing that has an atom processor and 2 GB of RAM, shipped with XP on it. It sat on the shelf for a long time and I noticed that there is a version of Raspberry Pi OS that is targeted at older PCs and Macs so I decided to give that a shot. Preliminary assessment it seems OK just from a little bit of usage looking things up on the internet while doing setup and getting updates. Have not tried a more normal type of browsing session yet to see how that feels. It uses LXDE for the desktop and Chromium for the browser. I have not tried using the installed apps yet either, but my previous experience with less powerful, low memory computers is that everything seems good until you try to browse the internet. Web browsers are hogs. I would be interested in seeing a roundup showing how different light weight distributions compare to each other.

[@SUCRA]

Great video, love the alternative.

[@howiecourt3445]

Worth trying Puppy Linux on that machine, or Brad's newer project EasyOS. Both are well suited to very low powered hardware

[@jimw7916]

puppy actually flies!!!

[@MattKasdorf]

@@jimw7916 I used Puppy and Damn Small Linux years back on business card sized CDs. But then they fell out of favor. I have this the Canadian (same) version of this laptop I want to run VICE on, should I try AntiX first?

[@MichaelTheProtogenOFFICIAL]

you dont know about only the pc right, i used the laptop for minecraft in windows 7 in 1.8, and it were in 40 fps but. It was the cleanest thing i have seen in my life, but your always the best tech youtuber

[@questionablecommands9423]

Just a quick reminder that the default "swappiness" in most Linux distros is 60% and considering that the task manager in Zorin is keeping close to that mark, I'd be willing to bet that the machine is swapping to disk like crazy and that the overall used memory is likely a fair bit worse than what we're seeing reflected in that tool.

[@dejiko]

I recently put antiX on a very similarly underpowered netbook and had a blast doing it

[@spinviking]

Hi TH, thanks for another excellent video. Too much tinkering left my 11 year old HP G62 with only 2 gigs of RAM. Then Linux Lite, Zorin Lite 32-bit, and even Lubuntu would NOT install. I finally hit a bingo with Peppermint 10, 32-bit. Need a new video idea ? Explain us the advantages, (or disadvantages) of using 32 bit systems on older machines, even if they still have 64-bit systems. Thanks in advance.

[@HikingFeral]

I'm planning on getting an older ThinkPad because I love the idea of learning Linux on an older system

[@YannMetalhead]

Good video, I had never heard about Antix before.

[@luki8806]

Got a same spec netbook back in 2009. Sit down: I loved it. Still sitting? I still have it, and still love it. Back in the day, I used it with debian and openbox as a sysadmin. Back when I have to travel a lot and this little guy was my best friend. Literally putted into my pocket when I had to go onsite support local intranet systems, this PC was able to stay alive 7-8 hours without a power cord back in 2009. When I got back into my office I plugged in az external mouse/keyboard/monitor/speaker and that was my little office setup. Internet was not the bloat sh.t that is today, this little pc was perfectly fine for daily use, listening to music, do some light mail/office work, watch a few movies in the breaks or play a few hours of openttd. Today I use it as a little companion device, when we travel somewhere still in use to type some documents (little, but very easy to type on keyboard) or just use it to repair microSD cards if I screw up my rpi setup. Netbooks was great if you bought it really for what they capable of, but for regular windows based desktop use... it was one of the worst pc experience ever. ps: q4OS with TDE is a great choice for these beasts.

[@dlittlester]

I absolutely agree. My desktop computer is really fast, and it's what I use mostly all the time, but you couldn't claw my little HP from my cold dead hands!

[@EricBowersTrekkie]

I have an old Dell laptop with similar specs. Just for fun, I tried out Peppermint OS, Xubuntu, Q4OS, BunsenLabs, Antix, Bodhi, and Debian LXQT. Surprisingly, the winner was Debian LXQT, with Q4OS a close second. (What can I say, I'm retired and have too much time on my hands, lol.) Note, that every one of these were usable and better/faster than Window XP. It was really hard to decide which distro to leave on there. Thanks for the great video! Really enjoyed it.

[@stevenmendoza472]

i haven't tried Debian LXQT i will have to give it on my ventoy drive ..but its Q4OS for me for 32bit systems for now...

[@escapetherace1943]

how could you try all those old things and not tiny os for the meme? Just kidding, but really you should try mx linux

[@Kensownvids]

Nice video. I am sure there are tons of similar devices laying around. Use simple screen recorder to screen capture. Pretty resource friendly.

[@pmichael820]

Thank You TechHut / I needed this Video / Linux on an OLD laptop / I have an old ACER netbook that I just like. The look, the 11.6 screen, the color, etc. / I'm always looking for 32 bit distros. I use my other computers for serious ... but, the Acer is like a. fun sports car.

[@russellbrooks3622]

AntiX is pretty cool. Played around with it when I was using MX Linux heavily. (I left MX because Debian Stable was more like Debian Stale.)

[@rohmadabdulmaseh6845]

I think so...MX linux is getting bigger and slower. I need a replacement 👍

[@wisteela]

Linux really is great for making use of old machines. I will have to check out this distro.

[@dlittlester]

Retired now, but when I was working, I got permission to take Windows damaged machines home. I'd install Linux on them and give them to people who couldn't afford computers. It felt good to be able to do that.

[@icaoberg]

I loved that machine! I had a similar Atom machine from HP. I had some flavor of Linux running in it, I think either Debian or some early Ubuntu. All I remember is I loved it!

[@tcscushing]

Thanks much. I learned, I enjoyed.

[@liamjewell62]

I'd give bodhi or q4os a try as well, great video tho

[@Crus0e]

I have an acer aspir one wotj very similar specs, during the pandemics I tried my best to give it new life with an ssd and linux distros, I wanted to give it away to children in needs to use it for online class but I failed miserabily to make it usable. One famous italian linux youtuber installed a distro without any interface, only for coding and note taking, and it works really well. I think it's the only thing you can do with it

[@AbdelkaderBenRhouma]

I have a similar netbook with two gigs of ram. It's running Bunsenlabs linux (with openbox) like a champ now. What I like about Bunsenlabs is that you get the best of two worlds: speed and eyecandy.

[@nabildanial00]

I use the latest beta of AntiX on my main PC (Ryzen 5 5600X + RTX 3060 ti) and installed Gnome on it. Everything works great and by far the fastest and smoothest desktop experience I've ever had on Linux, and I've tried probably 16 distros this year.

[@1pcfred]

With those specs any Linux distro should be fast and smooth.

[@nabildanial00]

@@1pcfred you would think so, but all Arch based distro doesn't feel as smooth as the Debian based ones. The animations feel janky on my 360hz monitor.

[@Androdaninux]

omg i thought you were gonna talk shit about W7 at the 1:45 mark, i use windows 10 now but still think back with fond memories of how objectively good it was

[@krtirtho]

The Weirdest sponsorship I've ever seen in KZbin

[@DaltonMyWorld]

Thanks for your help

[@dip4fish]

I run Antix on thinkpad R50e 2Gb with a non PAE kernel, for months. I reinstalled MX linux 19 with forcepae option. The MX19 interface (the start menu, the file navigator, the wifi setup) is more usable for a colleague. With MX19, the laptop is about as reactive as with Antix. This 20 years old laptop run as fast as th win7 dell 3010 optiplex we have in our high school.

[@Agustin-ri1ih]

I always like these videos were old hardware is bring back to life using linux.

[@kledomuc1713]

I'm still using an EEE PC with 900Mhz on 32bit lubuntu wit 2Gb RAM. The CPU can be tuned to 1200Mhz. You can listen to radio, even watch youtube on 144 and even movies on mpv. Mostly I use it via ssh as a slave, i.e. it is doing rtorrent, wget and other work, in GUI I mostly do everything in command line. My son had before a single core AMD with maxed RAM to 4Gb on an ASUS board everything tuned to the limit, including an old pasive GPU converted to active cooling, the complete package running on 64bit Lubuntu. He has been playing Minecraft and other games, Steam unfortunately didn't work because of some missing CPU function. His friend with a much faster PC running on Windows was dreaming about a PC like that, but I had to explain that the PC is ancient. Later his father bought him a gaming notebook on Windows for home use, a really smart decision... Especially the children are learning a lot about PCs when configuring and "fixing" the system.

[@atticuscorbitt8199]

Jeez I think I had one of those in red like over a decade ago at least. Man that thing was a total nugget. That said I was like nine at the time and getting any kind of computer that was actually mine felt amazing

[@andrekeirsgieter2283]

I have to recondition an old eeepc for a friend with only 1 GB of RAM. It's a real challenge in 2024 for these machines because many distributions give up the 32 bit and 1 GB is also very low memory today for the recent Linux distributions and for a modern internet navigator. Fortunately Debian keep the 32 bit so a distribution based on Debian can do the job. It has to be easy for a Linux beginner, not too ugly and with a very light desktop. I found Q4OS and AntiX ; Q4OS is lighter than AntiX but AntiX is more beautifull than Q4OS. I tried both in virtual machines and finally I think I will choose AntiX. Thanks for your video, We reached the same conclusion.

[@johnvodopija]

I was going to comment on how Hollywood your smile/teeth look and bam up pops the toothbrush sponsor 😂 jokes aside I enjoyed the video. I have a crappy old tablet pc that needs this treatment too. Cheers 👍😎🇦🇺

[@fosoo9948]

Lol his smile is evething!

[@aether64bit]

Fun fact about HP laptops: They have a Linux distro preinstalled by default which is called “Quickweb”

[@dauf69]

Quickweb was the shit yo, being so damn slow despite launching on startup.

[@aether64bit]

@@dauf69 true. It didn’t even have a terminal lmao

[@UNSCPILOT]

Even my new cheap HP laptop is still a modestly serviceable/upgradable machine too, just fitted it with 16 gigs of ram and I have an M.2 on the way for it, been running "Garuda Dragonized" of a USB SSD and having a lot of fun, as soon as that M.2 gets here that Garuda install is going to be permanent. Same plan for my desktop which is a modest VR rig, though that will deffinitly stay a dual boot system until I have a replacement for my "Windows Mixed Reality headset" because, of course, that *only works with Windows*

[@cleavisnowell1240]

May be the best option for an HP with Ubuntu infected with Spectre & Meltdown.

[@ninjanerdstudent6937]

This was how I discovered Linux distros many years ago. If you have an old computer, just slap some Linux on it, and make it functional! The reputation of Linux has been like this for the longest time prior to "planned obsolescence" becoming a concept.

[@pip5528]

I remember a cheap little Toshiba my family had since 2010 that also came with Windows 7 Starter. I had dual-booted Manjaro on it for a while and while it technically has an SSD, it got so slow, especially once it was full.

[@RoxasEarnshaw]

I had the MSI version of this netbook back in the days I had slackware running xfce bare bone. I still have it on my channel.

[@ninjason57]

I had an Acer netbook I used in college and it was perfect. I even emulated some n64/ps1 games!

[@user-kw8kh8dg3h]

My first laptop was a mini 210... Loved it back then

[@wongkokcheng6196]

Have you tried installing Q4OS? It is also another Debian bases lightweight OS. I used it to replace a Windows XP 32bit laptop.

[@cipherxen2]

I've installed windows 10 build 10240. Works like a charm. Very smooth.

[@LeslieLanagan]

There used to be a netbook distribution called "Easy Peasy" about 20 years ago that was so much fun when you have so little real estate. I think it got folded into the mate-netbook package, but that's my go-to for that form factor.

[@andrewd4906]

I had one of these. It was so slow. It was the reason I got my first chromebook, Chromebooks were real netbooks.

[@Feli_Heli_]

My go to lightweight distro is actually lubuntu. I've tried zorinos and mint on some older computers, and found them both to be too heavy, while lubuntu seems to work wonders. Although I have yet to test it on a computer as low spec as the one in the video lol. I wonder how lubuntu would run on it?

[@seguramlk]

After Lubuntu ditching LXDE on 20.04 going forward I kind of don't get the same feel as I did back on 18.04 which was the last version of it to use LXDE. But if it works for you, it works for you.

[@CFWhitman]

Lubuntu is certainly lighter than Zorin or Mint, but AntiX is easily lighter than it. AntiX is built on Debian's repositories, and the associated distribution MX Linux can be quite lightweight as well. Also Debian proper is very lightweight when you make the appropriate selections during installation. It's a bit more "do it yourself" than AntiX and MX Linux though.

[@jadedtermite2513]

I also preferred using lubuntu but after they switched to lxqt, it seemed too heavy for me.

[@0xDEAD_Inside]

ATM, stock kubuntu is lighter than lubuntu

[@Feli_Heli_]

@@0xDEAD_Inside I'll have to check it out then

[@dudeguy7988]

On something like this it would honestly probably be best to use debian stable with a window manager like i3 or Qtile. As much as I love arch I'm just gonna assume the bleeding edge wouldn't work too well on that.

[@allenellisdewitt]

Frist I have actually seen if antiX, I'd love to see more.

[@moetocafe]

Looks great. Potato revived!

[@JK-lj4lp]

These old netbooks run Batocera pretty well for a portable retro gaming machine. I ditched the hard drive and run everything from an SD card.

[@nathanbmanutd]

linux and an old computer is a match made in heaven lolllllllllllll

[@monemperor1559]

I have a crappy 13 year old ThinkPad I still use. it was basically crippled by windows so I would try distros like pop which were still too heavy. i couldn't get comfy with xfce ane al the while, it would be sluggish as hell. i eventually installed arch with kde(yeah I could look for something lighter ik) and it actually runs smooth as long as I don't have too much open. this laptop is like a fighter to me now and I don't wanna replace it lol. I'll check out antix. cool video. i initially thought mine was way worse than your laptop, but I was dead wrong!

[@sagejpc1175]

The toothbrush company must be a fan of FOSS as well as FLOSS

[@RobertRobertson7]

I would like to see a video on Ubuntu. The pros and cons of the OS. What the OS/ interface/ System can do? What kind of performance can I expect to get out of it? Is it worth putting in the time and effort to remake an old laptop with the Ubuntu OS? What can I expect to get out of it? Thanks!

[@FlyboyHelosim]

One of the biggest problems with these netbooks is not only the low-end specs, but many are 32-bit only and also don't support booting from a USB drive. This makes not only finding a good lightweight OS trickier than usual, but then actually installing it a nightmare as well. That was my recent experience with a Dell Inspiron mini 1010 netbook.

[@dlittlester]

I found out much later that my HP could handle 64 bit. All this time I've been playing with 32 bit distros. It made a difference.

[@TheWilldrick]

I still have mine, running Haiku Also, MSI U100 is far worse than that, the scrolling part of the trackpad on the HP is at least bigger than your finger

[@elu9780]

antiX is an excellent Linux distro. I use it both on my crappy Celeron N3060 2GB DDR3 laptop and my main PC that has Ryzen 5 5600, 16GB 3200MHz DDR4, and RX 6700 XT. Makes it look like magic when it's so light yet it runs damn everything.

[@oooo0O0oooo]

How to install it on laptop bro? @elu9780

[@dugtrioramen]

Yo that old thing opens stuff up faster than my current windows 10 laptop

[@bowieknife]

Thanks for introducing antix to me... Is there any chance of making a guide on how to install antix onto the hp netbook?

[@Tatar_Piano]

puppy linux?

[@FuchsiaShocked]

I've got a similar spec netbook, it used to be perfectly adequate running Windows XP ULCPC Edition in 2010 when I got it (I suspect I would have hated to have had Win 7 on it though). Nowadays, after trying several other lightweight distros and finding them too slow, I run antix on it.

[@persia106]

I 've been using Bodhi Linux 32 bit on my Asus EeePC 1101HA for some time now, and, having tested numerous other Linux distros (including but not limited to: Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Linux Mint XFCE, Linux Lite, ZorinOS Lite, TinyCore Linux, AntiX Linux, Xandros Linux, etc), as well as, Windows XP and Windows 7, I can safely say it's doing good in terms of performance (Intel atom z520 with 2GB DDR2 RAM and WD Green 120GB SSD). Not exciting performance by today's standards though, but remember, it's already 12 years old... For daily tasks, some really light browsing (2 tabs in chromium at most) and as tested recently a Zoom video-conference -without active camera obviously-, it's still quite good!

[@bodhilinux9724]

Cool to hear :)

[@HenningStrandin]

One of my favorite computers is an eMachines EM350 with Puppy Linux installed to the HD. It has approx. the same specs as your HP, possibly worse graphics. I mostly use it to run stuff remotely. With a new 9 hr battery it's just my most portable computer with a good keyboard. It has great overall build quality. Also all kinds of ports (my modern super slim laptop has 3 USB-C ports, and that's it.)

[@billiardoxx]

Generally when updating an app (new version) it means more demand of resources (hardware and software) from host, among many things else. Is the same with every new version of Linux kernel?

[@DarkAngel9999G4]

it reminds me of the msi netbook I bought on 2009 with win xp. about the same specs but with win xp I could do also gaming. amongst the games it could run no problem at all was mafia 1-2, max payne 1-2, sid meier's pirates and many others. I am still trying to revive it with a suitable linux edition.