Arch Linux

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 13,255

suitable Distro / DE for newbie on old pc

Someone i know has acquired an old compaq desktop, an Evo D310 .
It has a celeron 1700 Mhz, 256 MiB Ram and 20 GB HDD ( and a very old non-functional windows xp install).

After checking what he wants to do with the system, we decided a linux installation is the best choice.

Given the low specs, Gnome and KDE are to heavy.
Automounting and playing music files are 2 things this user needs, and this will be his first linux experience.

For DE i lean towards XFCE, but the distro choice is harder.
The *buntu, Fedora and Suse distros have far to much bloat .

Linux mint XFCE looks good, does anyone have experience with it ?

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Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky

Unia

Member

From: Stockholm, Sweden

Registered: 2010-03-30

Posts: 2,486

Website

Re: suitable Distro / DE for newbie on old pc

I heard Mint XFCE is rather harsh on resources, as well. I would promote Crunchbang, either with XFCE or Openbox:
www.crunchbanglinux.org

It was my distro before switching to Arch. It's stable, fast, lightweight and I definitely recommend it!
EDIT: Also, the community is a big plus. It's very friendly, even for the people who just started with Linux - so your friend shouldn't feel 'not welcome'
En er zijn daar een aantal Nederlanders die ongetwijfeld willen helpen!

Last edited by Unia (2011-08-17 23:06:29)

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Tom4hawk

Member

Registered: 2010-06-07

Posts: 7

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Re: suitable Distro / DE for newbie on old pc

LXDE will be much better then XFCE. XFCE is not as lightweight as it was few years ago. 256 MB of ram is not enough for it...

I think Lubuntu (or arch+lxde ) is a good choice for this compaq.
From the other hand, you can buy some ram and use any DE you want.

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Inxsible

Forum Fellow

From: Chicago

Registered: 2008-06-09

Posts: 9,183

Re: suitable Distro / DE for newbie on old pc

run Openbox with bmpanel -- doesn't matter what distro is beneath it - even Ubuntu -- as long as you do the minimal install.

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Mr_ED-horsey

Member

From: Portland, OR

Registered: 2011-04-06

Posts: 177

Re: suitable Distro / DE for newbie on old pc

tiny core linux: http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/welcome.html... Or Puppy Linux: http://www.puppylinux.com/

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Desktop: Fedora 21 Mate + Compiz [x86_64] on 2 TiB HDD  /  Windows 7 Professional [x86_64] on 500 GiB HDD
Laptop: Arch Linux + Openbox [i686] 120 GiB SSD on Acer c720 Chromebook

Andyvec

Member

From: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Registered: 2010-10-12

Posts: 30

Website

Re: suitable Distro / DE for newbie on old pc

...I think Lubuntu (or arch+lxde ) is a good choice .....

+1

Lubuntu is the best choise in this case. Is modern, consume fewer resources (far less than any XFCE) and as is based on Ubuntu it is a very easy to use distro with access to all the beneficts of using a popular distribution (lots of programs, well integration, extended comunity support, etc). And when you grow are welcome here in Arch!

Leonid.I

Member

From: Aethyr

Registered: 2009-03-22

Posts: 999

Re: suitable Distro / DE for newbie on old pc

I say any distro will require a lot of tweaking, so choose the one YOU are comfortable with. I would focus rather on app selection. For instance,  trade firefox in favor for midori/links -g.

Last edited by Leonid.I (2011-08-19 20:05:31)

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Arch Linux is more than just GNU/Linux -- it's an adventure
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Iranon

Member

Registered: 2011-06-11

Posts: 146

Re: suitable Distro / DE for newbie on old pc

If your friend prefers a GUI-driven system, I'd recommend Linux Mint Debian XFCE:

XFCE is a rock solid DE with few surprises, Mint is very good when it comes to usability enhancements, the Debian editions alleviate the problem of having too many ways to manage software and run considerably lighter than the Ubuntu-based ones.
If your friend is comfortable with newbie-readable text files and prefers a direct feel, Archbang is an interesting alternative.

The absolutely best experience available on modest (or any?) hardware would probably be a well-configured FVWM though. Unfortunately, I'm not sure such a thing exists, much less on a live cd with good out-of-the-box functionality.

ancient_archer

Member

From: Slovakia

Registered: 2010-03-13

Posts: 107

Re: suitable Distro / DE for newbie on old pc

I use Linux on a very similar system (but with more RAM - 768 MB SDRAM(!)) and I run Linux Mint 9 normal edition but with XFCE installed and it runs quite ok. Still, you can install LXDE or Openbox.

Or perhaps try Lubuntu as was suggested... Good luck with finding what suits you best.

damacas

Member

From: Ontario, Canada

Registered: 2011-05-27

Posts: 50

Re: suitable Distro / DE for newbie on old pc

You might want to give AnitX a look.  Based on Mepis/Debian Testing with Slim + IceWM or Fluxbox.  It should run on your machine without much trouble.

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 13,255

Re: suitable Distro / DE for newbie on old pc

As the friend who will be using the desktop liked what he heard from me about archlinux, we settled on starting with archlinux + lxde.

arxh basic install is on the desktop now, tomorrow the graphic stuff will be installed.
then he'll try arch/lxde a few weeks, if it turns out it doesn't suit him i'll look into alternatives.

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Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky

ninian

Member

From: United Kingdom

Registered: 2008-02-24

Posts: 726

Website

Re: suitable Distro / DE for newbie on old pc

Openbox 3.5 + fbpanel (+ idesk if required for desktop icons) would be my choice.
Stable and very light!

Valter

Member

Registered: 2011-08-24

Posts: 1

Re: suitable Distro / DE for newbie on old pc

ConnochaetOS:
http://www.connochaetos.org

458italia

Member

Registered: 2011-02-04

Posts: 20

Re: suitable Distro / DE for newbie on old pc

Or use IceWM (set up with the menu links and everything) with thunar or some lightweight file manager that does automounting, seems like a fool proof setup (I'm also assuming that the user is familiar with the start-taskbar list paradigm of managing windows, which is why I said icewm as opposed to fluxbox or openbox)

nawitus

Member

Registered: 2009-05-11

Posts: 112

Re: suitable Distro / DE for newbie on old pc

LXDE. Ram usage after boot is about 100MiB for me personally. It's also easy to use.

dwindle

Member

From: /dev/urandom/

Registered: 2009-05-15

Posts: 85

Website

Re: suitable Distro / DE for newbie on old pc

Sounds like you made a good choice with ArchLinux and LXDE. As I have a similar situation to ammend (newbie being relegated to a semi-ancient HP Pavilion), I got some nice ideas from this thread.

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