Which distro would you install on a celeron 2gb ram laptop for a lay person to use?

[solarpunker@slrpnk.net]

VoidLinux

[thebardingreen@lemmy.starlightkel.xyz]

Mint.

It's extremely stable Linux for your grandma, that comes with every tool that she will ever use and on the cinnamon interface all those tools are exactly where she will expect them to be if she is used to using Windows.

I've gotten three boomers to use it and they hardly ever ask for tech support because it's so stable.

[penguin202124@sh.itjust.works]

Raspberry Pi OS

[boebbele@discuss.tchncs.de]

minios
https://minios.dev/

[presi300@lemmy.world]

AntiX or Alpine

[markstos@lemmy.world]

I agree the question here is not so much which distro but which browser.

Todays low-end laptops often come with 8 GB of RAM. Even common phones have more than 2 GB of RAM.

[gayhitler@lemmy.ml]

Debian, lxqt and x11.

If you can get an ssd in there then there’s some zram or something or other that can make it even better.

[kualk@lemm.ee]

It is probably the best solution to the low memory problem, but it is also the least common and may be the most difficult.

[data1701d@startrek.website]

Debian is on the right track. XFCE might work - I remember it running pretty well on a laptop with 4 gigs.

[grumpyduckling@sh.itjust.works]

Windows 10 has a bug with 100% disk utilization that goes away if you have an ssd. You should look into upgrading the ram to 4 or 8 gb. ddr3 ram is dirt cheap on ebay. It would probably cost $10-$15 for 8gb and another $10 for a 120gb ssd.

[solarpunker@slrpnk.net]

There is a xfce live edition and a good wiki

[phanto@lemmy.ca]

Linux Mint Debian Edition: xfce, Firefox running, 12 tabs open, just under 3GB utilized. All my usual stuff open too, Telegram, Next cloud, etc.

I bet you'd be good with it and an SSD and a bit of swap. (I have no swap used.)

[joekrogan@lemmy.world]

Puppy or Debian with openbox or another light wm , is crunchbang still a thing ?.

[adarza@lemmy.ca]

for linux and the most basic of basic tasks, i'd look at peppermint. it's what i put on all the old crap here with 'marginal' specs that choke on windows. debian stable xfce based. base install is pretty sparse, not even a browser is included initially. a utility pops up after first boot to facilitate installing a browser, media player, and a few other things if you want them, or the entire debian stable repository is also available. one thing of note. with only 2gb ram, it's gonna be tight, whatever he runs on it.

his use case is screaming for a cheap chromebook, though. so at least consider that instead. an old laptop like that might make someone a nice little pihole or something, if it's not ready to be put down for good.

[dfx4509b_2@lemmy.org]

Puppy would fly on there, or even DSL 2024.

[0x0@programming.dev]

Last time i searched for "lightweight" linux distros (for an old Thnkpad) the ones i saw recommended the most were: TinyCore, Puppy, Porteus, Absolute, antiX, Q4OS, Slax,, Sparky, MX.
I saw Bohdi and other Ubuntu-based distros suggested quite a lot as well but my definition of lightweight means under 1GiB usage.
For a DE go with XFCE or some other lightweight DE.

[0x0@programming.dev]

32 bit version of firefox, because it makes a huge difference in low ram devices.

How so? What CPU does she have?

[0x0@programming.dev]

How is that sad for an old machine?

[0x0@programming.dev]

it will be slow

Then it's a bad recommendation.

[mynameisrichard@lemmy.ml]

To be honest, I wouldn't on a 2Gb laptop. It'll run Linux just fine but the minute you use a browser or office suite you'll have memory problems.