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

[disonantezko@lemmy.sdf.org]

But web browsers and video players are going to be painful with any distro.

[zod000@lemmy.ml]

I was always a fan of crunchbang when I used a couple of eee pcs as servers. It ran very light.

[lefantome@programming.dev]

Run a 32 bit distro. It is the only thing that will run well on 2 GB of RAM. It will run better than you think.

Q4OS, Antix, MX Linux, Damn Small Linux, and even pure 32 bit Debian are decent candidates. If you use Q4, give the Trinity desktop a shot.

I like Andelie Linux as well but MUSL may cause problems for an unsophisticated user.

[lefantome@programming.dev]

A 32 bit distro will make a BIG difference with that much RAM.

[lefantome@programming.dev]

Q4OS with Trinity is a great pick for this user. Alpine is great but MUSL may cause problems. And I say this as a MUSL use (Chimera Linux). You are not going to find 32 but Flatpaks and Distrobox may be too complicated. So, I would stay away from MUSL based distros with 32 bit Linux on a 2 GB system.

MX and Antix are also Debian based and have 32 bit versions.

[lefantome@programming.dev]

You would be amazed how much 32 bit helps. If you do not open too many tabs, the web should be fine. Video no problem ( at reasonable resolutions).

[lefantome@programming.dev]

How so?

32 bit pointers take up half as much RAM as 64 bit pointers. A complicated application like a web browser consumes much more memory as a 64 bit app than it does as a 32 bit app. That is true of most programs but you are really going to notice it in both desktop environment and your web browser.

[robber@lemmy.ml]

I recently had to use a friend's old 4gb macbook for some weeks because my laptop was stolen. I was surprised how well everything worked, even when using a few web apps in firefox. I think with using zram and avoiding web / electron apps where possible, you might get quite something out of a 4gb machine.

[solrize@lemmy.world]

I'm on a 4gb machine right now and it's tolerable if I don't do too many things at once, but Google Docs bogs in particular bogs it down.

[limelight79@lemm.ee]

Maybe he's going to run Links and Wordstar!

[dx1@lemmy.ml]

Last time I checked (a few years ago) Firefox has half the memory usage of Chrome, in practice.

[notagoblin@lemmy.world]

I put Antix on a 2Gb 64bit HP Atom. Worked well for notes and browsing. Oddly an SSD seemed to make little difference to performance compared to the previous HDD.
Old architecture I guess.

[captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works]

Is Crunchbang still maintained?

[dfx4509b_2@lemmy.org]

The Goanna browsers will run on pretty low-spec hardware, and there's also h.264ify for sites like YT, unless Google blocked YT from loading on Goanna browsers.

[mukt@lemmy.ml]

This is good RAM for any 32 bit OS which is still being maintained.
64 bit OS require minimum 4 GB.

I don't think Google will like any 32 bit device though. Go for an older version from libreoffice.

[reversalhatchery@beehaw.org]

I'm not sure that cpu will be able to handle memory compression with a usable speed. I would expect it to make it even slower

[aliteralcabbage@feddit.uk]

Crunchbang was amazing, but it's sadly no more. Development stopped on it some time in 2015 I think.

Bunsenlabs is a direct successor to it, and should be good on OP's system.

[aliteralcabbage@feddit.uk]

Bunsenlabs is the successor to crunchbang.

[joekrogan@lemmy.world]

Good to know. I always liked #!

[aliteralcabbage@feddit.uk]

Ditto, I used it on my eepc 701 way back when. I miss that sort of computing experience!