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

[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!

[utopiah@lemmy.ml]

Why wouldn't Debian run?

Debian is the OS, with its package manager and some applications suggested by default. You can install Debian with X, without X, with a certain window manager or another, etc. So... Debian WILL 100% run, the question rather is WHICH software should you pick that gives the best compromise between ease of use (specific to that person) AND performance (specific to that computer).

PS: to be clear, that's the same for other distributions. There are distributions that specifically target older hardware and that in turn might facilitate the process but usually if you do check how such distributions are done, they are basically Debian (or NixOS or Alpine or whatever) with a specific package selection. It's rare (if ever? counter-example) to have anything special that would somehow "boost" performance for hardware, especially here when it's rather common hardware.