So i have a bunch of pc’s/laptops/computers and such that my family members refuse to depart with even though there really bad. so far they mangae to keep 4 bulky computers in total, we do have some new-ish ones but theses ones im talking about need some loving.1 computer is 32 bit and has 2gb of ram, the other 3 have 64-bit and range from 1gb of ram- to 2 and one of which has only 75 space hardrive.

are there any linux distros that might work becasue im a noob who uses windows so im very lost. any tips or suggestions or something would be great.

also if im posting in the wrong plac eplease let me know in the comments.

  • silent_clash@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    Puppy Linux runs on a potato of any architecture and is super user friendly (grandpa certified)! Only 300 MB or so. https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/

    I know a lot of people recommended Mint, which I personally use on my very modern budget gaming pc, but you should really try Puppy Linux, it’s meant for the exact use case you’re describing.

  • rimu@lemmy.nzEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Browser choice is probably going to make just as much difference as distro choice. Modern browsers kinda need at least 1 GB to be usable, ideally more. Depends what you do with it of course.

    Try Pale Moon, Falkon and Konqueror.

    • naoseiquemsou@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      In my experience, palemoon struggles a lot with modern JavaScript-bloated sites and becomes much slower to use. My suggestion is to use 32bit firefox.

    • ShySpark@lemmy.fmhy.mlOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      alright and are you sure that is the best starter option? also what can i do on linux compared to windows?

      • PEnorman@beehaw.orgEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago
        • Gaming is less stable overall but it’s exponentially better now thanks to Valve and the Steam Deck driving support. Like seriously, from a cointoss whether it even launches a couple years ago to 74% Gold or Platinum on the top 1000 games on Steam.
        • Programming is easier (you can ask your commandline to install all you need at once instead of having to painstakingly individually install and set up requirements or addons to programming languages), but you don’t have access to Visual Studio if you’re working on C# or C++.
        • Web browsing is identical, watching movies too. I’ve never had a problem using LibreOffice and OnlyOffice as a replacement for Word and PowerPoint, but I don’t use many complicated features in Word or PowerPoint so your mileage may vary.
        • Photoshop, Premiere, etc are a pain to get good replacements for, OBS for recording and DaVinci Resolve for editing is a really powerful pair though.
        • I vouch for Mint with XFCE too. It was very fast on my laptop and some of the themes now are pretty. It barely uses any RAM. It has a Windows-style start menu and taskbar.

        Just be warned that your family members will probably have (usually solvable) issues if they want to do anything beyond web browsing. It’s a different operating system after all and it works differently in a lot of ways. Definitely recommend looking up some videos about Mint, XFCE, transitioning from Windows to Linux.

      • aMalayali@beehaw.orgEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        best option

        Ubuntu is popular and new-user friendly. And xfce is generally lighter on resources. It’s a good choice.

        What can I do

        Almost everything.
        Some proprietary apps you’ve used from windows may not be available, but equivalent ones would be available on linux.
        Stuff like browsing the web(provided that you don’t open too many tabs, because you have low ram) and watching movies n all is quite good.
        What all things fo you intend to do on it? I think it’ll be easier to check that the things you want are there.

  • Himawari@lemmy.4d2.orgEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I’d suggest Debian with LXDE, which, from my personal experience, works pretty fine on low-end computers. You can replace LXDE with your choice of Windows Managers for an even lighter system, but that might be a little hard if you’ve never used Linux before.

  • 20gramsWrench@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    those are very low specs for every day distros (meaning usable for the general public), you might get away with linux mint xfce, if it ends up usable on those machine and not lag too much then don’t bother with anything else, otherwise you might have to install lighter stuff like antix or lxle. If none of the above are usable you can always install puppy linux, it can run on a toaster but is not very pleasant to use. note that regardless of distro, surfing the web is going to be a chore due to half of the modern internet being heavy as fuck and hard to run, you might want to look for alternative frontend to websites like piped for youtube, urlebird for tiktok etc.

  • jerry@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    My favorite very light is peppermintOS, I think you may have to go back to version 10 for 32 bit though.

  • Marxine@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    For a more “friendly flavored” distro, MX Linux is Debian-based and comes with a bunch of quality of life tools

  • onepinksheep@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    Considering that you’re planning to use this with family members who aren’t tech savvy, and as you’re essentially new to Linux yourself, I would suggest something like Zorin OS. The familiarity and ease of use should help you get started fairly quickly, even for newbies. There are a lot of other great distros, of course, some of which were mentioned here, but the learning curve for those can be just a bit steeper. As someone who’s essentially the “tech guy” of the family, believe me when I say you don’t want them to keep bugging you about questions or tech help because they “don’t understand” Linux. You want something that you just install and leave be.

    Speaking of something that you can just install and leave, this isn’t strictly Linux, but a great OS to use for non-tech savvy family members is Chrome OS. Get Chrome OS Flex, install it on an old laptop, give it to your family members and call it a day. I’ve had success with it for some of my family members who’ve wanted to revive old laptops. It’s a lot more limited than full featured desktop operating systems, of course, but it’s perfectly suitable for the basic stuff. Best of all, it’s so easy to use that you usually wouldn’t even have to play tech support for your family for it.

  • Parallax@kbin.social
    0·
    1 year ago

    I’d like to do something similar on my Pentium 3 box. Maybe Debian with a really light WM would be a good fit, maybe IceWM? It only has 512MB of RAM though so I might have to go even lighter than Debian. I also have an Athlon XP box with 2GB of RAM, but that’s too new to be fun. :p

  • keet@kbin.social
    0·
    1 year ago

    I would suggest Mint. Considering the hardware, the XFCE version. Have you looked into any hardware upgrades for these machines? I’ve found that a simple ram or hdd–>ssd upgrade can be rather inexpensive these days.

    • Sorchist@kbin.social
      0·
      1 year ago

      There are a lot of distros which are more focused on old hardware than Mint, but Mint definitely wins in the “this distro will be familiar and discoverable to people who are used to Windows” department. If it works, it’s great for that reason.