Linux? On an old laptop?

builder22 · 28 Oct 2021 at 08:45

Have an old Dell laptop … T4200 2ghz 3GB RAM….the ONLY thing it’s used for is YouTube using Firefox and a Firefox add-on called Video Speed Controller…don’t need it to do anything else
have win 10 on it just now, it’s ok once the video has loaded on YouTube but starting up, searching for other videos etc can take ages sometimes, and sometimes freezes when watching, ffwd, riding etc the video

Would Linux or some other OS be a good idea?
Or maybe better trying to strip back win 10 somehow?

emu · 28 Oct 2021 at 21:45

peppermint os should run well

Nevakonaza · 30 Oct 2021 at 08:38

Try lubuntu, it's very light and should make that laptop much snappier compared to Windows.

TangoEchoAlpha · 2 Nov 2021 at 00:30

If you don't get on with Lubuntu, try Xubuntu instead, based upon XFCE. Lubuntu is lighter though

I have also never tried it, but Linux Lite is probably worth a look as well. Based upon Ubuntu in part, but very low system requirements.

jennidc · 3 Nov 2021 at 21:05

Lubuntu or puppy linux are both great for lighter hardware.

I tried out lubuntu on my old dell i5 last week and it was absolutely rapid. I'm going to use it to setup retropie. I setup megadrive emulation on it which worked well. I would like to setup 80s arcade games next like juno first, defender, roc n rope and galaga.

Rainmaker · 4 Nov 2021 at 15:57

As above, any lightweight distro will make a difference but check whether your CPU supports x64 or is x86 only. Some distros have dropped 32 bit support, but Debian definitely still supports it and is very light and lean. It's a little bit more fiddly to set up than an Ubuntu derivative though, but not much at all really. You'll get a nice experience on KDE Plasma imo. It's much nicer to look at than the very basic desktop environments (XFCE, LXDE etc) and these days uses less RAM than even XFCE, which was traditionally known as a very lightweight desktop. Win/win really.

Assuming an Intel CPU, install libva, vaapi and add h264ify extension to Firefox (for GPU offload in YouTube), and you're good to go. If your CPU does support x64 then Kubuntu or one of the other lighter derivative will serve you well, and as I said be a little bit easier to set up (albeit heavier in day to day usage). In that case still install h264ify in Firefox, but you can get all the graphics stuff sorted with 'sudo apt install kubuntu-restricted-extras'. Log out and back in or reboot for it to take effect.