[svlug] Linux for older laptop

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 15 Nov 2017 08:22:10 -0800
Michael Eager <eager at eagerm.com> wrote:

> Hi All --
> 
> I have an older laptop with a 32-bit Pentium M processor.  It has
> been running Fedora 10 and I wanted to upgrade to something not quite
> so ancient.  Fedora 26 KDE runs, but very slow.
> 
> There are lots of recommendations online for distros for old/slow 
> laptops.  I'm not an Ubuntu fan, but it seems that this is the most 
> common base.  I'm seeing online recommendations of Lubuntu or LXLE.
> 
> Does anyone have a recommendation or comments?

I've been extremely happy using Void Linux with (sometimes) Openbox or
(sometimes) LXDE. I run this setup on my 2GB RAM circa 2006 Acer
laptop, and it performs marvelously (till you run firefox, but,  well,
that's a whole nother thing).

If you have misgivings about running a rolling release distro, well, so
do I. It sounds like a bad idea. But after 2 years of running Void
Linux on all my actual metal computers, I can tell you I've had less
problems with rolling-release Void than I had with all my other
distinct-version distros. And I get to run some pretty modern software:

==========================================================
[slitt at mydesk ~]$ gcc -v 2>&1 | tail -n1
gcc version 7.2.0 (GCC) 
[slitt at mydesk ~]$ python3 -V
Python 3.6.3
[slitt at mydesk ~]$ uname -rv
4.13.10_1 #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Oct 29 17:25:31 UTC 2017
[slitt at mydesk ~]$
==========================================================

If I were to reboot my computer right now, the Linux version would move
to 4.13.13_1.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
November 2017 featured book: Troubleshooting: Just the Facts
http://www.troubleshooters.com/tjust