Light linux distribution for old netbook

[pkladisios]

Greetings!
I have an old netbook (atom, 2gb ram) that is currently struggling under windows 7. It is extremely unresponsive. Since the hardware of a laptop/netbook is slightly more fussy (touchpad, wireless adapter etc.), i would like your opinion on a suitable distribution. Is Debian a fit candidate? It's sole purpose would be to play videos.
Thank you in advance.

[bw123]

yeah it's fine on atom n450 with 2 gigs, pretty shnappy. When I got this dell it had been downgraded to xp for the same reason you mentioned, but xp driver for the touchpad really sucked, and lets face it, xp on a netbook is really bland.

[dasein]

I have an old netbook (atom, 2gb ram)...
[snip]
Is Debian a fit candidate? It's sole purpose would be to play videos.

You need to be more specific about your intended use. That hardware would be fine for playing locally-installed videos off the HDD, but it's not going to play streaming HD content fullscreen in real time without lag, no matter what OS you install.

That said, getting multimedia to work in Debian requires more effort than many other distros (no codecs, etc). Only you can decide if that extra effort is worth it to you.

[alan stone]

Did you have a look here?
with checking, amongst others, the following checkboxes:
- distribution category: multimedia, netbooks, old computers
- architecture: ...

[pkladisios]

yeah it's fine on atom n450 with 2 gigs, pretty shnappy. When I got this dell it had been downgraded to xp for the same reason you mentioned, but xp driver for the touchpad really sucked, and lets face it, xp on a netbook is really bland.

Yeah, xp would be quite a step back. On a side note, i am not so sure that xp drivers exist at all. Some companies just don't care!

I have an old netbook (atom, 2gb ram)...
[snip]
Is Debian a fit candidate? It's sole purpose would be to play videos.

You need to be more specific about your intended use. That hardware would be fine for playing locally-installed videos off the HDD, but it's not going to play streaming HD content fullscreen in real time without lag, no matter what OS you install.

That said, getting multimedia to work in Debian requires more effort than many other distros (no codecs, etc). Only you can decide if that extra effort is worth it to you.

Locally-installed videos would be my case. As far as the multimedia aspect in concerned, so far vlc was sufficient.

Did you have a look here?
with checking, amongst others, the following checkboxes:
- distribution category: multimedia, netbooks, old computers
- architecture: ...

I wasn't aware of that. However, upon trying a broad search, it came up with lots of ubuntu-based distributions. That can't be good .

I was thinking about Porteus but it's Slackware-based. I'm afraid it would be difficult to handle for a beginner such as myself.

[dasein]

I'm afraid it would be difficult to handle for a beginner such as myself.

Debian is not particularly beginner-friendly, nor does it try to be.

If you're willing to spend several hours researching and troubleshooting multimedia issues, then Debian is a viable choice. Otherwise, you'd be better served finding a multimedia-friendly respin or derivative.

[arochester]

I was thinking about Porteus but it's Slackware-based. I'm afraid it would be difficult to handle for a beginner such as myself.

Porteus actually isn't that hard. I've tried it before . A customised OS is downloaded and it doesn't really need any configuration.

[GarryRicketson]

I have had good results with
MX-14, on other types of laptops that came with Windows XP when
they were new,...
http://www.mepis.org/node/179

Just the other day, I installed MX 15, to a older Dell laptop,
It had Windows 7 on it, when I got it,

the touchpad really sucked

even with windows 7,
and the touch pad still "sucks", but with a USB mouse,instead it works
great.
My thoughts are that the problem with the touch pad is not so much
a driver issue, or OS, but it is just not very good touch pad,,...to be honest
I hate using the touch pads on any laptop,..... I like a mouse better.

[bester69]

You've a great debian (stable) testing distro with a lot of light Desktop's to choose,

Sparky give you a Tool to select differentes desktops to choose (Sparky APTus app).:
https://sparkylinux.org/download/

subir gif


I Think LXQT is good light desktop, also LXDE,Xfce and MATE, i think there are others still lighter among them..

[qyron]

Greetings!

Hi! Welcome to the Debian User Forums.

I have an old netbook (atom, 2gb ram) that is currently struggling under windows 7. It is extremely unresponsive.

Sounds pretty much like my Eeepc. And I used to have that same problem when I got it.

Since the hardware of a laptop/netbook is slightly more fussy (touchpad, wireless adapter etc.), i would like your opinion on a suitable distribution. Is Debian a fit candidate? It's sole purpose would be to play videos.
Thank you in advance.

It is, if you're willing to put in some effort to configure it right. Debian is extremely flexible and reliable. As it has been previously stated, it isn't that much user friendly (when compared with other distros) but its not that evil to work with.

For more user friendly, lightweight distros, I would suggest going for Bodhi Linux or Manjaro Linux. There are even more lightweight distros but they come at a cost of being less friendly.

edit
The most resource hungry part of an OS is mostly the user interface. Choosing a lightweight desktop is bound to get you more bang out of that machine. XFCE, to mention a more polished desktop works wonders on my machine. LXDE the same. And these are pretty much out of the box.

[stevepusser]

I have had good results with
MX-14, on other types of laptops that came with Windows XP when
they were new,...
http://www.mepis.org/node/179

Just the other day, I installed MX 15, to a older Dell laptop,
It had Windows 7 on it, when I got it,

the touchpad really sucked

even with windows 7,
and the touch pad still "sucks", but with a USB mouse,instead it works
great.
My thoughts are that the problem with the touch pad is not so much
a driver issue, or OS, but it is just not very good touch pad,,...to be honest
I hate using the touch pads on any laptop,..... I like a mouse better.

MX 16 is on the verge of final release; I'm testing the final right now, in fact. We spent a lot of effort pressure-washing, waxing, and polishing it, so it should run faster than ever.

[pkladisios]

Thanks, guys! I think i' ll start trying your suggestions on virtualbox first, to see how they feel.

[Dai_trying]

I find Q4OS to be a pretty good OS especially for older hardware, it was forked from kde3.5 a long time ago and has proved to be very resource friendly (to me at least). I have it installed on some very old machines and it runs great. I have also written a basic installer tutorial for it which can be found here

[Funkygoby]

It's not really about the distro you choose (pick what feels more natural to you) but more about the stuff that you want to run on it. The desktop environement will be more important than the distro I guess.
What makes a distro "lighter" than another is what is installed and running by default. Since Debian can be made the way you like (obsolete, bleeding-edge, skinny, bloated, etc...) by the choice of package, you can run it on old computer.
On the other hand Ubuntu-like distros make a lot of choice for you. It's good if you have no clue of what is a linux system but might not suit you (or you computer) at all.

That being said,
My father used to run LinuxMint 17 (ubuntue derived) with Xfce as a DE on a poor laptop with 1Go of ram. Worked fine for him. Something inside the laptop smoked then melted (after 10+ years of abuse) so he had to replace it.

I use Debian 7 (8 works just fine too) with Xfce on a x61s (thinkpad from 2006 with 2Go of ram) with an hybrid harddrive. Everything is blazing fast except firefox (at launch) or stuff like video editing (of course...). For basic desktop usage (browsing, copy/move files,...) I couldn't see any difference with my friend macbook air 2016.

[dasein]

I find Q4OS to be a pretty good OS especially for older hardware, it was forked from kde3.5 a long time ago and has proved to be very resource friendly (to me at least).

I'm embarrassed to say that I keep forgetting about respins that use TDE. These days, TDE qualifies as "lightweight," which makes an excellent choice for what qualifies by today's standards as "low end" hardware.

I've been VERY impressed by exe (another Debian respin that uses TDE). It's quick, light and eminently usable. It is definitely worth the OP's time to give it a test-drive.

On another matter... someone mentioned DE as a resource hog. That's certainly true for RAM, but much less so for CPU cycles. I run an HTPC (the OP's use-case) using KDE4 on an atom rig with 1GB of memory. Runs fine unless I try to do something RAM-intensive (and playing local videos isn't). I've also used Kodi (aka XBMC) successfully on that same box.