Ancient laptop - best Linux OS to use?

[soul101]

Personally from my experience I've had better luck running Puppy Linux on my 9 yr old hp laptop, compared to ubuntu. Puppy Linux is a very basic OS, therefore it's easy on the resources too.

[Intershar1]

My recommendation would be to use Arch Linux. Arch is hard to get installed (in the past), but there's an easier way. Arch-Anywhere automates Arch's install. However, its not as pretty as Ubuntu, but its a lot better than building from scratch.

[jbravo17]

Originally Posted by ribtastic

Thanks for all of the suggestions, guys. I've been playing around with different linux flavors today and I think I've settled on Mint. I haven't noticed a big difference performance-wise between the different distros. They all run better than Windows 7 on this old laptop.

It is nigh impossible to definitively answer your question without knowing what, exactly, you're hoping to do with the laptop once you have the new OS installed.

For example, I'm a software developer. For that purpose, I love Ubuntu because of the user community. No matter how obscure a tool I choose to help me develop code ... somebody, somewhere has had experience with it, and I can tap into that experience with a quick search of the web.

But as a desktop OS to play games, I'd probably go with something a bit more Windows-friendly, like Zorin. And if I were setting up a server ... it would be neither of those, etc. Any Linux distro is going to be much lighter on your system than Windows 7 ... so in effect, you've already solved the resource dilemma just by switching to Linux in the first place.

But just as some programs are better suited to a particular task than others, some versions of Linux lend themselves more easily to certain activities than others. From a "general use" perspective, however ... you've done exactly the right thing. By "playing around with different flavors" you've gotten a first-hand account of what might work -- for you. The ease at which you can do this is one of the best features of Linux, and will provide far more insight than any account of someone else's experiences.

Good luck to you on your new journey!

[ww345]

another option might be to switch out the HDD for an SSD

120 GB SSD's are as low as $25-$30 these days, might be worth it

[AliceKelly]

i have an old 1 ghz dell it runs i386 debian fine

Originally Posted by ribtastic

Hey folks...I have an 8 year old HP laptop that currently is running Windows 7. It is OK for web surfing but pretty damn slow for anything else. I haven't used Linux in years and there are a lot of different distros available now. Just curious what you would suggest for the best performance on an aging laptop?

I was considering Ubuntu or Elemantary OS, but I'm open to suggestions!