Debian, gnome, Dash to Panel extension, and WinTile extension. It will feel a lot like Windows. Then add OnlyOffice since it looks nearly identical to MS Office.
this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
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Your biggest problem is the amount of RAM, not the cpu. Some Linux distros would fit nicely on 2gb with a few native apps open, but the moment you'd want to browse the web, all hell will break loose, as each tab will take hundreds of megs each (youtube takes between 600 and 1200 mb of ram). FYI, even if chrome/ium is hated in these parts, it uses less ram than firefox (there's also a setting to use even less ram).
I'd suggest you use either Alpine Linux with xfce (240 MB of RAM on a cold boot), or even better, Q4OS with the Trinity Desktop (fork of KDE), 350 MB of RAM. The advantage of Q4OS is that it's a debian, so it can run lots of .deb files made for debian. Alpine is cool and all, but it has bugs on the desktop (some of its package management has dependency problems).
A tip: to save ram, don't use background images, only a single color. You can save up to 50 MB of RAM that way, depending on the image you'd be using.
I did not know, that background images could have this enormous effect! Good to know!!
I agree the question here is not so much which distro but which browser.
Todays low-end laptops often come with 8 GB of RAM. Even common phones have more than 2 GB of RAM.
Q4OS with Trinity is a great pick for this user. Alpine is great but MUSL may cause problems. And I say this as a MUSL use (Chimera Linux). You are not going to find 32 but Flatpaks and Distrobox may be too complicated. So, I would stay away from MUSL based distros with 32 bit Linux on a 2 GB system.
MX and Antix are also Debian based and have 32 bit versions.
To be honest, I wouldn't on a 2Gb laptop. It'll run Linux just fine but the minute you use a browser or office suite you'll have memory problems.
This!
Even 4GB RAM is low for web browsers and they're gonna struggle, A LOT, even with just one tab open, is going to be painfully slow to not want to use it anymore.
Old laptops like this, don't have hardware video decoders for YouTube or any video in AVC or HEVC códecs that is used everywhere today.
You can use Gnumeric for spreadsheets and Abiword for docs if Libreoffice is too slow.
Last time I checked (a few years ago) Firefox has half the memory usage of Chrome, in practice.
Maybe he's going to run Links and Wordstar!
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puppy linux. ironically its made to run completely in memory but only needs like 500meg
Puppy Linux is what I usually see recommended for such low specs. It's also available with a Debian base.
Run a 32 bit distro. It is the only thing that will run well on 2 GB of RAM. It will run better than you think.
Q4OS, Antix, MX Linux, Damn Small Linux, and even pure 32 bit Debian are decent candidates. If you use Q4, give the Trinity desktop a shot.
I like Andelie Linux as well but MUSL may cause problems for an unsophisticated user.
I think antiX would be a nice option. I installed it on a 20 years old laptop and it runs quite fast.
Upgrade that box or repurpose it for something else. Web bloat has made 2gb machines useless for browsing and 4gb marginal, if the user needs Google docs, put in 8gb or more.
I recently had to use a friend's old 4gb macbook for some weeks because my laptop was stolen. I was surprised how well everything worked, even when using a few web apps in firefox. I think with using zram and avoiding web / electron apps where possible, you might get quite something out of a 4gb machine.
I'm on a 4gb machine right now and it's tolerable if I don't do too many things at once, but Google Docs bogs in particular bogs it down.
honestly the distro doesn't matter so much as long as the hardware i supported. run a minimal desktop, disable CPU hogs and file indexing etc.
I used fvwm on Debian for many years on old computers. worked great. now I have kde/plasma on arch. my 10 year old laptop handles it fine...
disable CPU hogs and file indexing etc.
Do you have some tips for that?
As another said on the thread — it’s not really Linux that is the issue here as much as the internet. Browsers are just memory hogs now and you’re not going to get an enjoyable experience on 2gb of ram imo, if the goal is to have a functional laptop. OTOH, it would be a great little project server to play around with things like pihole or your Arrs🏴☠️ or other self hosting goodness.
Mint.
It's extremely stable Linux for your grandma, that comes with every tool that she will ever use and on the cinnamon interface all those tools are exactly where she will expect them to be if she is used to using Windows.
I've gotten three boomers to use it and they hardly ever ask for tech support because it's so stable.
Linux Mint Debian Edition: xfce, Firefox running, 12 tabs open, just under 3GB utilized. All my usual stuff open too, Telegram, Next cloud, etc.
I bet you'd be good with it and an SSD and a bit of swap. (I have no swap used.)
This is good RAM for any 32 bit OS which is still being maintained.
64 bit OS require minimum 4 GB.
I don't think Google will like any 32 bit device though. Go for an older version from libreoffice.
alpine
Debian can be pretty light/small on a clean install and xfce should run fine on 2gb. Although the biggest thing is gonna be if the laptop has fast storage or not. Since its a celeron it might not be upgradeable, and if it doesnt already have an SSD any desktop will feel slow
Personally if I really wanted to squeeze all the performance I could for web browsing I'd go with minimal Debian and RiverWM but thats a bit more involved
Raspberry Pi OS or antiX.
Debian, lxqt and x11.
If you can get an ssd in there then there’s some zram or something or other that can make it even better.
There are plenty of distros for very low end pcs, but they tend to require more tech skills to use. I have experience with a friend in a similar situation. I installed with mx linux for her and she is liking it. The performance is pretty reasonable and it comes with various tools that make it easier for people with less tech skills. The only extra thing I did was install the 32 bit version of firefox, because it makes a huge difference in low ram devices.
32 bit version of firefox, because it makes a huge difference in low ram devices.
How so? What CPU does she have?
How so?
32 bit pointers take up half as much RAM as 64 bit pointers. A complicated application like a web browser consumes much more memory as a 64 bit app than it does as a 32 bit app. That is true of most programs but you are really going to notice it in both desktop environment and your web browser.
I assumed a x64. Debian (the distro mx linux is based on) offers multiarch support, so i just had to enable it by running:
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt update
Then, to install 32-bit firefox, I first uninstalled it and then installed the 32-bit version:
sudo apt remove firefox-esr
sudo apt install firefox-esr:i386
With the standard 64 bit version, the browser would struggle with just 2 or 3 tabs, and with the 32 bit version, she can use like 10 tabs without problems
Last time i searched for "lightweight" linux distros (for an old Thnkpad) the ones i saw recommended the most were: TinyCore, Puppy, Porteus, Absolute, antiX, Q4OS, Slax,, Sparky, MX.
I saw Bohdi and other Ubuntu-based distros suggested quite a lot as well but my definition of lightweight means under 1GiB usage.
For a DE go with XFCE or some other lightweight DE.
If your friend is not tech savvy person, i would go with Mint XFCE (maybe Zorin OS Lite). Surely, it will be not as lightweight as Debian, but it will be much more user friendly for him
If he actually feel comfortable tinkering with OS - along side Debian maybe Bodhi Linux or antiX? I tried both of them on one of (in)famous Intel-based netbooks with 512mb RAM and they worked quite well.
Debian is on the right track. XFCE might work - I remember it running pretty well on a laptop with 4 gigs.
Puppy or Debian with openbox or another light wm , is crunchbang still a thing ?.
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Puppy would fly on there, or even DSL 2024. Heck, both those distros would fly even on a Pentium 4 of all things.
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I think Slitaz is still around, I always liked that for older machines, I was going to try it on an AMD C-50 laptop I pulled out of storage recently, except I don’t have time for messing around.
Windows 10 has a bug with 100% disk utilization that goes away if you have an ssd. You should look into upgrading the ram to 4 or 8 gb. ddr3 ram is dirt cheap on ebay. It would probably cost $10-$15 for 8gb and another $10 for a 120gb ssd.
With low specs like that, the experience will never be great, but with a very light desktop you can make it work. Debian is fine, but with some set up, Alpine could be one option. It's a really light distro.
VoidLinux
It is probably the best solution to the low memory problem, but it is also the least common and may be the most difficult.
There is a xfce live edition and a good wiki. Not having systemd is a great thing for these old specs in my experience.
The most important thing is not the distribution, but to enable ZRAM (or ZSWAP) and use a lightweight desktop. I am not sure how much difference a 32bit vs a 64bit distribution makes, but if possible you could take one for the team and run some trials and report your numbers (RAM usage) back here.
Of course I recommend Debian with a lightweight desktop of your choice, or Alpine.
I was always a fan of crunchbang when I used a couple of eee pcs as servers. It ran very light.
Is Crunchbang still maintained?
Crunchbang was amazing, but it's sadly no more. Development stopped on it some time in 2015 I think.
Bunsenlabs is a direct successor to it, and should be good on OP's system.
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for linux and the most basic of basic tasks, i'd look at peppermint. it's what i put on all the old crap here with 'marginal' specs that choke on windows. debian stable xfce based. base install is pretty sparse, not even a browser is included initially. a utility pops up after first boot to facilitate installing a browser, media player, and a few other things if you want them, or the entire debian stable repository is also available. one thing of note. with only 2gb ram, it's gonna be tight, whatever he runs on it.
his use case is screaming for a cheap chromebook, though. so at least consider that instead. an old laptop like that might make someone a nice little pihole or something, if it's not ready to be put down for good.
I put Antix on a 2Gb 64bit HP Atom. Worked well for notes and browsing. Oddly an SSD seemed to make little difference to performance compared to the previous HDD. Old architecture I guess.
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