So i have a bunch of pc’s/laptops/computers and such that my family members refuse to depart with even though there really bad. so far they mangae to keep 4 bulky computers in total, we do have some new-ish ones but theses ones im talking about need some loving.1 computer is 32 bit and has 2gb of ram, the other 3 have 64-bit and range from 1gb of ram- to 2 and one of which has only 75 space hardrive.

are there any linux distros that might work becasue im a noob who uses windows so im very lost. any tips or suggestions or something would be great.

also if im posting in the wrong plac eplease let me know in the comments.

  • Marxine@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    For a more “friendly flavored” distro, MX Linux is Debian-based and comes with a bunch of quality of life tools

    • YouNaughtyMonsters@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      MX Linux seconded. It’s available in 32-bit versions, too.

      I haven’t used it on a machine with less than 4GB though, but it runs well on an old Dell laptop from 2009.

  • rimu@lemmy.nzEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Browser choice is probably going to make just as much difference as distro choice. Modern browsers kinda need at least 1 GB to be usable, ideally more. Depends what you do with it of course.

    Try Pale Moon, Falkon and Konqueror.

  • Himawari@lemmy.4d2.orgEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I’d suggest Debian with LXDE, which, from my personal experience, works pretty fine on low-end computers. You can replace LXDE with your choice of Windows Managers for an even lighter system, but that might be a little hard if you’ve never used Linux before.

  • jerry@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    My favorite very light is peppermintOS, I think you may have to go back to version 10 for 32 bit though.

  • ppp@lemmy.oneEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’ve used Debian on an old netbook with an Intel Atom and onyl 2GB RAM. The experience wasn’t so bad but web browsing was definitely a pain. Video calling and watching YouTube (Firefox) was very sluggish and annoying to deal with. It’s fine for working with documents and watching low resolution videos locally but that’s about it.

    I’ve also tried antiX but a lot of the defaults were annoying. If you (or your family members) can deal with it, then it’s probably the best lightweight Linux distro out there.

    are there any linux distros that might work becasue im a noob who uses windows so im very lost. any tips or suggestions or something would be great.

    In this case, I recommend just leaving your family members to do their own thing. From my experience, it is very hard to manage other people’s Linux issues if you don’t have decent knowledge on it yourself. If they don’t want to upgrade, that’s their problem. Not yours.

    • ShySpark@lemmy.fmhy.mlOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      alright and are you sure that is the best starter option? also what can i do on linux compared to windows?

  • Parallax@kbin.social
    0·
    1 year ago

    I’d like to do something similar on my Pentium 3 box. Maybe Debian with a really light WM would be a good fit, maybe IceWM? It only has 512MB of RAM though so I might have to go even lighter than Debian. I also have an Athlon XP box with 2GB of RAM, but that’s too new to be fun. :p

  • keet@kbin.social
    0·
    1 year ago

    I would suggest Mint. Considering the hardware, the XFCE version. Have you looked into any hardware upgrades for these machines? I’ve found that a simple ram or hdd–>ssd upgrade can be rather inexpensive these days.

    • Sorchist@kbin.social
      0·
      1 year ago

      There are a lot of distros which are more focused on old hardware than Mint, but Mint definitely wins in the “this distro will be familiar and discoverable to people who are used to Windows” department. If it works, it’s great for that reason.