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.

  • 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.

  • 20gramsWrench@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    those are very low specs for every day distros (meaning usable for the general public), you might get away with linux mint xfce, if it ends up usable on those machine and not lag too much then don’t bother with anything else, otherwise you might have to install lighter stuff like antix or lxle. If none of the above are usable you can always install puppy linux, it can run on a toaster but is not very pleasant to use. note that regardless of distro, surfing the web is going to be a chore due to half of the modern internet being heavy as fuck and hard to run, you might want to look for alternative frontend to websites like piped for youtube, urlebird for tiktok etc.

    • ShySpark@lemmy.fmhy.mlOPEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

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

      • PEnorman@beehaw.orgEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago
        • Gaming is less stable overall but it’s exponentially better now thanks to Valve and the Steam Deck driving support. Like seriously, from a cointoss whether it even launches a couple years ago to 74% Gold or Platinum on the top 1000 games on Steam.
        • Programming is easier (you can ask your commandline to install all you need at once instead of having to painstakingly individually install and set up requirements or addons to programming languages), but you don’t have access to Visual Studio if you’re working on C# or C++.
        • Web browsing is identical, watching movies too. I’ve never had a problem using LibreOffice and OnlyOffice as a replacement for Word and PowerPoint, but I don’t use many complicated features in Word or PowerPoint so your mileage may vary.
        • Photoshop, Premiere, etc are a pain to get good replacements for, OBS for recording and DaVinci Resolve for editing is a really powerful pair though.
        • I vouch for Mint with XFCE too. It was very fast on my laptop and some of the themes now are pretty. It barely uses any RAM. It has a Windows-style start menu and taskbar.

        Just be warned that your family members will probably have (usually solvable) issues if they want to do anything beyond web browsing. It’s a different operating system after all and it works differently in a lot of ways. Definitely recommend looking up some videos about Mint, XFCE, transitioning from Windows to Linux.