Really ancient laptop Linux OS suggestions...
 

This Dell laptop is now in another part of the country so apart from saying it must be 20 years old please don't ask me what it is... I installed Lubuntu but the machine runs so slowly that 'stroll' would be a better description of what it does. Can anyone suggest anything even smaller? I don't like laptops at all and scarcely ever use this one except when I'm in the other part of the country where it is so this will be a 'fun' exercise to learn some more about Linux OS. This isn't life and death stuff... I run Ubuntu and Gnome on my PC, Mint with Cinnamon desktop on the old 'just in case' PC. So, something very different would be fun...

I bet an older Debian release would run on it:

https://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cdimage/archive/

Try Lenny (v5 from 2009), it is one of the few there with full disk image sets available for i386 or amd64 - needed since no one has online repos for these releases anymore.

AntiX. It's specialised for old machines.

You could run a stripped down version of any major distribution and do ok with it I would think...Debian, Slackware, etc. So do a base system install and then a low resource GUI on top of it.

AntiX is another one that runs pretty good.

You could also try Puppy Linux. I ran an early version of Puppy Linux on an old Bell & Howell computer with a Pentium processor (sorry don't remember the speed) and 64MB RAM...it actually ran pretty good. Puppy has been updated a lot since then, but it is still focused on old hardware.

Thanks so far!!! To be fair to you all, I'll probably try all of them! As I say, this is a bit of fun. I guess I should think of things for the laptop to do and work out which is most efficient...

I forgot to add that the connection is effectively dial-up... 2 megabit per second and not likely to change...

@Basslord1124 - I did try Puppy and I loved it but the version I used seem to depend on being reinstalled with each bootup. It felt a bit like CPM on the PCW or am I misunderstanding something?

If you were still running it from USB/CD on bootup it will do that. There is an option within Puppy where you can install it to hard disk and should allow you to save and run it from there.

I used a version of bionicPup not too long ago and once it was installed to the hard drive, it booted up like any other OS.

Thank you! It's definitely on the list. I just loved its sense of humour as well! It did make the ancient laptop zip along like a 'youngun'. :-D

For security reasons Puppy (which runs as root) is not recommended to run from the HD except with a frugal install which still copies to RAM and runs from there:
http://wikka.puppylinux.com/FrugalOrFullInstallation

AntiX is very light and fine so long as you like a plain window manager and find its facilities adequate. I have a laptop with the original Pentium M and that works fine with Xubuntu. I'd be very reluctant to install Debian unless I could get a live version — when I downloaded Debian and tried to install (on that old laptop) it failed halfway through.

Tilly,

Another vote for antiX.

It will probably automatically detect your Dell wifi card which is likely to be of the awkward Broadcom variety.

.....that's if it even has a wifi card. Though if it does, I agree it's almost certain to be Broadcom.

My own Dell laptop is getting on for 17 years old. A 2.6 GHz Pentium 4, 1.5 GB DDR1 RAM and a 64 GB SSD provide the 'go'. I run Pup on all my boxes anyway.....but especially on ye anciente Dell, since it's about the only thing that doesn't make it seem like a snail.

(The 1100 Inspiron was only ever Ethernet-connected. Its bigger brother, the 5100, had wifi. Most Dell's of that era had CardBus slots below the hard drive 'caddy', so I bought a 'period' CardBus wifi adapter from NetGear (still manufacturer sealed in its wrapper, but would have been on the market around the time the Dell was being manufactured). Around £5 off eBay, and it works a treat. The chipset driver, "ath5k", seems to have been in the kernel like, forever.....)

Puppies 'Slacko' 560 & DPup 'Stretch' run very sweetly on there, so I'm a happy camper.

'Frugal' is very definitely the way to go with Pup in any case. The 'full' install, for Puppy, is usually reserved for acts of desperation.....if you're grimly determined to get Puppy up-and-running, whatever the cost.

A 'full' install is very definitely NOT 'normal' for Puppy. Frugal is.....and most of Pup's software is written/built/packaged to work to best advantage with that.

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Your biggest issue will be getting a browser working on there. All current browser releases require a minimum SSE2 instruction set from the CPU. The age yours is, it's doubtful if you'll even have MMX, never mind SSEs of any stripe or colour. Even a 'text-only' browser, like Lynx, may have problems running correctly.

If by some quirk of fate it may turn out to have a Pentium III, there is hope.....a PIII does have SSE instructions, which will garner you a special, SSE-only compiled version of the Mozilla-based Palemoon browser.....


Mike. ;)

AntiX, SliTaz, & Tiny Core Linux are my usual suggestions for really old computers, & whilst it may take a little time, loading to ram will speed up any old machine. Good luck with your 'project'. :)

Puppy does have the whole always run as root thing going on...it's just designed as a single user system. Many would not recommend the full installation for that reason. I suppose it just depends on how you feel about it and what your uses are. I did it just b/c of it just being easier on me AND it wasn't a major mission critical machine...so it didn't bother me to run as root all the time.

I did put AntiX on an early dual core Sony Vaio laptop with 1GB RAM...the laptop was around 13 years old. I did want multi-user support and AntiX did very well. I ended up switching and putting a stripped down version of Debian on it instead...still runs good.

They all sound interesting. Thanks! I won't have access to the laptop till next year - I suspect. I've started looking at the suggestions though. I have taken on board comments about knowing what I want to do with it but the real answer is I don't. I'm a PC person. The laptop is a hangover from an earlier life and is only being used at present because both my PCs are in one part of the country and I need something in the other part. So, this is all in fun and really something of an intellectual exercise. I'm curious about how to get it to perform better under Linux than it could under Windows and I'm curious about just how much could be accomplished on it. It's really just another platform for me to play with the various Linux OS.

Yes Mike - browser *is* a problem and the issue is compounded by the 2mbs internet speed... (or should that be not-speed?).

^ or SalixOS both are very good for low powered/old machines.

Why's that?

I know nothing about SSE instructions, but Wikipedia says they're from March 1999. Lynx had been going for seven years by that point, reached 2.8.1 without needing SSE and makes no (obvious) mention of them in the 2.8 releases changelog.



That's a whole 256 KB every second. Plenty enough for text.

Without compression that might be half a second for a page to load, but even Lynx supports gzip, which (for example) shrinks the LQ active posts page request to ~19 KB, and the request for this discussion page down to ~17 KB, so (as long as you're not wanting to stream videos) it won't be too bad.