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LeFantome ,

On a laptop that old, I highly recommend a 32 bit distro.

Q4OS with Trinity: q4os.org

Antix antixlinux.com

DSL www.damnsmalllinux.org

You could also enable ZRAM If it is not already.

oo1 ,

replace HDD with SSD, number one thing to do if possible.

lxde or lxqt are quite a bit lighter then xfce.

you could try tiny core linux. it really depends what programs you want to run.

JustARegularNerd ,

Looking up the specs of a D270, looks like the memory is upgradable.

It also looks like the Intel Atom N2600 it has (from my reading) is actually a 64-bit processor

I’d probably say you shouldn’t have much trouble finding a bigger DDR3 memory stick for it for dirt cheap or free from an e-wasted notebook

Ultimately it depends if the performance loss you’re finding is memory limited or CPU limited right now, but I would think that giving it 2 or 4GB + giving it 64-bit would go a long way

mindbleach ,

Use an old distro?

I first installed Ubuntu 4 or 5 on a Thinkpad T42 with 512 MB of RAM. I used it until about version 10, when they forced everyone to use left-handed window controls. It all ran about as well as XP did on that machine. Might be unsafe to bring online, nowadays, but if it gets borked do you really care?

LeFantome ,

You do not necessarily have to use an old distribution. In some ways, a modern one is even more efficient.

The biggest problem is the shift from 32 to 64 bit which makes the same software take 2 - 3 times more RAM.

Next is the desktop environment. KDE is surprisingly light compared to 4 but GNOME is a beast and KDE 3 lighter. KDE is still available as Trinity. GNOME 2 (still not that light ) is available still as MATE. Most of the X11 Window Managers from back in the day or still available and still as fast and light as ever.

A modern 32 distro with a decent DE is more capable than old stuff and almost as performant.

Check out Q4OS 32 bit with Trinity for example.

mexicancartel ,

Antix linux is a very begginer friendly distro with very light specs

eldavi ,

either you go the easy route and use a distribution targeted towards low spec systems like damn small linux or you go the difficult route and implement the same measures that they implement onto your debian installation.

last time i was in your situation i ended up doing both and i’m glad i did because my version of the build never worked as well as the custom distro.

notthebees ,

Maybe try bunsenlabs? It’s uses openbox instead of a de.

I run it on a pentium m laptop and it runs well enough

Pentium m 735, 1 gb of ddr ram

Peffse ,

It seems like you’ve got plenty of choices already, but how about an OS that’s already been cut down to work on the limited RAM of a Raspberry PI? It bills itself as a good alternative for limited hardware.

www.raspberrypi.com/…/raspberry-pi-desktop/

slembcke ,

Oooh. So I keep a Dell Mini 10 (1GB RAM, ~1GHz Atom) around with Haiku on it. It’s brilliant! The UI is super snappy even on such an old machine, and I can even run pretty modern software on it. I used it yesterday to work on my website a bit. :)

Trainguyrom ,

I didn’t know Haiku had actual hardware support!

bloodfart ,

Oh yeah, I completely forgot, that laptops real old, so go ahead and regrease the cpu.

TwinTusks ,
@TwinTusks@bitforged.space avatar

I have two roughly 10 years old laptop that is completely usable, how do I go about regreasing the cpu (M14x r2 & A1502)?

bloodfart ,

Locate the service manuals or some kind of tear down. Confirm that the process will be within your capability. Order some thermal compound. Disassemble the laptop until you remove the heatsink from the cpu. Clean the old cpu and heatsink with isopropyl until it’s as clean as can possibly be. Apply new thermal compound. Reassemble laptop.

this might be the service manual for the alienware

A1502 could be a lot of laptops, use the emc number or serial to find out which one or just look for the MacBook Pro NN,n number in the about option under the Apple menu. It doesn’t matter which one you have, they’re all really easy to work on and well documented.

bassad ,

Check on youtube there is probably a video on how to open and do it your laptop model

jpablo68 ,

I am currently running Antix on my Acer Aspire One D255 with mixed results, Falkon to browse the “modern” web, and netsurf for simple websites, can’t play 1080p videos smoothly so I have to first resize them with ffmpeg (it takes a long time but it’s doable), other stuff like libreoffice works flawlessly.

Presi300 ,
@Presi300@lemmy.world avatar

AntiX

RustyHeater ,

I have that exact machine in my electronics “graveyard”.

Peppermint OS was my GO-TO for speed and driver support out of the box. You can also stick in a 2GB SODIMM of ram. It will only recognize 1.5GB but still 50% more ram.

GustavoM ,
@GustavoM@lemmy.world avatar

Use Dietpi as your main distro, do a minimal install, install sway and then your usual stuff.

t. Got a orange pi zero 3 w/ 1GiB of ram, did exactly as my suggestion implies and everything works as intended.

possiblylinux127 ,

First install an SSD if you haven’t already. Next install ublock origin in Firefox ESR and tighten down the security settings to max plus turn off all telemetry, studies and other “features.” Don’t use a Mozilla account as that adds overhead.

It still will be slow but it should be usable with a few tabs. Do not try to do video playback as the old GPU doesn’t support modern video formats so the CPU ends up decoding it all.

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