Want to save your old computer? Try these 5 Linux distributions

[techlists at phpcoderusa.com]

My daily driver is a 10 year old dell running an i5, 16GB of RAM, and a 
SSD.  It runs stock Kubuntu 22.04.

$ free -h
                total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   
available
Mem:            15Gi       3.4Gi       8.4Gi       958Mi       3.7Gi     
    10Gi
Swap:          2.0Gi          0B       2.0Gi
keith at Kubuntu22:~$

I have a FF browser open with 10 tabs in use.  I have 2 Libre Office 
spreadsheets open, and Thunderbird running.  It does well until I open 
too many browser tabs.

My other machine is an 8 year old laptop that has a 2 core / 4 thread 
CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 256GB M.2, and a 500GB spinner.  It runs Windows 10. 
  I use it for creating videos because my video editor is Windows only. I 
run win10, Camtasia video editor, VirtualBox, one Ubuntu server VM, and 
Putty.

When I check utilization I find it is using less than 9GB of RAM and the 
CPU is at about 70%.

In the past I tried running a LAMP stack at 1GB of RAM and it kept 
crashing when doing simple things. I find 1 vCPU and 2GB of RAM is the 
minimum.

I am shocked at how much RAM a modern desktop needs to run effectively.  
Seems the real problem is the modern browsers.

Keith


On 2024-07-17 13:36, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Mon, 15 Jul 2024 16:18:33 -0700
> 
>> This is the Linux I know!!
>> 
>> https://www.zdnet.com/article/want-to-save-your-old-computer-try-these-5-linux-distributions/
> 
> The last time they made a computer with less than 1GB RAM was the
> bargain basement computers from 2007. Normal computers of that time
> came with 2GB or 4GB.
> 
> I think any distro can be made to exist within 1GB RAM. Just use a
> lightweight user interface like Openbox, IceWM, ctwm, fvwm, and
> probably many others. If you want a desktop environment, LXDE or LXQt
> are tiny.
> 
> Then use a small browser like surf or luakit. I think even Chromium
> will fit into 1GB if you use only one tab and don't browse to a site
> with insane amounts of Javascript. Mutt, Alpine, Claws-Mail are good,
> lightweight email clients. Use Inkscape or drawing.
> 
> The advantage of mainstream distros like Devuan, Debian, Void, Gentoo,
> Funtoo and others is that they have a full compliment of application
> packages. Last time I tried Puppy Linux (which was a long time ago), it
> had few packages.
> 
> Just for fun I took my Void VM, set it to use 512MB, and ran it. I
> installed Chromium and Libreoffice, ran Chromium, enabled Chromium's
> memory saver, and pulled up both Buick.Com and Ford.Com, both are pigs.
> Then I created a small Libreoffice file.
> 
> When browsing, the computer was noticeably slow and jerky, but we *are*
> talking about 512MB here. I don't know whether I could have *installed*
> Void with only 512MB, but I sure could run it. I installed it with 1MB
> just fine. By the way, when I set it down to 256MB, the VM failed to
> boot.
> 
> In wealthy nations like US, UK, and EU, it would be bizarre to find
> somebody running a computer with less than 1GB of RAM, so I think those
> tiny versions are aimed for people in third world countries. If you
> have 1GB RAM you can run almost any distro if you carefully curate your
> applications. Almost all desktops and laptops made in the last 10 years
> have at least 4GB RAM.
> 
> SteveT
> 
> Steve Litt
> 
> http://444domains.com
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list: PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss