Can my old laptop make it?

[kunoob]

Hi guys,

I have an old laptop (32bit, Pentium 4 single-core 1.8 Ghz, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD) currently loading Crunchbang but off most of the time. Do you think it can accommodate Kubuntu 14.04 32bit? I won't use it much, just browsing the web occasionally when I'm bored.

Or if it's not, how about Xubuntu 14.04? I still prefer KDE tho.

Thanks!

[claydoh]

the 1gtb ram will be the big factor here. I have an old laptop with the same cpu speed, and I can tell you that it will be slo-o-o-w, unless you hack away at a lot of things. Even then, opening more than 1 browser tabs will suck out whatever resources you have left.

Xubuntu is probably a bit better, but I think it is still known to be on the heavy side for an XFCE desktop. My choice from personal experience would be for Lubuntu, which is definitely light enough for your laptop, but still having enough of the bells and whistles.

[kunoob]

Uhmm, let me try Xubuntu then Lubuntu and see how it goes. Thanks Clay!

[jlittle]

I expect Lubuntu will run really well, even with Firefox or LibreOffice, provided you don't have driver trouble. Reportedly, Xubuntu uses more memory than Lubuntu so in theory might struggle with firefox, though I haven't tried it.

Regards, John Little

[woodsmoke]

ummm i have lashed up computers from "junque" that all of the elitist smarter than thous said it could not be done going back to Xandros days....look me up.....

GO FOR IT.................

One of my posts at Xandros is now up in the 90,000 views....

forget the experts....

go for it.

woodjustsayin'causeimanolddoofsmoke

[josefko]

I run Kubuntu 13.10 on my netbook Acer Aspire One D150 with 1 GB RAM and Atom 1,7. It is slower than on better computers, but I can live with that. It starts in 2:15 minutes, some new Windows computers would be glad for that. I takes 300 MB RAM immediately after start. I only switch off blur.

Recently I tried to install something from Ubuntu family on a really old notebook Acer Aspire 3000 with 256 MB RAM and ended up with XUbuntu, which was really s-l-o-w. It needs more memory. Lubuntu didn't have proper graphic driver. Xubuntu has a half of graphical system settings comparing to Kubuntu. Even switching between two keyboards is a problem. It takes 160 MB RAM after start.

If I want a computer with 1 GB RAM to be really fast, I would try Bodhi Linux (also from Ubuntu family). It needs more than 256 MB RAM due to graphic installation program, 512 MB would be enough. Somebody claims that It takes 80 MB RAM after start.

[kunoob]

I did try it with Bodhi before.

Bodhi 1 flied. But Bodhi 2 was not good, slow, hang, couldn't shut down... I was surprised by Bodhi's promise of suitability for old computers. At that time, I thought it's because of the newer kernel (3.2). Yet strangely Crunchbang which also uses 3.2 runs pretty fast in this old hag.

[GreyGeek]

Last weekend I installed Trusty Tahr on a 10 year old 32b Pentium III Gateway m675. It had 1GB of RAM and an old Radeon video chip. Went on like a dream and works like a charm. Not slow at all.

[Teunis]

It is not a very complete desktop but it works, Razor-qt; http://razor-qt.org/
They are amalgamating Razor-qt and Lubuntu into LXDE-Qt; http://wiki.lxde.org/en/LXDE-Qt

I have it running on a PIII with 192GB RAM.
I started by installing the server without GUI and then added a desktop.
Because it's missing some gimmicks I really like I also installed the minimum KDE desktop so I can use Muon, KSysGuard and the likes.
At log-in I select the desktop of choice, usually QT and it's fine.

But with 1 GB of RAM you can run KDE though it will help to switch off the 3D effects, KDE-plasma-netbook is a nice start on top of a server install.