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    [LAPTOP] Suitable KDE-based distro for old 32-bit laptop?

    A friend of mine wants to get rid of Windows XP on his old 32-bit IBM laptop and I convinced him to give Linux a try.

    Unfortunately it is quite old:
    Intel Celeron M processor (1,5 GHz)
    1,5 GB RAM
    Mobile Intel 915GM/910GML GPU

    My first thought was of course: Kubuntu 18.04 32-bit.

    But are there better distros for the purpose? Debian 10 KDE 32-bit, perhaps?
    Will such a "modern" KDE / distro be too much for the old thing?

    He doesn't want to do much with it: LibreOffice, Firefox, …
    I will see him in three weeks and then it gets real.

    Thank you for your thoughts.
    Debian KDE & LXQt • Kubuntu & Lubuntu • openSUSE KDE • Windows • macOS X
    Desktop: Lenovo ThinkCentre M75s • Laptop: Apple MacBook Pro 13" • and others

    get rid of Snap scriptreinstall Snap for release-upgrade scriptinstall traditional Firefox script

    #2
    Debian 10 has a somewhat newer plasma, but 18.04 has the LTS version of it, so still supported for some time, though it is EOL (in terms of Kubuntu/plasma) in April 2021. The underpinnings are supported till 2023.

    The celeron M might be somewhat slightly usable for plasma itself, but single(?) core is a bottleneck, and the ram is going to be a major showstopper as soon as a browser is opened.
    I'd suggest a much lighter setup, both in terms of ram and background resources: Lubuntu 18.04, with Lxde (not the newer versions based on Lxqt), though this also is EOL in 2021. 18.04 is the last one to have 32 bit support, and is specifically configured for old systems, with fewer background services compared to bigger desktops. Later releases not so much.

    Comment


      #3
      There are quite a few specialty distros out there geared towards old hardware, so there will be options, just not from the major distros, mostly.

      Comment


        #4
        Thank you, I know about some of them already, and of course I know of Lxde / Lxqt-based distros or older (and lighter) versions of Xfce-distros.
        I have tried nearly dozen of them in virtual machines (and on "bare metal"), but I consider them all sooo much uglier and more incomplete than KDE…

        That's the reason I asked about KDE-based distros.

        I hope you are not right. ;-)

        EOL is not so much of an issue - Windows XP has been EOL for some time now, and that is what he is still using.
        Last edited by Schwarzer Kater; May 14, 2020, 04:40 PM. Reason: typos, as usual and EOL
        Debian KDE & LXQt • Kubuntu & Lubuntu • openSUSE KDE • Windows • macOS X
        Desktop: Lenovo ThinkCentre M75s • Laptop: Apple MacBook Pro 13" • and others

        get rid of Snap scriptreinstall Snap for release-upgrade scriptinstall traditional Firefox script

        Comment


          #5
          No, even Xfce themselves could possibly be too much for this old a system.


          Here is a decent list of (mostly) light distros, some of which are more feature-filled than one might expect.
          I have a soft spot for Puppy Linux and Slax. I used to run the former on a Pentium mmx Thinkpad with 128mb ram and a monster 4gb hard drive, many many years ago.
          I'd mainly ignore the obvious *buntus, though even some of these have done a good job of stripping things out that sap resources.

          https://itsfoss.com/lightweight-linux-beginners/


          But imnsho and experience, Plasma is not suitable for this sort of system, though it might not hurt to try.


          I can't quite verify, but the Kubuntu installer may require 2gb ram, though 1.5 might be enough
          Lubuntu 18.04 has an 'Alternate" text based installer which does not have this requirement, but is not a live installer

          Comment


            #6
            I tried a number of 32-bit distros on my Lenovo netbook (Atom processor, 2GB memory) and found them all to be too slow. Right now I'm running Elive, and so far it seems to be the thing I need. I selected the 4.19 versions rather than the latest, and it runs better than anything else I've tried in the past year or so. It has a nice Conky display as well, and a Cairo docker. I run Palemoon on it, and it's faster than Firefox was on any of the other distros I used.

            Comment


              #7
              https://lubuntu.me/
              "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
              – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.

              Comment


                #8
                I've tried Peppermint on my old Toshiba (32bit) A135 laptop. It was pretty nice actually!
                The next brick house on the left
                Intel i7 11th Gen | 16GB | 1TB | KDE Plasma 5.24.7 | Kubuntu 22.04.4 | 6.5.0-18-generic

                Comment


                  #9
                  Thank you all for your thoughts!

                  I have tried a lot of distributions again, but then I learned yesterday that (for reasons I don't wish to discuss here) the distribution has to be based on Ubuntu.

                  So for several hours I have thoroughly tested Kubuntu 18.04 32-bit, Peppermint 10 32-bit and Lubuntu 18.04 32-bit with Firefox 76.0.1 and LibreOffice 6.2.8 (the last one that supports 32-bit on Linux…) in VirtualBox with 1,5 GB RAM and one processor core assigned only.

                  Roughly Lubuntu uses 50 MB memory less than Peppermint which uses 100 MB less than Kubuntu.

                  I think that claydoh will be right about Plasma 5 being probably too much for such an old computer - Kubuntu did feel quite sluggish with the above settings…

                  Fortunately I really like Peppermint - much more than LXDE Lubuntu (thanks jglen490)!

                  So in three weeks I will try Kubuntu on the old IBM laptop, second (and most likely) candidate will be Peppermint and if even this is too much for the old thing: well, there still will be the ugly LXDE Lubuntu…

                  When I return from my friend in about a month I will let you know which Linux did perform most gracefully and which one he will have to work with in the future. ;-D
                  Last edited by Schwarzer Kater; May 17, 2020, 05:11 PM. Reason: typos, as usual
                  Debian KDE & LXQt • Kubuntu & Lubuntu • openSUSE KDE • Windows • macOS X
                  Desktop: Lenovo ThinkCentre M75s • Laptop: Apple MacBook Pro 13" • and others

                  get rid of Snap scriptreinstall Snap for release-upgrade scriptinstall traditional Firefox script

                  Comment


                    #10
                    not that you may feel as though this is an option , but just to be saying ,,,,,,

                    I have for a long time now just as a precaution installed a alternate desktop environment (DE) in my case "fluxbox" it is VERY light and VERY basic.

                    BUT right now , on Kubuntu-18.04 , logged into Fluxbox , with firefox,system monitor(ksysguard) , Krusader and a Konsole open , the system monitor is reporting only 0.68GiB of memory in use ,,,,,,,,,, Just saying.

                    Now Fluxbox as I said is very basic but is very configurable through it's text files it uses for configs , it's bace menu will not show all the programs Kubuntu installs but can be added to the menu.
                    "alt+F2" will bring up a "run" box and typing a program name will start it .

                    VINNY

                    EDIT: logged into a regular Plasma session with the same things running system monitor is reporting 1.3GiB memory in use
                    Last edited by vinnywright; May 17, 2020, 01:50 PM.
                    i7 4core HT 8MB L3 2.9GHz
                    16GB RAM
                    Nvidia GTX 860M 4GB RAM 1152 cuda cores

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Thanks for the additional idea, Vinny.
                      I guess your computer is 64-bit, so the memory usage would be a bit higher there.

                      Peppermint 10 32-bit used approximately 430 MB here in VirtualBox - terminal (Sakura), Firefox (just one open tab: www.kubuntu.org) and LibreOffice (main window) running (Kubuntu 18.04: 540 MB plus 6 MB swap, Lubuntu 18.04: 375 MB).
                      All systems completely unoptimized "out of the box".
                      But memory usage is only one thing, general performance is not shown by that value alone.

                      Peppermint uses a mixture of LXDE and Xfce.

                      One has to keep in mind that my friend is a "simple" user, who just wants to switch the machine on, do some internet surfing and office stuff and switch it off. No chance he would ever edit a text file for system configuration. :-)
                      Last edited by Schwarzer Kater; May 17, 2020, 02:45 PM. Reason: typos, as usual, added memory usage
                      Debian KDE & LXQt • Kubuntu & Lubuntu • openSUSE KDE • Windows • macOS X
                      Desktop: Lenovo ThinkCentre M75s • Laptop: Apple MacBook Pro 13" • and others

                      get rid of Snap scriptreinstall Snap for release-upgrade scriptinstall traditional Firefox script

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Originally posted by Schwarzer Kater View Post
                        Thanks for the additional idea, Vinny.
                        I guess your computer is 64-bit, so the memory usage would be a bit higher there.
                        Yes 64-bit

                        looks like your on the right track , good luck and let us know how it proceeds

                        VINNY
                        i7 4core HT 8MB L3 2.9GHz
                        16GB RAM
                        Nvidia GTX 860M 4GB RAM 1152 cuda cores

                        Comment


                          #13
                          It has become Kubuntu 18.04.4 32-bit, because he liked it the most and the speed is acceptable for him.
                          Plasma works quite well, considering the single core processor and my friend knows not to open several tabs in Firefox while using LibreOffice e.g.
                          Debian KDE & LXQt • Kubuntu & Lubuntu • openSUSE KDE • Windows • macOS X
                          Desktop: Lenovo ThinkCentre M75s • Laptop: Apple MacBook Pro 13" • and others

                          get rid of Snap scriptreinstall Snap for release-upgrade scriptinstall traditional Firefox script

                          Comment

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