Like the title says I want to install a Linux distro on my old laptop. I am currently looking into installing a SSD, but I want to learn a distro for fun! I haven’t been able to find a good current resource aside from the Linux Masters here, so I am actually asking for help on the Internet! What distro is the best!?
EDIT: thanks so much everyone for your recommendations and advice! I installed a couple of different systems before deciding that I think the laptop may be able to support Fedora with KDE plasma (my favorite flavor of the installs so far) and I’m finding it really attractive and easy to use. You will see once I get some more disk space used how the performance holds up! If it runs into trouble I might switch the machine back over to mint with, that one seemed to run really well and was pretty familiar seeming from my Windows days, also seem more low end and booted a little faster. I think I might even end up switching to Linux on my desktop I had so much fun with it last night!! I really appreciate all the information and will probably be experimenting with a more lightweight build on this computer in the future! I’m a Linux user and it was easier than I ever thought! ❤️
1/10 Do not recommend
Want to learn? Buy a current computer (secondhand to save money) that has a blazing fast CPU, shit loads of RAM, and any AMD graphics card. Running into trouble is no fun for beginners. You’ll quickly feel depressed and lose interest.
For the learning part, follow any distro’s official installation guide and do it step by step. Learn which part of the systems does what, and how to set it up, how to debug.
And stick to Ethernet connection before you get comfortable. (Shitty) Wi-fi ICs more often than not have driver issues.
For the old laptop, sell it for parts if you’re not feeling nostalgic.
For the last time, buy a new computer, please.
I have an odd recommendation. Install puppy Linux on it. Years ago, it was my default choice for older machines like this. It runs completely on RAM, has extremely small footprint, extremely snappy and very featureful. I think over the years, the development has stagnated. However, you should be able to get a few years old ISO, copy it to a USB stick and you are good to go. The ISOs are usually in the range of 100-150 MB. Even if your laptop has just 1-4 GB of RAM, this will fly. Oh, by the way, it has most (types of) applications out of the box. It has native support for older hardware.
antiX would be a good choice for that machine.
How much have you used linux before/what is your goal?
I’m pretty sure antiX is designed for this specific use, but I have not run it personally. It’s based in Debian stable (which right now is Bookworm and will be Trixie pretty soon). I’m very fond of Debian. It’s not fancy, but it gets the job done.
Do you know the specs of this laptop off hand? 2007 would place it in sort of a grey area between 32 bit and 64 bit CPUs. If it is 32-bit, you are likely going to have major issues and I would recommend using something else.
Even if it is a 64-bit CPU, the performance may not be amazing, and running modern browsers with anything less than, say, 4GB RAM could be an issue.
I would recommend something lightweight, such as Linux Mint with the XFCE Desktop Environment. You may need to get even more aggressive about finding something lightweight for something that old, though.
It does have 64
That is the eternal question but no distro is best. The most commonly suggested ones are Linux Mint and Pop OS. I will recommend Bazzite and say to avoid Arch or Arch-based distros.
no distro is best
And the nice thing is this isn’t like MacOS vs Windows. Knowledge gained in one distro is transferable to other distros. Just pick one and get started, you can always change later if you wish.
Is it 32bit or 64bit?
If it’s 64bit, with at least 4GB of RAM and an SSD, you can pick whatever you want.
I’m a fan of Linux Mint Debian Edition for beginners.
If it’s 32bit, MX Linux is probably your best bet.If you’re not afraid to dive straight into minimalism/command line, void linux could be a good choice, especially if the laptop is 32bit because void still has 32bit repos.
Hmmm, wow I am maybe a tiny bit afraid haha. Thank you for the info though. That would be interesting to experiment with!
That is a too old of a laptop. In reality, modern Linux distros run well in anything newer than 10-15 years. Yes, there are distros that you can install into it, but they won’t be the latest and greatest distros of today. They’d be instead distros made specifically for old computers, and these distros are usually more complex because they lack all the gui tools found on newer distros.
First you need to find out if your CPU is 32bit or 64 bit, and if it can take a minimum of 2 GB of RAM (if yes, upgrade it too). Then, I’d suggest you download the right file from here: https://www.q4os.org/downloads1.html I find Q4OS to be the best for old computers (more gui tools), but you’d need that minimum of 2 GB of ram to load a browser and be comfortable with 3-5 tabs (no more than that though or you’ll hit the swap). Also, consider Falkon or Chromium as a browser, they use less ram than firefox (people have downvoted me for saying that in the past, but it’s my experience).
Personally, I’d get a used laptop for $150 from the last 10 years, and install Linux on that. It should be way faster than your Asus laptop. Just make sure it has 8 GB of RAM to be comfortable with modern Linux distros (Linux Mint can work adequately with 4 GB of RAM, unless you want to do video editing).
Get a high capacity usb drive. Load ventoy and copy over all the linux distro you wish to try. There is no best distro, its all user preference.
For beginner, you can try linux mint, ubuntu, fedora etc
It’s been a long time since I’ve used 2007 class laptops. In my mind I’d lean towards like Lubuntu or Xubuntu. LXQT or Xfce. It won’t look as modern as GNOME, KDE, Cosmic but they’re good
Fedora for beginners. Ubuntu-based lost the crown because of Snap bullshit.
Are you talking about plasma Fedora?
The Desktop Environment doesn’t matter much. Whichever you like. Stock Fedora is Gnome, and there is a Spin of practically every desktop available. Try what you think you’ll like.