Thanks for this link!

"antiX is my top pick for truly constrained hardware. It runs on systemd-free Debian Stable, uses around 256MB at idle, and includes a full desktop experience. The trade-off is a less polished interface compared to Ubuntu-based options. If you need something even lighter, Puppy Linux runs entirely in RAM and can resurrect machines that most distros would reject. The learning curve is steeper, but the performance is unmatched."

I would actually recommend Bodhi Linux for under 2GB. https://www.bodhilinux.com/ I installed AntiX on a 2GB Chromebook, and it had issues crashing on browsers under even a couple tabs. It might have just been the laptop I bought from Goodwill, or the fact that I disabled swap, because it was an old 16GB soldered SSD/NAND drive that I wanted to avoid heavily writing swap space to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhozuNv-J7Q

Bodhi is more featured with a more conventional package manager than Puppy, and while I like booting from RAM, it's learning curve is a little steeper and less maintained than Bodhi, which is getting a new release soon: https://www.reddit.com/r/bodhilinux/comments/1qqrfyj/is_bodh...

I did a video with Bodhi on Virtual box with 1GB since I didn't have the Chromebook with me at the time, but it idles around 350MB (possibly before Chromium running): https://youtu.be/61xI-g--ozs?si=y7ukxyEGSj_kNPF7

For additional package manager support, a nice UI (Enlightenment) and compatibility, it's far more preferrable than 250MB ideling on AntiX with less support.

For Atom N450 series, I recommend eXe Linux: https://exegnulinux.net/ I have a video of that too.

I hadn't heard of BunsenLabs, but I will definitely check it out (Note: Atom N450 chips support 64 bit, even on single core, so they might work great on those machines)

The overall sentiment expressing the growing gap between software needs and hardware capabilities is sound. This is where FOSS projects shine who put deep thought into providing the same features modern users need into an OS that can intelligently utilize older computing resources. I've been in the industry since the Nineties and it still amazes me how many companies invest so little into backward-compatibility and performance during their OS and application design process.

I've had my Panasonic Toughbook (CF31-5) for almost 10 years and while it's a dinosaur to some, it's a major upgrade from what I had before in terms of portable computing. Its max memory is 16 GiB DDR3 SDRAM on an Intel Core i5-5300U. When I first bought it I tried Debian and Ubuntu, but even back then those ran slow. I installed Xubuntu and have run that ever since with no performance issues whatsoever.

Because I primarily use Emacs and TeX tools, writing Elisp and LaTeX, the system is more than enough for me. I've not played graphics-heavy games, run GPU-intensive UI or done any heavy data plotting. However, one benchmark I do have: I am able use the test automation framework required for my day job with ease. I run that software on Xubuntu because on my work-provided systems (Windows 11 and macOS Tahoe) the application crawls and is practically unusable.

The reason this advice is bizarre is that old memory isn't actually that dear. The machines that would have had 2GB of RAM or less would be from the Core 2 Duo era or so, taking DDR2 or DDR3, and typically supported 8-16GB. 8GB of DDR3 is currently in the ballpark of $10 and the machines that take it can be found by the pallet in the "free e-waste" pile, so who is going to suffer <2GB instead of 8GB over $10?

You don't even have to go that old. There are so many companies that upgrade tiny pc's its created a whole self hosting community with the tiny lenovo, hp and dell unit's. It's not only Windows that can be replaced with old hardware but also many online services with proxmox for cloud/nas/dns/vpn/multimedia etc. Of course these are not 2GB systems but you can do some pretty cool things with 8 and 9 year old systems that are literally decommissioned because they are too old. Although a friend of mine who works for a MSP gave me a Lenovo m710q tiny a month ago and its made a pretty good Debian Desktop for my workbench in the garage. I lucked out there because even these tiny's are now going up in price. People have caught on.

And not a word about MGLRU and its settings. It has the biggest impact on performance on lower-end PCs, especially with low amount of RAM and slow HDD.

Here's a post from "le9" patch user which was created by ChromeOS developers much before MGLRU, but exploits the similar idea: keeping the essential file cache in RAM for as long as possible. It's usually night and day on low-end machines.

    - https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/software/general-linux-open-source/1267300-le9-strives-to-make-linux-very-usable-on-systems-with-small-amounts-of-ram?p=1267789#post1267789
    - https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/software/general-linux-open-source/1267300-le9-strives-to-make-linux-very-usable-on-systems-with-small-amounts-of-ram?p=1268100#post1268100

>If the machine cannot run a lightweight Linux desktop at a usable speed after you have applied the optimizations in this guide, it is time to recycle it

or better yet, install NetBSD. That system will run on anything that old :)

Nice to see BunsenLabs getting some love - smooth way into a GUI Debian

I prefer Boron over the more recent Carbon due to some of the panel changes (although presumably this is all configurable somewhere)

https://ddl.bunsenlabs.org/ddl/

Boron also probably requires this fix:

https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?pid=144667

I had a similar experience trying to use an old laptop with 2GB of RAM. I was surprised how much it struggled with basic tasks. I remember my first computer with 32MB of RAM. Obviously we live in a different world now but still, it's not like I was trying to do anything more ambitious than what I used to do on that PC.

The post is missing a section about video cards.

My old laptop from 2006 has an ATI x1600. I remember that I lost v sync with kernels past 3.something so I had to put the kernel on hold while the other packages updated around it. That was around 2012. Maybe the issue is fixed by now but old graphic cards can make an old PC run only as a headless server. It's been years since I booted it.

    <driconf>
         <device driver="i915">
         <application name="Default">
         <option name="stub_occlusion_query" value="true" />
         <option name="fragment_shader" value="true" />
         </application>
         </device>
    </driconf>

For older hardware: Void Linux, Xubuntu or maybe Linux Mint Xfce. If you want something up to date that needs to be online.

AntiX and Puppy Linux are a bit too rough, in my opinion. I'd rather leave the machine with some fully updated old Windows version designed for that hardware, offline. Works very well for retro gaming, ripping CDs and stuff like that.