What lightweight, user friendly distro can be used on an old system that doesn't have PAE support in the CPU?

A debian like "crunchbang" ?
An experience reduced to the strict necessity like "TinyCoreLinux" ?
I think the non PAE mean your laptop has a small and old CPU and low RAM ?
A post of the spec would be good.

Crunchbang doesn't have a pae kernel and Bodhi has a separate non-pae version. My reviews may not sound very enthusiastic, but if you have a non-pae computer they suddenly look much better! Bodhi recommend a minimum specification of Pentium II and 128MB; I don't have a note about Crunchbang, but I suspect it's similar.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/review...page/15/sort/7
http://www.linuxquestions.org/review...page/15/sort/7

I have Slackware on my older machines (K6-2/III, Celeron 550) though they all have 512MB ram. I have used it with much elss though. Might have to be circumspect in choice of GUI however.

I didn't have any particular computer in mind, just something that I can recommend to friends who have an extra computer around.

But for something more specific: Pentium M CPUs at around 1.4 to 1.8 GHz, or Pentium 4 CPUs at around 3 GHz, 1 to 2 GB RAM, normal 5400 RPM HDDs, integrated cheap graphics chipset.

I use Slackware myself, but that is one of the most difficult distributions that exists. I mentioned this should be a user friendly distro.

If you want to get rid of that requirement then obviously Gentoo would be the best distro since everything is compiled specifically for your particular CPU.

However the question becomes a little more challenging when you want it to be user friendly too.

Almost every distro could run on that if you have enough ram for the version.

I don't get the can't have PAE part. Last I knew was you either had to force pae install or it autoselected.

Pentium 4 CPUs all support PAE, Pentium M CPUs support PAE, unless they are the versions with 400MHz FSB, those don't have PAE support.
So possibly the PAE problematic doesn't apply here at all.

Well that depends on your definition of "run". I tried Ubuntu on a 1.4 GHz Pentium M, 1.25 GB RAM system, it did NOT run well at all. Unity is very demanding, and not even that user friendly. A person used to Windows XP will just find it counterintuitive and just weird. Yes, sure, I could just install XFCE, but I'd rather use a proper distro.

Thanks, a computer I tried was on the lower end spectrum of that list though, a Pentium M that probably had the 400 MHz FSB.

The Pentium M CPUs (not the Pentium 4 Mobile) you can find in this list are the ones without PAE: http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced...tionSet=32-bit

Well, if it ran then I'd guess that the pae is not part of the problem. Modern distro's have been made for people who asked for more and more things. Your main issue may be more likely to be a combination of totally poor performance within the system along with a poor video card or video setup.
Things change so fast in the computer world. A somewhat good system of a few years ago will simply not run the current big distro's.


http://www.webupd8.org/2012/05/how-t...n-non-pae.html if you want to try it without pae.

Select other distro's maybe or try Gentoo to build your own system. Try any of the made for older hardware versions. I have liked Slitaz.

Ubuntu is fat.
Look at www.distrowatch.com with the selection "old computer" or desktop "openbox" or other lightweight desktop.
I think, for that type of PC you have, lubuntu, crunchbang, xubuntu, mint xfce, debian lxde.. could good full experience distro (sorry but I never tried slack, arch or bsd..).