Greetings:

I have an ~ 8 year-old Dell Inspiron 1521 laptop that my wife gave me. It's running Win XP but that's pretty useless. I'd like to install Linux on it and I'm wondering if anyone might know what distro would be compatible.

It has a 1.6 Ghz processor, 80 GB HD, but only 512 MB RAM. I could upgrade that RAM to 2 GB but would prefer not to dump any money into this old geezer.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Why not grab one or two live distros and try it out? There are a few members at last I saw running on P-IIIs and such. You'll certainly want a lightweight desktop, such as LXDE, XFCE or even no desktop environment and a Window Manager alone. I believe Mint (linux-mint.com) has an XFCE flavor, check it out. Even MATE under Mint will work for you, but may be a little heavy and slow.

Avoid anything with GNOME, KDE or Unity. They require faster hardware.

The problem I used to have with (really) old Inspirons was the video. They used to come up with only 8Meg (yep, meg) of video memory and used a Win driver on boot to reallocate some of the shared RAM to video on the way up. The current Linux driver should handle that ok, but KMS support might be an issue on older kit. As suggested a liveCD should shake out any/all of those problems.
On 512 Meg, you'll struggle - I'd maybe have a look at Bodhi, it works a treat on crappy netboots I tried it on (uses Enlightenment). Never tried it on the old Inspirons, I used mainly Slack or Arch as I could control what got installed.

Ah, yes, a live distro. Didn't think of that. I may end up doing the memory upgrade. They're only around $15 on Amazon. Might be worth it.

Thanks to all.

I had two Inspirons. The only real problem I encountered running Linux on them was Broadcom wireless.

Were you able to resolve the problem?

Had a similar situation about a year ago with a Inspiron E1505, but at least it had 1GB of RAM.
Fisrt consider replacing the HDD unless the SMART data indicates a clean bill of health.
I was able to upgrade the wimpy CPU with a faster dual-core CPU for only $16 from eBay. Just upgrade to a mid-level chip (e.g. 2.0GHz) which is still inexpensive; it's the faster/fastest that command top dollar. Replacing a laptop processor does take a bit of skill.

Installing Lubuntu was easy. The Broadcom WiFi required a few minutes of searching in the Ubuntu forum, and did end up working.


Regards

Hi...

If you plan on using this laptop on a regular basis, the upgrade will be well worth it.

Regards...

Are you sure about the model? The 1521 is listed as having 1 GB. But 512 MB is not inadequate: there are a dozen decent distros that will run in less than that. The best bets are:

With the Xfce desktop, AntiX MX (other Xfce implementations can be larger)
With the LXDE desktop, Lubuntu
With the Ice window manager, AntiX

To see a bit more about them, read the reviews on this site and look at the descriptions and screen-shots at

http://antix.mepis.com/
http://lubuntu.net/

http://www.xfce.org/
http://lxde.org/
http://www.icewm.org/

Instructions and drivers for Broadcom wireless are not hard to find. It's slightly inconvenient because of Debian's policy of distributing only free software. In other words, if it's proprietary, you have to find it and follow the instructions, but for me that was no big deal. I did it for 2 Dell laptops.

Also it's not a GUARANTEE it's broadcom wireless. I had 2 1521's long ago and only 1 of them had Broadcom, the other had an Intel 2200.

Thanks to everyone for the responses.

I ordered the 2GB RAM module so that should help.

It's definitely a 1521 and came with a 512 MB card installed. I'm guessing there were different options when purchasing. I will check the health of the HD - good idea.

Windoze device manager identifies the wireless card as Broadcom.

Although I have the tech background to replace the CPU I'll probably be too lazy to tackle it. :^)

I will check into the different distro suggestions.

Once again, thanks to all.

Broadcom wireless can be got to work in pretty much any Linux distro. My experiences with the Dell is what led to this thread. http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ux-4175434970/

You're welcome, glad we could help.

Regards...

Thanks for that link - looks very informative.

I'm embarrassed to say I was a bit off on the hardware I have. There is indeed 1 GB RAM installed - when I looked at the module it said 512 MB but that must be per side. Also the CPU is running at 1.8 GHz not 1.6 as previously reported.

Always helps to check in with the BIOS to see what's really happening!