Hi - I have a HP Stream 14 netbook:
32Gb HDD, 2Gb RAM, Broadcom BCM43142 dual WiFi/BT, Linux Mint 20.3 Xfce64 bit.
It is frustratingly slow with any "normal" desktop distro, it being up against the stops in terms of RAM and storage.
I have tried many "lightweight" Linux distros and all have drawbacks either in terms of not recognising some elements of the hardware (notably the WiFi or wired Network), not booting properly, not being able to access driver store as root or change screen resolution etc.
I have been able to boot most into Live USB/CD but rarely get much further than that.
There must be someone out there who has recommendations for a suitable distro for this laptop. If so, would they care to offer suggestions for something that is simple to install (e.g. not Gentoo/Arch etc.) and will allow adequate web browsing?

Thanks in advance...

Hi,

Considering your hardware configurations, the RAM will limit you the most.
With modern distros, the desktop environments and a web browser like Firefox tend to use more than 1GB of RAM. So, I suggest you find a distro using a desktop environment other than GNOME or KDE, and a lightweight web browser.

XFCE is a pretty lightweight and stable desktop environment. Maybe try Manjaro with XFCE. Or Debian with XFCE. As for browser, maybe you can try Pale Moon, Falkon or Midori.

All the best.


PS. I would have suggested Slackware with XFCE (without installing KDE or the development packages), but the installation might be a bit difficult. If ever you're ready to try something a bit more demanding in terms of learning curve, you can try Slackware Linux; it's quite gentle on the hardware.

That distro shouldn't be using more than 1 GB when started. Maybe you are opening a lot of applications and going over your 2 GB of RAM which will make your computer very slow. Have you checked your RAM usage? Is your computer slow from the start? Maybe something else is wrong with the installation and your problem is not memory based.

As far as memory usage, here is some memory used as soon as you enter desktop (six month old data).
antiX-21_x64-full.iso 150MB
EndeavourOS_Atlantis-21_4.iso 680MB
MX-21_x64.iso 800MB
Zorin-OS-16-Lite-64-bit.iso 800MB

A current "heavy" Debian installation with Cinnamon on my laptop uses about 800MB.
A current Bodhi installation on my laptop uses about 250MB.

You have a lot of choices.

On the MX Linux 21 Xfce recommend.

I run the MX 21 Fluxbox edition and it is as full featured as the XFCE edition. Which I have also installed and ran.

Youtube comparison.