What Linux Distro for my old laptop

wpeckham · 04-01-2017, 10:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by igadoter

I suggest to start from top to down. Grab any new distro and try. There are great chance it will work. The only limitations is graphic card of your computer. Brand new desktops like Gnome 3 or KDE 5 can be too heavy for old graphic card. Also you should disable file system journal on hard drive. Simple hard drive is too old, and active journal probably will kill the hard drive on your computer for good. As it was done on my notebook. Now I am using ext2 very old files system, it is not as safe as any system with journal, but well, if you care much about safety of your data, then I suggest buy new notebook.

???
I was using a journaled file system in 1997. I do not recall seeing any 2G ram laptops at that time. That drive should be able to handle a modern file system with journals just fine. EXT4 or EXT3 should work fine, but ReiserFS4 or XFS might not be a good fit. EXT2 may be faster, but is seriously limiting. This sounds like a good time for some experimentation.

I would stay with things that are light and fast, due to the cpu and video restrictions. Play with the Puppy or try TinyCore (use the CorePlus image to get extra drivers and WIFI support) to test the hardware and verify that everything works with Linux.

igadoter · 04-01-2017, 02:46 PM

[QUOTE=wpeckham;5691278]???
I was using a journaled file system in 1997. I do not recall seeing any 2G ram laptops at that time. That drive should be able to handle a modern file system with journals just fine. EXT4 or EXT3 should work fine, but ReiserFS4 or XFS might not be a good fit. EXT2 may be faster, but is seriously limiting. /QUOTE]
It is not about running or not running system with journal. One can always run such system, but I believe journal will shorten lifetime of the hard drive which already is old.

wpeckham · 04-01-2017, 03:44 PM

[QUOTE=igadoter;5691364]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wpeckham

???
I was using a journaled file system in 1997. I do not recall seeing any 2G ram laptops at that time. That drive should be able to handle a modern file system with journals just fine. EXT4 or EXT3 should work fine, but ReiserFS4 or XFS might not be a good fit. EXT2 may be faster, but is seriously limiting. /QUOTE]
It is not about running or not running system with journal. One can always run such system, but I believe journal will shorten lifetime of the hard drive which already is old.

Possible, but I have found that turning off atime makes as much of a difference. (YMMV)
It also strikes me that if a replacement drive can be found for that model, it should be cheap.

I advised against journals on SSD drives not that many months ago, but SSD has improved so fast that the advice would no longer apply to the latest devices. On old drives it was always more important to me to be certain that my data would survive and unexpected power down event. It is possible that using EXT3 or EXT4 with journals turned off would extend the life of the drive for a day or two in a year, but I would not expect it to make enough difference to make it easy to PROVE that there was a difference.

If you choose to run without journals, also set the noatime option and be very careful to do proper shutdowns to avoid corruption issues.

Drakeo · 04-01-2017, 03:52 PM

puppy linux from the bottom up was built for old laptops. read the history of puppy grab a slacko pup or one of Barry's pups and bring a old laptop to life.

BruceHenrik(Geek) · 04-01-2017, 08:16 PM

To: tboneshep

You can use any linux distrobution you want. You just need to install or use a light-weight desktop manager like xfce, Mate, LXDE/LXQT. fluxbox and so on.