I've got an ancient laptop that currently runs Windows 10, but it's time for a change since that version is nearing its end of life and has too much bloat. I'm looking to breathe new life into this old machine with a lightweight and visually appealing Linux distro. I've stumbled upon Zorin Lite OS, but I heard it's going to be discontinued soon. The laptop has only 2GB of RAM (I might upgrade it to 4GB in a few months) and a combo of HDD and SSD storage. I've already spent a good amount of time with Linux Mint, which I enjoyed, but I'm searching for something that looks a bit more stylish. Any suggestions?
5 Answers
You might want to give Fedora LXQt a shot! You can customize the themes to get that aesthetic look you're going for. It's lightweight and has some great options for tweaking it to your liking.
I've been using MX Linux on my 2007 laptop and it works beautifully! Plus, it’s super customizable so you can make it look just how you want. Perfect for older hardware.
Just a heads up, with only 2GB of RAM you might hit some limitations, especially with web browsing. Antix or MX Linux with Fluxbox could be good options—they're lightweight and have a lot of community support! But investing in more RAM would definitely help.
If you're happy with Mint but want a different look, consider switching to a different desktop environment like GNOME, KDE, or XFCE. Mint uses Cinnamon by default, but you can easily change it without needing to reinstall a whole new distro! There are also window managers that let you really customize how your desktop appears.
Have you thought about Bodhi Linux? It's built on Ubuntu and is designed to be lightweight. Just keep in mind that moving to a more Debian-based distro might make your old laptop run smoother!
Yeah, and while these setups can take a bit longer to configure, the end result can be something really unique!