6 Lightweight Linux Distros for Old PCs

Not all computers are born equal, and if you have a lower-end rig you may need to look at lighweight Linux distros that will work well on older computers. There's so much variety on the Linux platform that it can actually be hard to choose the best lightweight distro for your purposes, so we've picked out six of the best.

[racoononinternet]

"Arch requieres you to put a bit of efford in"
It took me 4 times to install it, a bit is an understatement

[wkrossman]

I was surprised to see a few distros I hadn't ever heard of before, and know nothing about... will be fun looking into those.

[Vantud]

Thank you, the video looks professional.

[danduby]

I just installed 4M Linux, and it works great, very fast, and very lightweight. A keeper for sure.

[drewsaulpaul]

Peppermint OS is the light distro for me. Very zippy and very functional.

[squiddyathome]

Shout out for LXLE. Amazing work. Can only say awesome

[beefcake]

been on lubuntu 16.04 for years. happy.

[Slushpuppie]

I am also throwing my hand up for Peppermint 9. Solid and Snappy on my Oldish System.

[George_K]

This is an excellent video on Light Weight Distro's

[macinman]

I've gone with Xubuntu on the older computer I run linux on. I find it to be a good balance of light, but having a good set of features out of the box. Of course though as with any Linux distro, you can take, and add as needed. Even though this video is focused on Linux distros, I've also considered FreeBSD, as that is also light and lets you build from ground up. It's also a true UNIX vs Linux which is a Unix clone.

[bertnijhof]

Peppermint 9, I run it on a Pentium 4 HT with 1 GB.

[thatcoolgamer]

Thanks I had a old Lenovo from 2009 and I did not no what to download on it

[lightningMcqueen]

Puppy is the litest most user friendly best looking fastest stable Linux distro i have ever tried .

Tiny Linux is much much liter than puppy and dog linuxs . But it's not user-friendly, it's not complete to meet use cases of a regular user .

[razzaqrizvi]

Using Peppermint 10 on Lenovo thinkpad T410. 2GB ram, Inter dual core. Runs like a charm :). But I am definitely going to give Alpine Linux a try.

[supercomputing]

Bionic Dog Linux is good, just like puppy linux, although it is based on Ubuntu 18.04 meaning that it supports all software made on ubuntu in this distro, it only uses 100mb ram at idle. Really Good!

[massilamany]

Thank you for all these very usefull informations. Nice job!

[Xotty]

Found an old laptop with 2Gb ram 80Gb HDD and with Intel Dual core processor. Tried Lubuntu and Fedora but did not work for some reason computer just hang during install. Tried Linux Lite and Wow everything worked fine. Video, network, wifi, sound etc. right after install. Very impressed. It is working now as a music centre at my workplace :D

[tomormiston]

I'd also suggest Mint Xfce as a good fallback. Not the lightest but probably the easiest to use. Flatpaks built in, snaps easy to add

[brunoeiler]

Bodhi Linux is awesome too !!!! I have running very good in a Thinkpad T40 old Centrino with 700MB memory with WiFi and all drivers installed automatically connecting my Samsung networked color laser printer and Epson WiFi scanner too

[poseidon]

The biggest issue I see with any OS is the CPU. I can add enough ram. I can upgrade to a SSD. But I can't always upgrade the CPU, especially with laptops. For example, "this distribution only using 250MB of memory!". It boots fairly quickly. But when they fire up the internet browser, it's running slower than lounging snails. What gives? The web seems apparently designed for more current processors and each web page is pulling increasingly more data. Blocking that data is the only I can see to make the web a better experience and it isn't just about Ads. I don't care for all the videos playing on every page. If I wanted to watch a video, I'll go to a video page, like YouTube.