Lightweight Distro for Old Hardware?

A friend of mine is looking to setup an older laptop with a lightweight distro of Linux. He only needs basic web access (e.g., check mail, watch videos, post on forums, et al.). Time was I'd recommend Ubuntu or Puppy Linux, but I'm not sure what the latest and greatest is for older, lower spec hardware. Anyone have some recommendations? I'll be helping him and I'm IT savvy, but he's not real technical, so an easy-to-use GUI is also a must.

Thanks all.

 

I've installed Lubuntu in an old Pentium IV I had laying around and it performs OK. I wasn't planning on using it much, so I gave it to my father that mainly checks on emails , surfs the internet and writes documents. So far, so good; he's never complained about it and is even happy with it. The problem I've found (and It's more of a personal opinion) it's that it looks sooo old and kind of boring, you can search some screenshots and maybe get what I'm saying. Wasn't a problem for my father, though.

 

I would recommend using AntiX. It has a similar interface to that of Windows and needs a minimum of 64Mb of RAM to run, although 128MB is preferred. The download size is around 700mb which is quite impressive considering how much has been packed into it. It comes with LibreOffice for writing documents. It's also fairly up to date as well.

 

PuppyLinux or Lubuntu are always good choices. You might like Kali Linux or ArchLinux, too. PuppyLinux is the fastest and most flexible I've found that gives you the full user experience and features while keeping it under 128mb. You only need 64mb of ram to install it and a 333mhz CPU, but you can get the ram requirements down to about 40MB in some cases. The only linux I've seen that is smaller than this with a GUI that you can use on just about any older system is TinyCore Linux. You're looking at only 4 to 8mb of ram for a full graphical OS with firefox. You can use the package manager from a terminal shell to get more or install packages manually. It's a great little system for use with systems that have less than 16mb of ram. If you want a smoother experience without as much configuration and multimedia support already there and have 64mb of ram or greater, I would go with Puppy.

 

I am currently ponder about installing Linux on my HP laptop to resurrect it. My problem is whether to go with Linux that is similar to Window or Linux that is similar to Mac. I have read many articles on installing Linux on old computer to get a few years out of it, but to know what is the best to use, I have to leave it up to my nephew who is fixing it up for me.

 

Just use one of the lighter linux distros mentioned above. You don't have to stick to Ubuntu if all you need to do is surf the web and read emails. There are many linux distros made specifically for the purpose I mentioned previously. Plus, it's really not that difficult to install these various OS's and many of them come with installation instructions as well.

 

Xubuntu is a nice alternative too, xfce is very lightweight and not that ugly to the eye.

gOS could have been a nice alternative for what you are asking, it was basically google chrome OS before that even existed, basically an OS that only exists for you to log in, launch a browser and use cloud based apps and browsing the internet. That thing is sadly dead by now.

 

It depends how much memory the laptop has. I used Puppy Linux for my old Easynote because with 128Mb of memory and an ancient processor it wouldn't support Lubuntu. The only thing is that Puppy, at least the version I've got, has a rather busy desktop and it's easy to get lost with all the options. If all you're after is surfing, TinyCore might be a better bet. I'm not sure what the video or flash drivers are like for TinyCore though. I did have to add some extra ones to Puppy to view online video, but the system really doesn't have enough memory for it.