this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
44 points (92.3% liked)

Linux

48033 readers
1133 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

It's an old model (Acer One D257) Processor is Intel Atom. Memory is 1GB DDR3 with 320 GB of HDD. I currently Have MX 21 running on it, but I need to reinstall because I forgot the root password. Since I'm reinstalling the OS, I thought I'd ask here for recommendations for an OS that makes the most of this oldie.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'd recommend Alpine and running it headless. Realistically you'd need 4GB+ of ram to run a modern desktop session so that's not ideal. However running Alpine headless will leave you with 800M to run programs.

You can still run a GUI desktop on it but I'd recommend having a nice sized swap partition/file to make up for it. It'll be slow as soon as you hit the 1GB memory and starting swapping out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's not the desktop that needs 4 GB, it's large apps like modern browser or office. The desktop will run fine on 1 GB. May want to look into Midori and Abiword as alternatives.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Absolutely correct, Alpine can run a desktop environment with 500 megs.