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I have a 2004 laptop with 2.8Ghz Pentium 4, with 512MB of RAM and 30GB hard drive.

While I like using ubuntu, but this latest release is very slow... I'm using 10.10 desktop edition. The UI is not very responsive. I tried turning off all the eye candies but didn't quite work.

Can anyone recommend any linux distro that's better? would a ubuntu netbook remix be good? What about fedora or others? I need this for writing, coding, running java and C++ programs, and also some excel work. I don't care much about music and videos, I have an iPhone and an iPad. I want it to be able to run Dropbox and Google Chrome easily

BTW I can't install something like jolicloud or Chrome OS because my BIOS does not support USB booting (and jolicloud does not officially support Live CD). I don't want something like puppy linux either.

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closed as not constructive by random♦ May 9 at 20:21

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4 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

There are some Ubuntu-based alternatives that are very lightweight, Xubuntu (XFCE) and Lubuntu (LXDE -- even lighter than XFCE) come to mind.

Vanilla Debian is great too. If you don't mind straying away from the Debian-based world, Zenwalk is a nice change as well that doesn't require a lot of extra configuration.

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ok.. Do you think I should try debian first of lubuntu first? I'm tempted with both but only have limited time to try =) – Enrico Susatyo Dec 3 '10 at 4:09
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Go with Lubuntu in that case. Vanilla Debian comes with Gnome which is heavier than LXDE. – John T Dec 3 '10 at 4:21
oh, LXDE does not have gnome layer? so is the GUI completely different than desktop ubuntu? – Enrico Susatyo Dec 3 '10 at 4:35
It's not completely different, it's still pretty similar but more simple IMO. I went with Lubuntu on my old craptop and it definitely picked up the speed a lot. Tried Xubuntu as well, but it's not as fast as what it tauts, at least not from what I could tell. Lubuntu is my vote. – NoCatharsis Dec 3 '10 at 4:45
Ok, I'm downloading it right now. Would dropbox, chrome, and a decent text editor be available? Thanks for all your help! – Enrico Susatyo Dec 3 '10 at 5:01
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up vote 1 down vote

I'm a huge fan of Arch Linux. It starts you out with just a CLI bash prompt, and you can add precisely what you want to minimize the bloat. Whether it's going to be faster in the end depends on what was slowing you down to begin with, but if there's any chance it was because you had anything you didn't need installed, this may be the answer, since Arch never installs anything you don't ask it to. It can be some work to set up, but worth it. Try it with a relatively minimal OpenBox (without or without the rest of LXDE) type install.

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Still a Linux newb myself, I've heard some talk about Arch Linux and the ability to customize your installation like this. Sounds great - I hate loading up Ubuntu or Kubuntu for the first time and having to uninstall the e-mail app, Firefox (in favor of Chrome), all the media apps, etc. Can you suggest a guide to customizing Arch Linux installation? – NoCatharsis Dec 3 '10 at 4:48
Yes, can you please? I dont't want the hassle of installing everything either – Enrico Susatyo Dec 3 '10 at 5:03
I would have suggested this too if he wasn't time limited and slightly more experienced. Arch is great. – John T Dec 3 '10 at 5:38
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@NoCatharsis The Beginner's Guide on the Arch Wiki wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide is where to start; the rest of the wiki is great too. @the_great_monkey: you don't seem to want the same thing; NoCatharsis doesn't want to have to uninstall things; you don't want to install things. If you don't want to have to pick what you want to install individually, then don't use Arch. – frabjous Dec 3 '10 at 19:20
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up vote 0 down vote

I know this isn't the question you asked, but I haven't really used anything other than Ubuntu. There's a little hack you can add that is reported to improve desktop responsiveness. It's really seemed to help me on Ubuntu 9.04. You can try entering this into your /etc/rc.local file:

mkdir -p /dev/cgroup/cpu
mount -t cgroup cgroup /dev/cgroup/cpu -o cpu
mkdir -m 0777 /dev/cgroup/cpu/user
echo "/usr/local/sbin/cgroup_clean" > /dev/cgroup/cpu/release_agent

exit 0

Otherwise, I'd suggest looking at Xubuntu or Lubuntu, as mentioned by John T. The reason why Ubuntu may be unresponsive on your computer is because Gnome (the default display manager on Ubuntu) can take a lot of system resources and is quite heavyweight. Xubuntu and Lubuntu to not use Gnome.

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The thing is, I used ubuntu 9.04 in this laptop and it wored fine before! =( – Enrico Susatyo Dec 3 '10 at 5:02
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up vote 0 down vote

Sorry, but a Pentium 4 with 512 MB of RAM is not that old! ;-) I have installed Xubuntu in two Pentium_II machines with 256 MB of RAM. It runs quite fine, however a little bit slow. I did not try any netbook versions, nor Lubuntu (except in live-CDs). The worst in these cases (P_II machines) is the processor, that remains a lot in 100% usage or close, when analysed with "system monitor!; the RAM is not that limiting (thanks to the swap space, obviously). I hope Lubuntu gets more and more solid and "professional", since I guess is really lighter than Xubuntu. I I knew a little bit of Linux configuration, I would go or a Debian customised installation. I guess it would be the best option. Cheers!

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