What are your experiences with using Linux on older hardware?
Posted by Leedeegan1@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 94 comments
Many of us have seen the impressive performance of Linux on modern machines, but I'm curious about your experiences with running Linux on older hardware. Whether it's a vintage laptop, a desktop from a decade ago, or even a Raspberry Pi, I’d love to hear how well Linux performs in these situations. What distros did you choose, and what optimizations or tweaks did you implement to enhance performance? Did you face any challenges with hardware compatibility or software limitations? I believe sharing our stories can help others who are looking to repurpose older systems or give new life to legacy hardware. Let’s discuss the best practices and lessons learned from our journeys in using Linux on older machines!
SithLordRising@reddit
Older is easier as generally more support however newer kernels sometimes drop redundant hardware so pays to check. Easier to go back than forward
MartinUK_Mendip@reddit
Macmini 6.2 (late 2012) | i7-3720QM/16Gb | mint 21.2 | everything works well except Steam/Proton as Vulkan has problems with the X11 Intel HD4000 Ivy Bridge driver (no vulkan 1.3) but using OpenGL usually works.
lndoors@reddit
For a few devices Linux is the only option you have. Its not like I'm going out of my way to use older hardware, the experience is often rather slow, and not the greatest. Still better than windows but it doesn't make your hardware any better than it is. It just works how its supposed to.
The only time its interesting to me is when its a raspberry pi or something similar where the form factor or capability has something going for it. I can turn a old pi board and some wired web cams into a bird monitor. Theres not much I can do with a old windows xp think pad that i find fun or interesting. There isn't really the same access or hype that something like the raspberry community brings.
PatientCommittee7014@reddit
6+ year old laptop. 8th Gen Intel i7. 16Gb RAM. No discrete GPU. 1Tb SSD.
Arch + KDE. Runs great, very fast and smooth. Uses far less than 50% resources almost always.
Use for office applications, internet browsing, streaming video, remote desktop to other machines.
I have dual boot on Windows 11 on same laptop for occasional use. And Windows 11 is slow and lagging.
Own-Tip6628@reddit
Varies by device but always better than using Windows that's for sure.
tomscharbach@reddit
Dell Inspiron 11-3180, circa 2016, AMD A6-9220e, 4GB, 32GB eMMc, no racehorse but runs LMDE fine out of the box with no tweaks, optimizations, or special setup.
The secret is to understand the limitations imposed by low-end hardware and exercising common sense, keeping the number of browser tabs down to a reasonable level and not running multiple applications.
Linux runs efficiently and does not require much in the way of hardware. My hardware is low-specification. My desktop "workhorse" is a Beelink Mini S N100/16GB/256GB, my laptops Dell Latitude 3000 Education models (Pentium N600/8GB/128GB and N200/8GB/128GB).
ohfuckcharles@reddit
My copy of RedHat 4.2 ran really well on my 486 dx4-100 🤷♂️
nowuxx@reddit
I used void Linux on i3-2100 and gts 450. It was bearable. Also I used it with nouveau driver.
Xenphrax@reddit
Old hardware works great with Linux unless it has NVIDIA graphics 😅
no2gates@reddit
I'm running Mint on a Dell XPS laptop from 2017. has 16G RAM, but never needs that much memory Works great, super fast. It fires up Krita and a few other programs faster than a brand new Windows laptop I've compared it to.
Few_Regret5282@reddit
I have installed Mint on several older laptops and is much more efficient and runs smoother than Windows ever did. Does not require much RAM. Some only have 4GB
piexil@reddit
I am able to get Ubuntu 24.04 with full gnome working with just 2gb ram, on a core 2 duo no less. Requires zram to be enabled.
It can even handle firefox, for a few tabs at least.
Pitiful-Welcome-399@reddit
Ubuntu isn't a great choice, you should really look into other distros and maybe using xfce
tmahmood@reddit
Surface pro 3, 4gb ram, Arch Linux, Gnome, using it to ssh into my main computer and work. Because it's so small, and light. It's easy to manage. Have a small mechanical keyboard handy, which feels pretty nice.
Small footprint, battery life is fine. Firefox runs okay, but too many tabs, bye. I was thinking of running a VM on the main desktop and remote into it, but too lazy to setup.
it works pretty well actually. Tailscale is so useful
MegaVenomous@reddit
My laptop is a 2008 Dell Latitude E6500 with 4GB. Has its moments, but otherwise runs fine.
fallingupdownthere@reddit
I currently have Kubuntu running on a late 2013 MB Pro. I use it in my 3D printing space. Works really well. On another of the same MB Pros I have Ubuntu. That’s just for watching stuff at night before I go to bed. My home server is Mint running on a 2012 Dell XPS 8500. I upped the ram to 32gb. I run mint because I also use it to run my CNC software. I also have mint on an old dell laptop that I use for random stuff and testing. All work great. I’d use Linux as my daily driver if it ran the software I needed.
Some day I want to swap out mint for Kubuntu on two of the machines.
icehuck@reddit
Until somewhat recently, I had two pentium 4 boxes running debian. I've had linux on them for almost 20 years, and no issues to work around these days.
If I could, I would install arch linux from 2006 or so with KDE 3.x on these machines. That was peak KDE for me.
Happy_Phantom@reddit
The Thinkpad X230 is a great and compatible platform for running just about anything (except Windows 11). By just about anything I mean any Linux distribution you can think of, plus FreeBSD and variants, OpenIndiana, and Haiku. It can be upgraded to 16GBs of ram and has a very accessible bay for cold swapping M.2 SATA SSD drives.
Iwisp360@reddit
No problems with i5 6300, nor Pentium E6600, which are old CPUs I used Linux on. The only hardware I recalled to have problems was an old Nvidia GeForce 9800 GS, which ran on Nouveau but it was glitchy everywhere
oln@reddit
It generally works quite well. Gentoo and debian is still pretty usable on the old core 2 duo machines I got, though web browsers are starting to get too much for them these days. Even my old pentium 4 machine can run gentoo fine, it even runs accelerated wayland fine thanks to having a radeon 9600 that supports opengl 2.1. I have it gentoo running on a pentium 3 as well but that is more sluggish.
Some problem points are nvidia cards no longer supported by the current proprietary drivers as you are stuck with either nouveau with bad performance or old bitrotting proprietary drivers that don't support wayland. (would probably be even more jank with the 2000s pcs that came with s3/sis/powervr iGPUs but those are less common and not sure how many of them were present in 64-bit systems.)
Another pain point is broadcom wireless cards though that's easier to get around by using a usb dongle or wired if needed.
Tired_Teck@reddit
Great! It matters which distro you want to run. I've been using Linux for (coughing) decades. I have lbuntu running on a AMD Duron 32 bit 1.3ghz with 1GB of ram and 40gb ide hard drive. All the apps work as they should. No you can not run the latest Ubuntu 25.x on any aged hardware. Plan accordingly. YMMV
loozerr@reddit
Alpine is so nice on old computers.
raymoooo@reddit
My laptops are all from over a decade ago. I don't notice any performance differences from modern hardware except when I'm compiling stuff, which is obviously slower.
yahbluez@reddit
From the Linux view a raspi is a very powerful machine. Antix runs on much much slower and smaller hardware.
pipoo23@reddit
Choose a lightweight DE, disable some desktop effects like animations. Disable services you don't want or need, blacklist modules which are loaded by default but not used on your machine.
imtryingmybes@reddit
I install arch or debian on everything I can get my hands on. Nothing under 8gb ram so far though.
DestroyedLolo@reddit
I'm using Gentoo and Arch on quite old x64 machines without any trouble : as example, I have 2 laptops I'm using on daily basis, one of them is a i7 from 10 y/o and it's perfectly workable.
The only issue is it's motherboard is limited to 8 Go which is too limited for video edition (so it's why I have now another one).
I'm also using some x86 (32 bits) or Celeron D machines. They are now too slow for a decent desktop usage (especially regarding web browsing). I migrated the slowest one to TinyCoreLinux and I'm using them as backup system.
I'd played also with TCL down to antic Pentium 1 (yes, the original one) and it's working and usable ... but for internet browsing obviously.
The main issue is the available memory of such old timers.
I'm not using Raspberry as SBCs but the original BananaPI (dual core ARM7h, 900Mhz and 1G Mo). They are driving all my smart home automation (including a PostgreSQL database) and a website. They are running Gentoo and I'm testing Arch. Thanks to their native SATA and 1Gb Ethernet, I have not need to upgrade to newer SBC.
pppjurac@reddit
It works, but sometimes it just does not make any sense to do so when hardware is too old, too slow and uses too much power for work it can do.
There is time when old gear needs to go to recycling bin.
CarryOnRTW@reddit
I used to run the LRP firewall off a floppy on an old 486 that was being given away at a place I did work for. Worked great. Then I switched to ipcop followed by pfsense (sorry not linux). All on old hardware.
Drzejzi@reddit
Mint XFCE on a laptop from 2015 with i7 3630qm and GT 750M.
Mint with XFCE works fine, but - I had to do a research to find the information, that the Nvidia driver suggested by Mint is incorrect - use older version with older kernel, that supports this particular version of the driver and then update the system to the newest version while staying on the old kernel - literally no games work, as the architecture of my card does not support Vulkan.
FengLengshun@reddit
A bit stuttery at times. Even after installing drivers for video acceleration, it isn't the smoothest. But it works well enough, and its job is to be my file dumping server via Resilio. For a laptop with i5 5200U, it handles all that exceedingly well.
That said, a bit weird that NixOS performs way better than Ubuntu Server there. Even before installing KDE on Ubuntu Server, it can just randomly not respond or slow and restart take so long to the point I thought my SATA SSD was that bad. Installed NixOS 25.05 last week, took a bit to figure out how to set it up the way I want (especially confusing was the lack ofmedia/video acceleration drivers by default) and it's been smooth.
vasi@reddit
I'm running Arch POWER on a 2001 PowerPC iBook.
Things that suck: * It's hecking slow, the the specs are terrible: 500 MHz G3, 640 MB RAM * Support for unusual architectures is rough. Lots of programs don't work, or at least aren't packaged. * GPU support is pretty bad, nobody maintains the Rage 128 driver anymore
Bright points: * It's the only way to run modern software on this machine. SSH, WPA wifi, KOffice, semi-modern browsers * The Arch POWER dev is amazing, they've quickly upstreamed my contributions * I've learned a ton! Just sent in my second kernel patch.
Overall, this is more of an experiment, I don't think a hulking, slow laptop is ever going to be my daily driver. But it's been fun!
NBGReal@reddit
I installed AntiX on a 2009 Asus EeePC, and in my opinion, I find it's the best in terms of hardware like that. It uses a window manager pre-configured to give the impression of a desktop and also has graphical or automated tools for most things.
1369ic@reddit
Same basic experience. Put AntiX on a netbook with an Atom processor with a GPU that only ever had a driver with Windows 7 starter edition. It could only do one thing at a time comfortably, but that was enough. The owner would use it to play around with amateur radio software, digitize old albums, or take it to someplace like Panera Bread to surf the web and download stuff like podcasts. He still has dial-up at home, so the little netbook had a purpose, and he got it free.
Due_Adagio_1690@reddit
NOOBS!!!!
Started with downloading Slackware floppies, about 30 1.44MB floppies, using a 9600 baud modem took about a month to complete while competing with my wife for telephone line. Ran it on a no name Intel 386sx 16mhz system, with 4MB yes Megabytes of ram.
Later I was able to get a cdrom drive and a Slackware 96 disc, and found a 10 MB MFM harddisk for sell at "WeirdStuff warehouse" in San Jose sadly now closed.
Current stable kernel of the time was 1.0.9, and did manage to compile my own kernel, it only took 2 and 1/2 days, thanks to the "make dep" which took about 18 hours to complete, because "awk" was using floating point instructions that were emulated on systems with out the 387 and 487 chips, when someone found out about the issue it was rewritten in "C" and was able to complete in a couple hours instead of nearly a day.
undrwater@reddit
Linux may be the only way to keep older hardware running - for a given definition of "older".
chiefhunnablunts@reddit
i installed lubuntu on an hp stream 7 and a winbook 100. had to use a respun iso from linuxium due to intel bay trail family chipsets using a 32bit bootloader but has a 64bit architecture. it's not terrible on the winbook 100, serves as a decent ancillary device at my workstation for streaming. the hp stream on the other hand straight up sucks all around. it's a hardware problem, not a linux one. i could probably get rid of xcfe and replace it with fluxbox, but at some ive gotta just let it go.
Aginor404@reddit
Linux Mint (XFCE edition) or Xubuntu run better on Laptops from ~2010 than the Windows they came with.
I have several old Laptops in use, mostly working without any issues, just out of the box. The one that I could not get to run properly with Mint (it has some weird hybrid graphics card) runs on Xubuntu, which happens to bring a driver for it.
For me the key is asking yourself: "what could I use it for" and then build towards that. Don't expect miracles, but sometimes that old hardware might surprise you.
Lost4name@reddit
I am writing this a on 10 year old HP with an A8 processor and it runs quite well, my daily beast. I have another 10~ year old laptop with a dual core Celeron that I'm using to do spreadsheets elsewhere but it can do mostly everything, I just wouldn't call it snappy in performance
GrassyNoob@reddit
Mint on an Asus ROG G-74:from 2011
CyclopsLobsterRobot@reddit
I got through my CS degree on a then 15 year old ThinkPad. I used i3 instead of a regular DE to save resources but I was able to run IntelliJ running college level programs just fine. I was not able to get Ubuntu running in a virtual machine on it but I took my computer to my Operating Systems teacher and she gave me credit for the lab anyway.
Then-Sherbert1974@reddit
Estou utilizando o Zorin OS 18 num Pentium dual core, com 3GB de RAM, adquirido em 2012. Com a ajuda de 6GB de Swap, funciona praticamente tudo que eu preciso para funções básicas, além de poder rodar um pequeno ambiente de desenvolvimento, com Docker e diversos bancos de dados. Linux, no geral, é simplesmente sensacional no quesito dar utilidade a equipamentos mais antigos.
CT-1065@reddit
I’ve got an AMD E-300 laptop with 4gb of RAM. It was fun but slow with Ubuntu and Linux Mint.
Then there was a Phenom II x6 + HD 6thousand something machine (Manjaro, Kubuntu) a family member gave to me, that was honestly the most usable old machine I’ve encountered. Like if it weren’t for games I could’ve stuck an SSD in there and probably thought that machine was far more recent!
There was an even older machine \~2007/2008 era. Some gateway with a core 2 duo of sone sort and an nvidia gpu but that gpu made it hard to use since it seemed to be breaking (rip)… but I don’t remember being frustrated with its speed so it’d probably be usable.
also raspberry pis (3, 4 and zero) but only the 4/400 I would consider properly usable as a desktop
elatllat@reddit
Things I have found limiting:
Check those things meet the usage goals and you are set.
GPU speed would matter for gamers or GPT users but that gets expensive and is a more well known limitation.
Honj0@reddit
Every single old laptop with windows I had from my friends was slow and completely dogshit to use. After installing Mint or Ubuntu it felt like you were using a new macbook pro. Linux brought every old hardware back to life.
ChuckMauriceFacts@reddit
In recent years I found that there's not really a need for light desktop environments anymore (XFCE, LXDE, LXQT...): either the hardware is "recent" enough to run KDE or Gnome well (I've had KDE running on a 16 year old laptop with 4 GB of RAM flawlessly) or it's a low-power server/SBC where I don't need a graphical interface.
I usually go for Debian KDE or Linux Mint if it's for relatives that just want a simple PC for word processing, email and web browsing
7FromTheFuture@reddit
Typing this from a 14 year old Toshiba laptop. Sometime in the late 2010's, W10 was so demanding it took the cursor 8 seconds to move at all. My dad, who relies on incompatible software, bought a new PC and this one sat in a drawer until 2021, when I started using Linux on it, and it's been a perfectly capable PC since then, as long as I use it for basic tasks. Never had a single issue related to hardware, everything on this laptop works as expected.
Even when trying shenanigans, it works better than I thought it would. A couple of days ago I tried getting the new Affinity version to work through a Github script, and I got it to run and let me select a document size, but it sadly freezes right after that, I think the GPU is just too old (Radeon HD 6450M) but I'm surprised it even got that far. If Linux wasn't a thing, I'd just have to throw this thing away, instead I get to keep something that still works. It's far from optimal, it'd be downright miserable if this was a daily driver, but as a computer that's occasionally used, nothing wrong with it in any way.
Over time, I've used Manjaro (don't shoot me, it was the flavor of the month when I was starting out), OpenSUSE, and EndeavourOS (current distro). None of them had glaring flaws, in fact that Manjaro install was severely mismanaged but it tanked every bad practice I threw at it no problem. Couldn't be happier with this outcome.
drummerdude41@reddit
Great! I can use the same operating system on my old system as my new ones. It's the same environment and all my hardware works as anticipated. In some cases it's even better with some hardware manufacturer's being out of business now and their drivers not being existent for windows.
i_h8_yellow_mustard@reddit
I've been able to get use out of at least decade+ old hardware that would otherwise be forced to run an OS that no longer gets any updates, or would basically be ewaste otherwise. I used a laptop with an i5 540m and 4GB of ram for a while until the keyboard stopped working, and it ran fine using Mint XFCE. It was perfectly functional for office type work and even watching youtube. Hell, I use a computer with just 2GB of RAM right now as a torrent box, with a desktop environment and remote desktop client running and it is perfectly functional even when I occasionally open a browser on it. Granted, it liberally uses swap, but it works. None of that would have been possible if I had tried windows on the same machines, and the linux versions were a fully up to date operating system.
There's a recent video of a guy using TinyCore on a computer with a Pentium 1 CPU, and it's a functional (albeit very slow) system. Linux is known for being able to run on very low end hardware.
k3rrshaw@reddit
I have an old laptop for tinkering. It has Celeron CPU, 3 Gb DDR2 and old hard drive. Debian testing with XFCE works fine on this machine.
dcherryholmes@reddit
I ran it on a Pi for a while as my media server w/ HDMI out to the tv. It did the job, but now I'm partial to lenovo tine thinkcentres. I also run pihole on an older Pi (I think a 3). That doesn't require much heavy lifting and is adequate for the task.
olinwalnut@reddit
I posted earlier this week I believe in another thread that I recently retired an old OptiPlex 3070 from 2011 that was sitting around my office that was in the to-be-recycled pile. For under $100 I maxed out the processor and memory and honestly ran that into the ground starting around 2019 until literally two weekends ago.
The only reason I retired it was that I put a new WiFi 6 PCIe card in it and the motherboard wasn’t playing too nicely with it.
I ran VMs and containers on it. It was my Plex host. It handled the Time Machine backups for my Macs and off-site sync of my NAS. If I had a ton of video encodes that I didn’t really care how long it would take, I would hand that activity off to that box. The last big service I put on it was Immich and that also ran fine though it did max out the old i5 that was in it.
I should mention it also ran RHEL 9 like a dream. Zero issues until I hit hardware limitations.
So yeah, it’s one of the reasons I wave the Linux flag as hard as I do. There’s so much e-waste out there from Apple abandoning perfectly excellent hardware and Microsoft just being idiots.
Correct-Society-1900@reddit
Installed 32bit Q4OS Trinity DE on a pc stick with Intel Atom Z3735F on 32GB EMMC and 2GB RAM. Installed earlyoom to handle the limited memory, and H264ify browser extension to address the lack of VP8/VP9 codec support with the CPU. Pretty solid performance for what it is. Certainly better than Windows 10 that it came with.
SinnohConfirmed@reddit
Antix magic is real. I installed it on a 2013 netbook that was super slow even when it was new. Antix runs WAY better than Windows ever would on it. Even with it installed on a spinning hard drive it boots up in what feels like less than a minute. Of course the modern web is bloated and using a web browser will make it slow to a crawl. The desktop experience at least feels buttery smooth. That being said, I feel like this machine is "newer" that one would expect when thinking of Linux on an old machine, so that probably helps. This laptop probably has better drivers than a 2005 desktop would.
ElectronicFlamingo36@reddit
Same behavior like Windows: runs but cannot support some modern codecs for YT/Netflix/other movies when hardware support lacks.
So, the old saying like good for movies and internet doesn't apply anymore.
ElectronicFlamingo36@reddit
Same behavior like Windows: runs but cannot support some modern codecs for YT/Netflix/other movies when hardware support lacks.
So, the old saying like good for movies and internet doesn't apply anymore.
UNF0RM4TT3D@reddit
I've got slackware on an old IBM ThinkPad T42 with 1GB of ram and an intel centrino. It can barely run Firefox but it's technically capable of browsing the web on an up to date OS.
DFS_0019287@reddit
Linux itself works fine even on fairly modest hardware. I use Debian and XFCE4 and it's quite usable even on 10- to 15-year-old machines.
Modern apps, however, can be pigs. Firefox and Libreoffice demand a lot of resources. Running them in less than 4GB of RAM will be painful.
My advice for making old hardware more usable: Max out the RAM, ideally to at least 16GB, and replace any spinning hard drive with an SSD. These upgrades don't cost a whole lot, but can make the system far more usable.
Shhhh_Peaceful@reddit
Is ThinkPad X230 vintage enough? Runs Linux perfectly. Fast enough for my use case (as a glorified typewriter)
timmy_o_tool@reddit
X230 is my daily driver. openSuSE leap 15.6.. I have the same version on an old Acer Aspire One netbook (the AMD C60 powered one).
I also have Tumbleweed on one of the older Intel Atom 7" netbooks
emfloured@reddit
AMD A4-4000 (single module / "2 cores" / 2 threads, AMD Bulldozer, infamously called as "Pentium 4" of AMD at that time), some ASUS entry level board, 4 GB DDR3 1600 CL11 RAM, 250 GB SSD. Used solely as a printing machine. Works perfectly fine. This is the oldest system we have in our home.
f-ranke@reddit
Very good!!!
TheBariSax@reddit
Fedora 42 (now 43) on an old ThinkPad T480 that's older than my 6 yo Acer Win11 laptop.
It's a refurb with an SSD, 16G RAM, and an 8th Gen Core i5. The Acer had similar specs.
The Fedora system feels faster, and runs cooler and quieter. And I don't make use of it, but it also had a working touch screen. Aside from 2 specific apps, it's now my daily driver.
kurupukdorokdok@reddit
The problem with older machines is I can't browse the internet with a small amount of ram. While I can install a very light distro that only consumes 500MB of RAM.
PolkKnoxJames@reddit
Firefox on older machines suffers a lot because of this and also can run up CPU usage and temp when watching video. In those cases Chromium with Ublock or Brave along with settings/extension to dump unused tabs is kind of necessary for 10+ yo machines.
3G6A5W338E@reddit
Experience aplenty across a range of hardware, be it older x86-64, late x86-32, 2000s x86-32 (athlon), pentium, 486s, m68k (Amiga), ultrasparc II, mips, arm.
Generally, I have had better luck with openbsd where it works, netbsd otherwise.
Haiku is also fantastic on older hardware, where it runs.
Linux is suffering with these, and these days I wouldn't even bother running it on anything but current machines.
rarsamx@reddit
Linux makes it usable.
Old hardware is more compatible in new Linux than in new Windows or Mac as they tend to drop drivers.
It does extend the life of a computer system.
My desktop is 15 years old and I have a hard time justifying an upgrade. Maybe locally hosted LLMs will be the last straw.
Yes, it had a beast of a CPU back then AMD Phenom II X6 1100T) but now it's 1/4 of performance as my laptop's CPU but per core it's just 1/2 the performance as it was
Still, I find it quite usable for my day to day tasks even running virtuals (virt-man) or doing light 3D editing (sweet home 3D). Video editing and transcoding takes too long but I'd use it if I didn't have a choice.
I wouldn't game on it other than AisleRiot.
I'm really bouncing between spending $20 adding another 8 GB DDR3 or $500-$2000 replacing motherboard, memory and CPU for a current one. I'm sure you see my dilema.
So, what does Linux have to do with it?
I'm running a highly tuned up Arch with a WM without DM allowing me to dedicate most of the power to apps and not to the environment.
Munalo5@reddit
I have an older daily driver desktop. I guess it is 13 to 14 years old. I forget when I had it built so I ran: $ sudo dmidecode -t 2 $ sudo less /proc/cpuinfo And googled the results... I have not had a software issue and I run with Mint 22 XFCE self installed with KDE flawlessly.
I was getting some odd behavior from my system about a year ago that turned out to be a failing power supply. Once I swapped in a newer supply things have been great.
When the computer was built I installed 16GB of memory which was respectable then and common now.
I get frustrated seeing people posting their specs and asking if a specific OS will run on their aging unique machine... TRY IT OUT!... With Ventoy it is SO simple!!
bje332013@reddit
I put Lubuntu 24.04 (which is a lightweight derivative of Ubuntu 24.04) on a \~15 year old desktop PC with a Pentium processor, a mechanical hard drive, and only 4 GB or DDR3 RAM. It took a while to load the operating system, but then again, the same was true when loading Windows 10 on that same machine.
Once we got to the Linux desktop, it performed as well as you could expect for such weak and outdated hardware. The main operating system ran fine. Firefox took a while to load, and would occasionally crash - especially when trying to load highly interactive productivity websites, like Canva. Just as in Windows, Kdenlive could render videos, but was very slow at doing so.
I think that for the sake of browsing websites that are less interactive and/or have less video, the computer was okay. It would handle stuff like LibreOffice fine, which I guess is what Pentium-based computers are mainly supposed to be used for nowadays. (Pentium has fallen a lot from the rank of top processor since the mid-90s.)
BiruGoPoke@reddit
I'm still happily running my i5-3450 alienware with OpenSuse Tumbleweed (KDE).
I've replaced mechanical hard drive with an SSD, removed the (toasted) nvidia card (running on igpu) and went from 8 to 16 GB RAM.
Perform great with python programming (Spyder), web browsing, office stuffs, ...
Obviously, I'm not going to train a LLM on this, but exploring financial portfolios risk analysis? it's amazing.
Sf49ers1680@reddit
I'm running Linux on three older Thinkpads, a P52 (8th gen i7), a P50 (6th gen i7) and a T540p (4th gen i5).
suszuk@reddit
Its fairly fast on AMD Phenom II X4 B95, ATI Radeon HD 4200 and 8gb DDR3 and using HDD with Devuan Linux 6 OpenRC and XFCE, it boots fast and performs fast
pm_a_cup_of_tea@reddit
Slackware on an x220 runs perfectly and although 8 have a gen 9 X1 running debian the x220 is my favoured machine because I'm contrary
thisbenzenering@reddit
older hardware > new hardware
linux loves old hardware
Dialectic-Compiler@reddit
I installed Fedora Workstation on an old Toshiba laptop from 2012, and it ran OK considering it was booting from an old HDD, a little sluggishly. I had to direct connect it to the Internet with an ethernet cable and run some updates to get wi-fi working, but that was literally the only snag.
I'd have went with a lighter distro, but I needed something fairly new-user friendly since it was being given to some kids to play with.
Amazing_Actuary_5241@reddit
I've always run Linux in older hardware. Multiple distros over the years in various levels of old hardware from a 486DX2/50 to my newest (~5yo) i9. I put together the office/family computer in 2012 (ElementaryOS 8 on an AMD FX4100 Black and 8GB) and it's still working fine though it's an office machine. My laptop is a T430s (Ubuntu 25.04 on i7 16GB) and works just fine for my workflow though I do very little gaming on it (FlighGear and Portal on Steam) I still use it for FreeCAD and software development. My oldest (actively with me) right now is my Thinkpad R60 (C2D 2.0Ghz 3GB). I do have some older machines all the way back to a P233 but those are in storage and not actively in a rotation and those mostly have old Linux in them from when they were my daily machines.
Jojos_BA@reddit
Mixed.
zardvark@reddit
How old is old?
I have a 14 Y.O. ThinkPad that runs just fine on any distro and any DE. I'm currently using NixOS / KDE. The key is to max out the RAM (in this case 16G ... and IMHO, 16G is really the minimum these days for good Linux performance) and use a SSD.
Full disclosure: My Sandy Bridge laptop has an Ivy Bridge CPU upgrade. Any machine older than this and I would use a lighter weight DE, instead of KDE.
Internet browsers are far too bloated these days and with only 8G of RAM, you can only have a few tabs open, before the system starts using the swap file/partition. Once the swap is in play, the machine hesitates and slows down tremendously.
BTW - I still use this ThinkPad daily.
SunSunFuegoThe2nd@reddit
I got a Lenovo Thinkpad from 2012 with an i5 2320m and 8gb DDR3 RAM and an SSD, it easily runs cachyos. i can run games like morrowing without breaking a sweat and stream games via steam from my desktop. other than that i use it for movies in bed or reading.
Apart from games i didn´t really encounter any issues with it, it´s neither slow nor feels like a chore to use compared to newer laptops with windows installed.
i really enjoy using it and i don´t have any reason to retire it.
SimsallaBim08@reddit
Im just gonna say i got a pentium 3 katmai with S4 savage 4 and 384MB ram running semi-smooth using antiX with IceWM. The only hard thing with old hardware is CPU instructions like SSE3.
Ok-Current-3405@reddit
My oldest machine is running Debian7 without X11 on a via c3 533 mhz. I use it to tweak my electronic creations connected to the parallel and serial ports
Osherono@reddit
Having used installed and setup Linux on a weak CPU (E-450), what I would say is to understand the limitations of older hardware.
Understand that multitasking is pretty much a no no, and once you test it, if you cannot give it purpose, recycle or donate to someone who will. Also, while a PC might be useable for some things, it might be more expensive to keep it running when compared to newer, more efficient tech.
In my case I transformed my E-450 PC into a retro gaming setup, and while I prefer my Raspberry Pi 3b, this is the machine I take out when my younger nieces and nephews want to play some arcade games (curiously enough, many older console games did not interest them, but arcade games did). I have some old arcade sticks and they can play for hours .
0nlytom@reddit
I have lost count of the amount of machines I have installed Linux on.
However, I did come across an old 486dx running Linux in a manufacturing plant 3 years ago. My job was to upgrade it to a new industry PC.
The general rule of thumb is that if the hardware is all good, it can run Linux.
myth_360@reddit
Far more than good. Only problem I faced was a bit too new kernel for older nvidia. Downgraded minor version of kernel, solved issue.
Dominyon@reddit
Computers have been powerful enough to perform most people's daily tasks for about 15 years now. I put Linux Mint on older machines, currently have it on 3 machines (2 laptops and a AiO) and don't even have to do anything to it to make it run well. Even with cinnamon DE it is fast and responsive on old hardware. As long as you have 4+ GB of ram and an SSD Linux will run great.
nandru@reddit
It runs fine, but the moment you need to do anything online, the performance tanks (understandable, modern web is resource hungry)
pfp-disciple@reddit
I'm running r/voidlinux on a 13 year old HP Desktop. Except for a new 1TB SSD that I put in, it has all original hardware (8GB RAM); I forget the CPU specs. I'm using XFCE but haven't tried Gnome, KDE, or other desktops so AFAIK they'd work fine.
I can only tell it's old when I really pay attention. Otherwise it runs fine for everything I use it for - Web browsing, YouTube, light software developing.
fek47@reddit
I switch desktop environments (DE) and occasionally distributions as the hardware ages. When the hardware is newly released, I make sure to use a distribution that provides access to the latest software. Eventually, I transition to less resource-intensive DEs and potentially a different distribution altogether. I start with Fedora Workstation or Silverblue and ultimately end up with Debian Stable XFCE or another distribution with even lower system requirements.
Linux performs exceptionally well on older hardware, allowing me to continue using my old laptop and desktop for an extended period. Currently, I have a laptop from 2008 and a desktop from 2011, both of which I utilize as servers.
This would not have been remotely possible had I stayed with Windows.
Rusty9838@reddit
Mint xfce on gaming pc from 2009. No official drivers, but novua drivers are good enough to run web browser
Gone2theDogs@reddit
I’ve installed it on a variety of systems. Rarely had problems. The few minor issues just took a little longer, like finding a driver that didn’t automatically install.
Big-Obligation2796@reddit
I've installed Alpine Linux on a ThinkPad X61 (4GB RAM, Core 2 Duo T7300, SSD). In my opinion it was a bit snappier than Debian, which I had tried on it before. I was able to browse the web without much trouble - which is a rather demanding task nowadays, for a machine from 2007 - and even watch videos on YouTube. No real issue with hardware support, although I didn't bother setting up the fingerprint reader.
Sure, I wouldn't use it as my daily driver if I could avoid it, but if I had no choice, with some patience I could still do most of what I do for fun and work, other than most gaming (except retro games of course) and running the occasional Windows VM.
DoubleOwl7777@reddit
desktop? works amazingly. thats my first linux experience on some anchient desktop. laptops depends on the drivers. my current install is the First one on modern hardware.
Xe4ro@reddit
I installed AntiX on a 80GB 2,5" HDD on a 2008 Unibody MacBook. Runs pretty well all things considered. It uses like around 500MB of RAM. Browsing works.
I had Debian on a Early 2009 iMac, getting the wifi drivers was a bit annoying. Recently erased that install to try out installing Arch Linux. Took a while and it has problems with the ass old GeForce 9400M. Performance is a bit sluggish but usable.
I also have an old OEM PC from the Vista era that I could try it on. C2D E8200, 3GB RAM but I have currently Win10 (SSD) & Win7 (HDD) in it. I might try some Linux tinkering with it though, considering I have only used Linux on old Macs so far 😅
flemtone@reddit
For older systems I typically use Bodhi Linux 7.0 HWE which runs surprisingly well on lower specs.