[sf-lug] distro for an ageing laptop

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Alex Kleider (akleider at sonic.net):

> I've got an old IBM t41. The current version of Ubuntu no longer
> runs on it.

Because of what?  Amount of RAM?  It would be useful if you could state
how much RAM the machine has.

IBM shipped the ThinkPad T41 with a single DDR PC2700 200-pin SODIMM
with either 256MB or 512MB, leaving the other slot open.  Of course,
subsequent owners often changed this.  Total RAM was 2GB of you put a
1GB SODIMM in each of the two memory slots.

So, you should determine, to know'n'tell:  How much RAM does it have now?

> Does anyone have a recommendation as to which distro to use?

Sure, lots.  But the most vital factor in deciding what specifically to
recommend is:  How much RAM does it have?

You might even consider buying and putting one or more 1GB stick into it,
but that's a judgement call, sinking money into a decade-plus-old computer.  
http://satech.com/ex1gb0081f.html

> My understanding is that it's a 32 bit version of the Kernel that is
> needed.

Yes.  To verify this (assuming it's running Linux), 'grep ^flags /proc/cpuinfo'
returns a line that includes 'lm' if the CPU has x86_64 capabilities,
and doesn't include 'lm' if it doesn't and is i386-only.

My general distro advice is here:
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/kicking.html#distro

> I'm looking at
> https://sourceforge.net/projects/lxle/files/Betas/LXLE%20OS/16042-32/lxle-16.04.2-32-beta.iso/download
> and
> have also heard some enthusiasm for mint:
> https://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=229

You might be assuming that the XFCE4 Desktop Environment (the basis for
that edition of Linux Mint) is lightweight to the same degree that LXDE 
(which underlines LXLE) is.  It's actually quite a bit more RAM-hungry
than LXDE is -- albeit less RAM-grabbing than are GNOME3 and KDE4.

Bodhi Linux (on my recommendation list, using a variant of the
Enlightenment Desktop Environment) is also quite lightweight.

Anyway:  How much RAM ya got?