I have an old Subnotebook (at least 10 years old I think) which runs Windows 7 atm. I would like to run Linux on it. Iām a Linux noob, but would like to try and learn a few things. Any recommendations?
I have successfully run Arch with Openbox as WM on machines even older than that. Arch has a learning curve, though.
@Dirk @Fungus
Arch + aur is a little bit too much in my opinion. Old PC = old slow hardware. Some of aur pacages are basicly compile instructions. Also you wonāt benefit as much from rolling release.
For GUI stay away from GNOME as it is resource hungry. KDE claimes to be a lot better but honestly it is still a very polished flashy expirence out of the box.
Learn using KDE, atempt to replicate using window manager like AwesomeWM.
You will āwasteā resource only for what is a mass have for You.
@mrXYZ
Unless youāre doing something very unusual, youāre not going to end up with many AUR packages. Iāve run Arch on SBCs without much trouble.
There are severely steps in between Gnome/KDE and Awesome. XFCE and Enlightenment are more user friendly options that are still quite lightweight.
@Dirk @Fungus
And therefore it should not be recommended to Linux beginnersā¦ It is not a beginner distro.
There is no such thing as a ābeginner distroā. There are distros that need little to no intelligence to set up and maintain. Arch needs you to read and follow instructions. It is a myth that it is impossible for beginners to use Arch. There are several good installations instructions in the wiki, select one and follow it till the end.
There are also plenty of Arch derivates that preconfigure the system for you.
There are distros that need little to no intelligence to set up and maintain
Itās not a matter of intelligence but prior knowledge, Arch wiki is the best thing ever for everyone, even if you donāt use Arch, BUT you need some Linux knowledge - at least Linux ālingoā - to be able to understand it.
Thatās something a Linux newbie doesnāt have yet, exactly the reason why Arch is not recommended for newbies.
Youāre way too deep in the linux world lol.
There are distros that need little to no intelligence to set up and maintain.
One might call thatā¦ suited for beginners.
I beg to differ and say, even when the Arch wiki is a great source of knowledge, setting up own Arch system and maintaining it requires keeping on track with updates, to understand what is wrong with your system to look up the right keywords and so on. In my opinion it is better to stay on a stable, periodically released distro with tested repos like Debian, Mint or Ubuntu at first. Afterwards, you can still switch to Arch.
