Linux People...
 

A friend has a couple of old Laptops that she wants me to get working - Of course no money...

They are fine but just 2GB Ram etc - OLD - She is not not techy at all and all she wants is to do an online course so all she will be dong is firing up Chrome - I was thinking a lightweight Linux distro and desktop environment - Would Mint with LXQT work OK?....

I can't find an easy way to just set-up ChromeOS as that would be ideal - Any ideas?..

Thanks

2gb of ram is gonna be tough with any modern distribution of linux.
You can install this instead of chromeos - https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os

I have shitty HP notebook with 2 gb ram as well and linux mint is working fine on it.

I think Mint + LXQT might work. I have a box with current Debian stable + LXDE, which is very similar.
With a single Chromium window with YouTube vid playing, the whole OS is using 0.5GB RAM, plus 0.5GB allocated for cache. Just tested.

The only way is to test though, it depends on how she'll be using it.

That might do the trick - I have loads of ram hiding in the 'old computer bits shoe box' that lives at the back of the cupboard, but none of it seems to be of any use - It's either the wrong format or wont work together etc - Why would anyone build a 17" laptop that weighs the same as a small car and only put one ram slot in it?..

I did just find an old 128GB SSD - That should put some oooompf back into one of them.....

Thanks!

SSD will help alot. With 2gb of ram it will us swap space alot.

Cinnamon working fine as well.

Ive got 2 old laptops, both 32bit - Cant get linux to boot on either of them, so cant help you :(

I'm a Linux desktop user since 2004.

Try CloudReady:

https://www.neverware.com/

Which would make the laptop a ChromeBook.

I'd also recommend Xubuntu https://xubuntu.org/ which is the very popular Ubuntu linux distro with the lightweight XFCE desktop interface. [According to the site: "To install and use 64-bit Xubuntu, you need an Intel or AMD 64-bit processor with at least 512 MB of memory. You can also try Xubuntu with a USB or DVD with the same amount of memory. Keep in mind that running the system from a USB or DVD will be slower than an installed system. When you install Xubuntu, you need about 8 GB of free space on your hard disk."]

I ran lubuntu (light ubuntu distro) on a 2gb ram laptop for over 3 years (2017-2020) as my primary work and lifestyle machine

linux would suit your purposes fine but you should ask yourself, is it worth it. whatever you set her up with, you'll become tech support for years to come. maybe its better to spend a couple hundred bucks on a factory-default chromebook (which is now my primary machine and I love it)

That should work fine. As others have noted, 2Gb is tight but assuming you have a decent SSD it should be fine. I would give it a big swap partition (10GB min) and set the swappiness low to around 20. Once it's installed, you can test the performance and if you don't like it, you're not married to that desktop. You can also install XFCE or some other lightweight desktop from the software manager and choose it at login and try again.

Heck, depending on how adaptable your friend is, you could even skip the desktop completely and go old school with a slick WM like Windowmaker, which still rocks even today (I still use it some). I even showed it to my wife, who is a techno-retard and she liked it. Set your friend up with some right click menu items for basic common applications like Chrome and you're in business. Windowmaker would rock and roll in 2GB. :2 cents: