Hi, i need some help, my friend needs a new OS for work, he still uses windows xp i think, the reason is his computer is to low powered to run later versions of windows, now the reason im asking you guys instead of trying linux distros is because the pandemic(covid-19) he lives in a shop so i cant go there here are the computers specifications:
1 or 2 GB of ram, i forgot
An intel pentium i dont know the model
And i dont know the others, his computer display is big, he has 2 monitors, and i think xfce would work or mate or lxqt or lxde any recommendations???
Oh but is it lightweight enough to run in pentium or 1 GB of ram?
@KITT…A minimal ISO can be downloaded. Will this PC be dual booted with XP?
You could try Puppy Linux, I am pretty sure it will run.
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It will be dual-booted
Puppy Linux he can install it, or run it off of Ram off of USB Stick. Here is a read up on it
There is Linux Mint Debian version of Cinnamon 32bit.
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Go with Lubuntu 20.04 (lxqt) or 18.04 (lxde). Or, PUPPY LINUX! It would perform better!
It’s your choice to choose something. Check itsfoss.com for articles mentioning Linux OSes which still give 32-bit support.
Debian + LXDE was the most lightweight I tried so far - still worked quite good on a AMD Athlon XP2200+ with 512MB RAM.
LXQT is in an early stage, to me it seems being a bit half-baked.
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Hmm i tried puppy linux but its a little complicated than other distros, my friend is new to linux so it needs to be newbie friendly i think linux mint xfce will do the job or maybe lubuntu or xubuntu
I’d go with Cinnamon the Debbie 32bit here https://linuxmint.com/release.php?id=37 As 32bit XFCE mint is no longer supported.
Trisquel Mini, a lightweight version for older machines and netbooks. Based on the LXDE desktop environment and a selection of resource-saving applications to bring new life to your hardware…
Hit the ground running as so easy to use out of the box
Kitt->>>>>Go with Linux Mint! I prefer MATE over XFCE, or Cinnamon. Remember-If dual booting Linux with Windows, MAKE SURE you install Windows first, and then Linux.
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I recommend a maybe uncommon choice. Sparky Linux. My father’s old laptop is a Celeron M 1.7Ghz non-PAE.
I looked for a replacement of Lubuntu, because Lubuntu 20.04 needs a 64-bit processor so I had to look for something else.
There are 2 kinds of Sparky, semi rolling (the edition which not to choose) and stable.
I chose the XCFE edition. Also, I adjusted the swappability down to 5 only. The machine has only 2 GB of ram and if you run either Firefox or Google Chrome you can browse, but limited to 2 or 3 open tabs. It is not fast but for such an old machine, certainly not bad
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And, you’ve mentioned the point!
Your friend should definitely check out Q4OS, It comes with either KDE or TDE. TDE (Trinity Desktop Environment) is a less well-known fork of KDE. You might think that KDE is too heavy, but the Q4OS devs did a great job of optimizing it. In fact, here are the system requirements:
Plasma desktop - 1GHz CPU / 1GB RAM / 5GB disk
Trinity desktop - 300MHz CPU / 128MB RAM / 3GB disk
Q4OS is built on Debian, so you should have access to all the stuff you need. The default desktop theme also looks very similar to Win XP.
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I’m not sure how well Qubes OS would run on his specs.
Thanks, i will tell my friend to check out Q4OS, looks nice, i remember trying it for a pine64 SBC, but ended up scrapping it because the default display was to big and i cant seem to see the settings app
The official puppylinux website shows screenshots with over 900MiB RAM used yet say whatever you may think you can’t argue with the lightness on the system - well I invite you to talk to the brilliant team at Trisquel or Andy at it’sFOSS.
Independent test at…
Puppy Linux BionicPup 8.0 - Small and feisty
BionicPup 8.0 was fast. Really fast. 450MiB RAM used.
Yeh, right, meet mini-Trisquel 134MiB warp factor 10 - lightweight and lightyears ahead 
Do you humans know what lightweight means 
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I would hold back on that one as actual numbers are hard to come by. Despite their wild claims on the official website and searching review pages all that I could find was on their forum which also compared to SparkyOS
https://q4os.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=3240
Oh Dear seems like 400MiB at standstill - you humans 
will have to wait for Andy to release his MiniMaxOS preview with Full Monty apps included… We come in peace Dak, dak daka dak 
Have fun but Stay Safe 
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