What distro would you recommend for a 32-bit old Acer One laptop?

It's an old model (Acer One D257) Processor is Intel Atom. Memory is 1GB DDR3 with 320 GB of HDD. I currently Have MX 21 running on it, but I need to reinstall because I forgot the root password. Since I'm reinstalling the OS, I thought I'd ask here for recommendations for an OS that makes the most of this oldie.

jvrava9,
@jvrava9@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

AntiX or Arch 32 bit

Doll_Tow_Jet-ski,

Yeah I'm going with AntiX. Used it a long time ago and assumed it had merged with Mepis to do MX, but thanks to this thread I find out it's still available

Krtek,

If you don’t have to use it but want to keep it functional, why just not reinstall MX again? You know that and how it works

Doll_Tow_Jet-ski,

Because it does give me a functional piece of software to grab YouTube videos without actually opening YouTube, but it cannot really run Firefox with uBlock, which basically means web browsing is impossible

Atemu,
@Atemu@lemmy.ml avatar

See if you can get the memory upgraded. DDR3 SO-DIMMs should be dirt cheap.

I’d also get a cheap SSD aswell, especially if this is for a child who might not be very careful with the machine.

Doll_Tow_Jet-ski,

Hmmm yeah I hadn't thought about upgrading the laptop, that's a big idea, and indeed it should be super cheap

LeFantome,

I use super old hardware as well. An SSD will blow your mind.

Lemmchen, (edited )

I’d probably try a minimal Debian installation with the Openbox WM.

Link, in case you’re having trouble locating the .iso: …debian.org/…/debian-12.2.0-i386-netinst.iso

kugmo,
@kugmo@sh.itjust.works avatar

Whatever distro you install, make sure you enable zram, it makes old computers with low ram much more usable, and an out of memory killer too.

piexil,

Ooms are much less necessary with MGLRU if they keep to a new kernel

kugmo,
@kugmo@sh.itjust.works avatar

I’d still use an oom killer even on 6.1 which is the kernel Debian uses, mglru got improvements in following kernels like you said.

dan, (edited )
@dan@upvote.au avatar

The Linux kernel already has OOM killing… Do you mean something like Facebook’s oomd where you can more easily control it from userspace?

kugmo,
@kugmo@sh.itjust.works avatar

yeah, from what i remember the kernel’s oom killer isn’t that fast and external ones work better

Doll_Tow_Jet-ski,

Thanks! Great advice 👍

KISSmyOS, (edited )

The only distro I could get to boot on my old Acer One was MX Linux.
It had the rare combination of 32bit UEFI support (cause the Acer supports neither 64bit UEFI nor legacy BIOS) and the necessary firmware out of the box.

But after upgrading it to the current release, it broke again. And then I threw the netbook away cause I have better things to do with my time.

Doll_Tow_Jet-ski,

Oh shit, what newest release did you upgrade to? I think I have MX21 in my Acer one

KISSmyOS,

23, the one that is based on Debian Bookworm.
21.3 worked fine.

KISSmyOS,

If you don’t want to reinstall just cause you forgot your password:
linuxconfig.org/recover-reset-forgotten-linux-roo…

Doll_Tow_Jet-ski,

Thanks, that's actually a very clear tutorial. Definitely saving it

yum13241,

Arch Linux 32.

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