Bought cheap laptop to do web surfing and light programming on. I'm looking at Peppermint but wanted g's thoughts.
Best Linux distro for underpowered laptop?
void with musl or lubuntu
Any of them
If you need to ask, Ubuntu or Mint with a light DE
arch
Whatever you're more used to, distrohopping isn't smart
ubuntu minimal or debian netinstall
The most important thing for an old laptop is to choose a lightweight desktop environment. Xfce, mate2, lxde are some good ones. Once you've chosen a DE, look for an image with your DE of choice preconfigured, but it's really not hard to change desktop environments.
Install Gentoo
Just install Ubuntu Server. It'll come with the Task Selector built in, where you can then choose to install any desktop you want (like Xubuntu desktop, Lubuntu desktop, etc.).
Or, just use apt to install whatever DE you want.
Xubuntu
slackware, its made for old shit
god I want to stick my penis in her butthole and then have my penis smell like her butt for the rest of the day
puppy :D
distros won't change much. Look into configuring tlp properly, and keeping your cpu clock at a minimum (also disable some bios settings for performance).
For the distro itself, anything that doesn't require many processes, like debian, will work fine. But something like ubuntu minimal would work fine.
i use guix on my laptop with tlp properly configured and my cpu weakened.
puppy
Hence the name
Post the specs. Generally the distro has less to do with being lightweight than the DE/WM you're running.
Not OP, but I have a shitty Acer Aspire 1 netbook with 1 GB RAM (yes; the shitty one where you have to remove the keyboard, to get at the screws to open the bottom of the case to do a RAM and drive upgrade).
Anyways, I want to use it as a shitty LAMP server, but I also want a DE for it. Should I go with Ubuntu Server and then install twm?
peppermint is great for your needs, but an arch derivative with LXDE is really useful for programming and should get you the same resource consumption
NOW THE WORLD DON'T MOVE,
to the beat of just one drum!
what might be right for you
may not be right for some.
/a/ MAN IS BORN!
Crunchbang++. Openbox, super low footprint, very few services. Boots on my x220 in 1 second
Nixos
Arch+i3
Puppy
>using musl for literally no reason
>reading and believing literal misinformation on the void wiki
Musl is literally less performant than glibc
Unironically Gentoo if you can be bothered to set up a distcc. Otherwise, Slackware.
Unironically Gentoo.
Or Arch if you are too much of an idiot for the true distro.