Best Low Memory OS?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
T

thorax232

Honorable
Apr 3, 2013
2
0
10,510
I have a grandmother that wants to tether her android phone to save money on the internet. I noticed she still has XP and installed Windows 7. When going through updates and experiencing a whole lot of freezes I noticed the computer has 512MB of DDR ram. My DDR3 sticks don't fit (because the plastic slot as conspicuously moved about 2CM since updating.

I don't want to spend anymore money on this thing that I already have. So I plan on installing a low memory OS. My options are as follows.

Windows XP (Pirating = risk)
Puppy Linux
Slitaz (Linux)
Damn Small Linux
Zeniz OS

What do you think is the best idea for tethering and ease of use?
 
Solution
8350rocks
I would recommend either Kubuntu (KDE is closer to a windows environment and may be easier for her to adapt to), or Linux Mint...which are both based on Ubuntu.

If you wanted a super lightweight install, you could put her on Arch Linux, which would allow you to select the DE to run, as well as the window servers, etc. It's a bit more tedious to setup, however, you can have as light weight or powerful an OS as you want.
Sort by date Sort by votes
T

thorax232

Honorable
Apr 3, 2013
2
0
10,510


All she would need is shortcuts to Firefox and a quick tutorial on how to navigate the menus. Personally I've used Ubuntu and Fedora which are pretty straight forward, even for someone like her. Unless those options are more complicated, I thnk it'd be fairly safe.

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
ksham

ksham

Splendid
Mar 29, 2013
8,398
1
29,960
Sure, but that's the window manager. GNOME and KDE aren't exactly lightweight window managers. I was just wondering.

Anyway, Puppy Linux is really lightweight. Alpine and Debian are good options as well. You can probably even run Knoppix.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
8350rocks

8350rocks

Distinguished
Mar 14, 2013
6,235
0
18,460
I would recommend either Kubuntu (KDE is closer to a windows environment and may be easier for her to adapt to), or Linux Mint...which are both based on Ubuntu.

If you wanted a super lightweight install, you could put her on Arch Linux, which would allow you to select the DE to run, as well as the window servers, etc. It's a bit more tedious to setup, however, you can have as light weight or powerful an OS as you want.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
A

Alabalcho

Titan
Jan 13, 2011
14,019
435
76,290
@Thorax,

Did you check with your grandma' operator whether she can tether on her plan? Tethering is a sure way to use way more data than one actually is thinking. Imagine playing a movie on Netflix/Youtube, or some nasty flash game which is not optimised for low internet data - your grandma could run into big troubles.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom