Best Linux distros for reviving an old PC

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Installing the right version of Linux can breathe new life into an aging system.

Linux for old computers
(Image credit: Pexels, OpenClipArt)

Installing Linux is a great way to breathe life into that decade old laptop that is sitting doing nothing in the corner of the room. Linux is generally lighter than Windows (sure you can slim Windows down) and its open and free nature means that there are a myriad of distros on offer.

But herein lies the problem. Which distro do we try? The answer is subjective. What do you want to do? What is the spec of your machine? These questions dictate the path that you take with Linux. So with that in mind, we will take a look at six different Linux distros. Some are big names in the Linux world, and some are not-so-well known.

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Les Pounder
Les Pounder
Associate Editor

Les Pounder is an associate editor at Tom's Hardware. He is a creative technologist and for seven years has created projects to educate and inspire minds both young and old. He has worked with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to write and deliver their teacher training program "Picademy".

22 Comments Comment from the forums
  • eszklar
    My main Laptop uses Manjaro Linux, but with really Old Gear I prefer MX Linux. Linux Mint is a really good starting point for newcomers coming from Windows. I've also rediscovered Fedora (41) and openSUSE again. Not a fan of GNOME myself, prefer XFCE. But that's the beauty of Linux, although I've been using it since the mid-90s.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    PSA:
    There is no linux that will make your old hardware better than it is, if your goal is to watch modern youtube videos or any other media from the web, forget it.
    A decade old PC like the article talks about will be doing decade old things.

    The only reason to prefer linux instead of windows is for the safety when going online, but as said above, there is very little reason to go online since you can't do much useful other than download files.

    Old PCs are good for watching DVDs and that level of videos from your hdd, and for playing old games that have issues with running on modern OS.

    All the above is for low end decade old systems, if you had like the super duper GPU/CPU from 10 years ago you will be good for youtube and heavier stuff but then you would also have no issue with running windows on it.

    Rant continue:
    Also if you have a decently modern PC and just don't want to use windows because MS is getting pretty hardcore with forcing all sorts of things on you then try bazzite which is basically steamOS just not from valve.

    Also since "retro" is pretty hip these days, battocera recalbaox and lakka are the best OS/frontends for retroarch, from most heavy to most light, lakka only loads up the PS crossbar and is pretty barebones.

    Lastly, just for funsies, pimiga supports the Pi as well as x86 CPUs, is a full Amiga installation, and has a full linux Os underneath.
    (You have to provide your own Amiga kickstarts(bios) )
    Reply
  • peterf28
    Only Linux that worked on my Pentium III laptop is PLOP linux. I use it as a print server.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    I'd generally recommend against using hardware too much older than a decade, due to "code rot". Basically, the stuff that works best in Linux is the stuff lots of people are (still) using. Once you go old enough, you can end up with a somewhat esoteric hardware configuration where many of the others even using Linux on it aren't running a very recent kernel. So, you might hit bugs that've crept into a device driver or kernel codepath somewhat specific to your system.

    It depends on just how popular the machine was, however. So, for AMD machines, I might not even want to run something much older than Zen, whereas I might still feel comfortable still running an Intel machine as old as Nehalem. At this point, I'd definitely avoid using 32-bit machines.

    With that said, there's an old server we have at my job, with a Core 2-era Xeon CPU, and it's been running openSUSE Leap-15.6 just fine. We basically just use it to serve up an iSCSI volume over NFS, though. So, that's a fairly narrow bit of functionality we're exercising.

    BTW, I once installed Linux on an old Pentium M laptop, back before it was too old. It was a slight pain, due to the fact that those CPUs didn't support a feature called PAE (which enabled 36-bit addressing on old 32-bit CPUs). Well, I believe PAE support recently got dropped from the kernel. So, that's one thing about using a leading-edge kernel on old hardware that would go much more smoothly.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    TerryLaze said:
    PSA:
    There is no linux that will make your old hardware better than it is, if your goal is to watch modern youtube videos or any other media from the web, forget it.
    A decade old PC like the article talks about will be doing decade old things.
    Web browsing on a Sandybridge-era machine (now 14 years old!) is still very viable, especially if you increase your privacy settings (which cuts down on ads) or run an ad blocker. You might be right about video decode acceleration, unless the GPU in it is a bit more recent.

    Speaking of GPUs on old Linux PCs, you can apparently even play Indiana Jones (which requires ray tracing) on old AMD GPUs, like the RX 480:
    https://www.phoronix.com/news/RADV-Emulated-RT-Indiana-Jones
    TerryLaze said:
    Old PCs are good for watching DVDs and that level of videos from your hdd, and for playing old games that have issues with running on modern OS.
    I once had a Pentium 4 that struggled to decode 1080p H.264 video files. But, a software decoder on a Core 2-era PC could play them with ease. And Core 2 is almost 20 years old!

    DVD playback is something a Pentium II-class PC could handle.
    Reply
  • usertests
    TerryLaze said:
    A decade old PC like the article talks about will be doing decade old things.
    Decade old PC = Skylake, which is fast enough to do plenty of things. Once you hit quad-core Skylake, you're basically golden for anything that isn't a newer CPU-intensive game or something that "needs" Threadripper levels of performance. This level of performance is sold to this day as quad-core Alder Lake-N (e.g. Intel N100).

    SteamOS may get its "official" desktop release within a year or two (perhaps timed with Windows 10 support ending), and that will make these lists from then on.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    usertests said:
    Decade old PC = Skylake, which is fast enough to do plenty of things. Once you hit quad-core Skylake, you're basically golden for anything that isn't a newer CPU-intensive game or something that "needs" Threadripper levels of performance. This level of performance is sold to this day as quad-core Alder Lake-N (e.g. Intel N100).
    Yeah, so why do you need to "revive" such an system?!
    This system is still alive (going strong) and can even run windows 11.

    That's why I talked about high end of the time, try doing anything with a skylake celeron... Or since you brought up the atom replacements, try doing anything with a 10 year old atom cpu.
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    TerryLaze said:
    Or since you brought up the atom replacements, try doing anything with a 10 year old atom cpu.
    I have a couple of those laptops, ASUS Transformers.

    Trying to use it now would be laughable.
    Like watching paint dry, even in the most minimal of web browsing uses.
    Reply
  • usertests
    TerryLaze said:
    This system is still alive (going strong) and can even run windows 11.
    I've experienced what Windows 11 has to offer and want no part of it.
    Reply
  • ezst036
    Incidentally, these are some of the best distros for someone on a brand new computer who doesn't want advertisements sent to them on their start menu. Revival isn't the only reason to go down this path for Linux.
    Why should anybody have to do a W11 install and then shut this off, shut that off, tweak this, tweak that, go through this go through that other thing, buy this program for $3, buy that other program for $8........ all to restore a Windows 10 or 7 look and feel. All of that is just too much compared to a nice out of the box experience at minute 1. (and, BTW, be forced during the W11 install to have no choice but go in and touch the terminal for local accounts. That's so 1980s to type in a bunch of commands.)
    Reply