What Ubuntu Lite versions are there for gutless hardware?

[hennmann]

Other than using Puppy what possible Lite versions of Ubuntu fit my requirements?
This is what I have and was lacking from new, an Acer Aspire One 533 (2009/10 vintage) and has 2 GB of RAM (used to be 1), an Intel Atom 455 1.66 Ghz single core processor and this is also a 64 bit processor with Win10 64 running on one of the partitions as an experiment.
I upgraded the 250 GB HHD to a 1 TB SSD which really helped due to the snail 5400RPM it previously had. Also this Acer Aspire One 533 originally has Win 7 Starter on it and even this so called basic version of 7 ran like a sloth with 1 GB of RAM so I upgraded it to the supposed max 2 GB and this changed the Sloth into a Bionic Turtle, 1GB was a bad idea from the beginning and 2 created a sweeter tasting Lemon.
Since this Netbook exceeds the minimum system requirements in a somewhat pathetic way and the Intel Atom bomb is a 64 capable device possibly increasing options what is a good Ubuntu version that would work great in this Netbook?
I have 3 partitions with 10 on one, 7 on the other and the 3rd for a future Linux install and presently there is a Win 10 boot loader giving me the choice of 7 or 10.

Now as for old hardware I also have an HP Omnibook Xe3 with a P III 800 and a whopping 128 megs of RAM and as an experiment ran Puppy 4.3.1 on it with surprising results such as running faster than the original Win 2000 Pro it was sold new with. Due to the meager speck of RAM running Live is a dead horse so I set up a 300 meg Swap in the tiny 20 GB HHD and installed Puppy on the drive and just having the swap made an incredible difference! Mandrake 7.0 from 2000/1 also is at home on this HP as well but as we all know Mandrake, then becoming Mandriva is now extinct but anyway my options are much greater for the Aspire!

[kc1di]

I think you will find that Lubuntu may work on that machine. other than that I would suggest something with xfce or lxde desktops. good luck in your search.
Give anti-x a try it may surprise you. (though it's not a ubuntu derivative.)

[ajgreeny]

Lubuntu 18.04 should work on that as kc1di says; I use it on a lower spec machine with only 1GB ram and an Atom 270 at 1.6GHz, and whilst it runs pretty slowly, it is fine for email and browsing use, even for watching video as long as its not high resolution, HD video.

[kurt18947]

On your HP Omnibook, I have a machine of lower spec (PIII 660(?) w/ 512 RAM)running Q4OS. It's a Debian based distro running the Trinity desktop and is quite light on resources. For your other machine I'd agree with Xubuntu or one of the Lubuntu flavors. There is a LXQT flavor of Lubuntu recently released.

[hennmann]

The Acer Aspire One 533 has an Atom 455 1.66ghz and 2 gb or RAM Win 7 Starter is fair but in reality hardware I have soars like an eagle with XP with the tiny system requirements and 7 is nothing more than a resource hog!! Vista was much worse bringing hi end systems to a crawl! 10 is even worse with much unnecessary crap running in the background. I believe I tried Ubuntu 18.04 on my drive by itself with not bad results but with Win7&10 on there I would like to be sure before installing just to have to reinstall something else. I guess another alternative is to stick in a USB with the OS on it and place a second USB and permanently install it like a HHD with swap for a more accurate tryout as I don't have an external USB drive yet. I guess I should break down and purchase one for times like these and backing up systems! Just having a swap makes an incredible difference compared to live and the HP with so little ram was a good example! Even Mandrake 7 from 2000/1 runs great on it but Mandrake is extinct. Just because it is d doesn't mean it's no good. The newer OS's are forcing us to always upgrade just to have more whistles and bells we really don't always need.

[him610]

I have a similar, but older (BIOS 2008) AAO 110L (upgraded from 512KB to 1,5GB RAM) that runs great on Xubuntu 18.04.1. You must be realistic in your expectations though. I use my AAO 110L as my primary travel machine. Lubuntu should run well on yours also.

[hennmann]

Lubuntu 18.10 looks very promising as I run it Live and I didn't have to configure ethernet at all, and my Wifi is working great.
Xenialpup64-7.5 is also fantastic and snappier I might add but doesnt support 32 bit computers like my IBM Thinkpad with 1280 megs of RAM and Intel 1500M processor. The biggest PITA is the PAE and newer flavors that support 32 abort and cry about PAE It's a PAEn in the @$$
Ubuntu 16.04.5 is somewhat sluggish like 18.0.4 in live but installed I'm not sure otherwise Lubuntu and Xenialpup are the best performers in Live.
Now the older Puppy Anita OS4.3.1 soared like eagles on both the Aspire and IBM but the internet browser wouldn't open but is very presentable. The earlier version of this 4.3.1 also worked very well on my old HP with the PIII800 and 128 megs of RAM and performed better than Win 2000. It is sad when older versions that rocked on smaller hardware are "discontinued" and should be able to be updated like the supported OS.

Lubuntu 18.04 should work on that as kc1di says; I use it on a lower spec machine with only 1GB ram and an Atom 270 at 1.6GHz, and whilst it runs pretty slowly, it is fine for email and browsing use, even for watching video as long as its not high resolution, HD video.

Are you running this live or do you have it installed permanently on the hard drive? Permanently installing with a swap was the only way I could get Puppy 4.3.1 to run on my HP OmniBook XE3 with 128 megs of RAM and a PII800. It worked like it belonged on the HP as did extinct Mandrake 7.0
My slight advantage over your machine is 2 gigs and an Atom N455@1.66ghz. If I didn't know any better I would venture a guess and think you were running a slightly older Acer Aspire One that had XP or Linpus Lite on it?? I procrastinated too long and these were discontinued and ended up with the Win 7 Starter. The Linpus fascinated me being a gui slave despite the complaints about it but in reality a small Icon on the bottom corner allowed the gui desktop to be toggled to a conventional Linux desktop. I think I'm going to install 18.0.4 on this Acer to see if any improvement results instead of live. If I don't @*%! things up I can always install a lighter version later.

I have a similar, but older (BIOS 2008) AAO 110L (upgraded from 512KB to 1,5GB RAM) that runs great on Xubuntu 18.04.1. You must be realistic in your expectations though. I use my AAO 110L as my primary travel machine. Lubuntu should run well on yours also.

Oh believe me I'm realistic because picture Win7 Starter running on 1 gb of RAM and I limped this AAO for a long time and the SSD and 2 gb did wonders for the "Blue Circle of Sloth" and OMG!! What a miserable job to swap RAM without damaging the finish around the Keyboard while it is unsnapped from the retainers to lift out.
This is also my travel machine and spare backup in case I'm doing a major wipe and reload on my 970A SLI Krait edition with an FX8370 and I just got this and my Gigabyte M68MTS2 Rev 1.3 with an Athlon 640x4
It is amusing what we put up with for so long as I used to use my MSI K8TNeo2 with an FX5700LE AGP video card that I purchased new in 04 and only 4 years ago I threw a Toledo 4800+x2 (used of course) into it.

[sudodus]

Lubuntu 18.10 looks very promising as I run it Live and I didn't have to configure ethernet at all, and my Wifi is working great.

I suggest that you try Lubuntu 18.04.1 LTS as well as 18.10. Try live before deciding what to install. Lubuntu is the lightest of the Ubuntu family flavours (much lighter than standard Ubuntu also as installed).

Xenialpup64-7.5 is also fantastic and snappier I might add but doesnt support 32 bit computers like my IBM Thinkpad with 1280 megs of RAM and Intel 1500M processor. The biggest PITA is the PAE and newer flavors that support 32 abort and cry about PAE It's a PAEn in the @$$

Lubuntu (and the other Ubuntu flavours) can use the boot option forcepae to make it run on IBM Thinkpads with Pentium M processors with PAE capability but without PAE flag. Otherwise you can use Debian (or debian derivatives for example ToriOS) i386 versions with non-pae kernels. I think they are still released.

Ubuntu 16.04.5 is somewhat sluggish like 18.0.4 in live but installed I'm not sure otherwise Lubuntu and Xenialpup are the best performers in Live.

Try Lubuntu installed or persistent live in both cases with swap. I think you will like it.

Now the older Puppy Anita OS4.3.1 soared like eagles on both the Aspire and IBM but the internet browser wouldn't open but is very presentable. The earlier version of this 4.3.1 also worked very well on my old HP with the PIII800 and 128 megs of RAM and performed better than Win 2000. It is sad when older versions that rocked on smaller hardware are "discontinued" and should be able to be updated like the supported OS.

See also this thread, Old hardware brought back to life

[ajgreeny]

Are you running this live or do you have it installed permanently on the hard drive? Permanently installing with a swap was the only way I could get Puppy 4.3.1 to run on my HP OmniBook XE3 with 128 megs of RAM and a PII800. It worked like it belonged on the HP as did extinct Mandrake 7.0
My slight advantage over your machine is 2 gigs and an Atom N455@1.66ghz. If I didn't know any better I would venture a guess and think you were running a slightly older Acer Aspire One that had XP or Linpus Lite on it?? I procrastinated too long and these were discontinued and ended up with the Win 7 Starter. The Linpus fascinated me being a gui slave despite the complaints about it but in reality a small Icon on the bottom corner allowed the gui desktop to be toggled to a conventional Linux desktop. I think I'm going to install 18.0.4 on this Acer to see if any improvement results instead of live. If I don't @*%! things up I can always install a lighter version later.

It is installed to hard drive and runs very well though not very fast.

The machine is a re-badged MSI 100U Netbook from UK company Novatech who produced this X10 - 10.1" Intel Atom N270 1Gb 160Gb Hard Drive back in 2010-2011.
It runs as you would expect of a machine with those specs, ie, good enough for browsing, email and video/music playing.

[hennmann]

Well I would say this is snail vs Olympic Snail
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Atom-N...ntel-Atom-N270
I will install ******* Office 2007 Pro on my Krait,, and Gigglebyte, setup Outlook Distress and transfer my PST backup file as to completely transfer all of my emails, contacts etc. and experiment on this Acer Despire One 533 because it has Win 7 Starter (Mild Sloth edition) Win10 Ult(Severe Sloth bordering on Snail on a cold day Edition) and a blank partition for a Linux flavor. I will see if everything sets up properly in case something gets bodged or knackered. The only thing of concern is I'm running a Win10 bootloader and hopefully Linux cooperates.
As we are doing this response currently I'm running Zorin 12.4 Lite to see what it is like and for a so called lite it is somewhat sluggish compared to Lubuntu or Puppy but it is the same setup etc. as Ubuntu being a Blue flavor instead of purple with the startup menu. If all goes well I can always rip it out by the roots, install the Beaver for a test (what happened to the Penguin??) and If I fall asleep Lubuntu or a Dog. Windows has become sooooooo bad that people are attempting to decrapafy it using NLite. This is why we need Lite linux versions and I wish it wasn't too much to ask for a Puppy or Lulu for Ubuntu that looks the same with a Beaver on the desktopbut is Old Fogy computer friendly