Finding a new Linux distro for an old laptop

Recently I have been looking at my old (very old) laptop and wondering if I can kick some life back into it. It was running Windows XP, which feels rather out-dated in 2014. I decided to replace Windows with Linux so my laptop is a bit more modern and fun to work with.

As anyone who is in this position knows, you are now standing at the proverbial fork in the road, glaring down at the black hole that is know as:

"choose which Linux distro to install".

Luckily, my laptop is a Sony Vaio with 512MB RAM, a Core Duo T2400 1.8GHz, and a 100 GB HDD. So this helps me narrow down the list of distros quite a bit. So, I needed to find a distro that met the following criteria:

• – was light on resources (especially them RAMs),
• – had quite up-to-date packages,
• – was easy to install and keep up to date,
• – had good documentation,
• – starts out with a small clean system

I was not looking for something like DSL, which packages are too limited for my needs. I need development packages such as OCaml and Haskell, which are very up to date.

I looked at FreeBSD as well, but wanted to stay with Linux if possible. After reading and downloading distros like a crazy person, I eventually settled on ArchBang. I think it meets all my requirements.

ArchBang is a great distro, light on resources and easy to install. It also piggy-backs on all the great documentation of Archlinux, and the rolling-releases and up-to-date packages.

If you would like to give Archlinux a try, but are intimidated by the install process, take ArchBang for a spin. You do not have to sit with a manual next to you to remember which steps to complete. You do have to know about partitioning and file-systems though. So it is still not for the total beginner.

After install, all my hardware was detected and it uses about 120 MB of RAM with the default OpenBox desktop. It boots up quickly, and is not sluggish at all. So far a great experience.

Keep up the good work Archlinux and ArchBang.