Single core, 32 bit CPU, can’t even do video playback on VLC. But it kinda works for some offline work, like text editing, and even emulation through zsnes! It’s crazy how Linux keeps old hardware like this running.
Thankfully though, this laptop CPU is upgradable, and so is the ram, so I’m planning on revitalizing and bringing this old Itautec to the 21st century 😄
Ubuntu 12 on an Intel atom 270m with an nvidia chip set with 125mb ram lol
Stories from the “good” old days running Linux on a 386 machine with 4 MB or less of memory aside, in the present day it’s still perfectly normal to run Linux on a much weaker machine as a server - you can just rent a the cheapest VPS you can find (which nowadays will have 128 MB, maybe 256MB, and definitelly only give you a single core) and install it there.
Of course, it won’t be something with X-Windows or Wayland, much less stuff like LibreOffice.
I think the server distribution of Ubunto might fit such a VPS, though there are server-specific Linux distros that will for sure fit and if everything fails TinyCore Linux will fit in a potato.
I current have a server like that using AlmaLinux on a VPS with less than 1GB in memory, which is used only as a Git repository and that machine is overkill for it (it’s the lowest end VPS with enough storage space for a Git repository big enough for the projects I’m working on, so judging by the server management interface and linux meminfo, that machine’s CPU power and memory are in practice far more than needed).
If you’re willing to live with a command line interface, you can run Linux on $50 worth of hardware.
I had slackware on my 386DX 40. 4mb ram. It was kinda short-lived. I never got my modem working. I got a book, paged thought it. Learning shit was hard in the 90’s Internet.
I got my modem working in Slackware in 1997 - but the PPP driver (equivalent of WinSock - which worked in Windows quite well at the time) would only work during the first boot of the system. After a reboot, PPP would never return, and the best I got out of the internet about it at the time (mostly using my Windows PC) was “real men connect to the internet through ethernet.”
Between that an the useless (unless you enjoy frustration) sound drivers, I declared Linux “not ready for prime time,” and left it to others until starting back in via Cygwin in 2003, then Gentoo (for 64 bit access you couldn’t get any other way) in 2005.
Similar story but I just installed slackware on one of the University PCs (they just had a handful of PCs in the general computer room for the students and nobody actually watched over us) since I did not have a PC yet (only had a ZX Spectrum at the timback then).
Trying to get X-Windows to work in Slackware was interesting, to say the least: back then you had to manually create your own video timings configuration file to get the graphics to work - which means defining the video mode at the very low level, such as configuring the number of video clock cycles between end-of-line-drawing and horizontal-retrace - and fortunatelly I didn’t actually blow up any monitor (which was possible if you did the configuration wrong).
At least we had some access to the Internet (most things were blocked but we had Usenet and e-email and one could use FTPmail gateways to download stuff from remote servers) via Ethernet, so that part was easy.
Anyways, my first reaction looking at the OP’s post was like: yeah, if they’re running X it’s probably a too powerfull machine.
My favorite part of the first configuration of x back then, you screw with the conf for ages, manage to get a viable video mode set, startx for the billionth time… gray screen, mouse cursor… Overflowingly happy… Wait, now what? No program manager, no apps, no terminal, No exit, no shutdown. What’s a window manager? The least apparent thing in the world being to switch consoles , export a display variable, and start an xtern in the video console.
We worked so hard for every little thing.
Yeah, but at least we knew how to switch consoles.
I bet that most Linux users nowadays don’t event know the CTRL+ALT+Fx shortcuts to switch console.
Can’t say that the old days were really “good” compared to what we had now, but there was definitelly a lot of satisfaction in step by step getting the system to work.
Up 'til 2022 or 2023 company I work for used Pentium 4 at POS PCs running ancient openSUSE. They would be still in service if it weren’t for leaking/swollen caps on most motherboards. Pure power wasn’t really there, but it was plenty enough to run that checkout software…
Older machines running Xfce brings me joy.
Xfce on Debian is my preferred flavor these days - regardless of machine power.
Yes the laptop CPU and RAM may be upgradeable but have you considered the parts availability? Considering its a 32bit CPU
Yeah, that’s what I’m researching right now… I hope I can at least make it useable enough for web browsing
Hell yeah! Love seeing old hardware like this still running a modern OS.
With Linux, if your hardware is a decade old, you’ve barely even reached middle-age.
Meanwhile Windows 11 won’t even allow an official install on hardware that’s 4-5 years old.
Long live Linux & FOSS ✊
2GB of RAM? Low?
Were you born after the year 2000?
Haha, I’ve been used to 4gb ram minimum for most of my life 😆
Lmao, I’ve ran Linux on an eeePC with 1GB RAM and 900MHz Intel Atom. Compiling gcc & glibc could take hours.
Edit: RPi3 still got only 1GB, BeagleBone Black even got 512MB, don’t forget RPi0
I remember when 128MB RAM sticks were $400
I remember expanding my Amiga with 512KB to 1MB Fast RAM and later going crazy with another two megabyte Slow RAM.
I remember my dad’s friend upgrading our PC clone to 640K. He used a soldering iron.
I remember when computers had no memory and the storage was on punch cards made from mammoth leather that we had to tan ourselves after spending our weekends hunting the mammoth with spears. Also we carved our code by hand on stone tablets. Young people these days have it easy.
I slept in my first computer - and worked as verbal RAM (first VRAM!) 28 hours a day !
“…and when you tell this to young people today, they won’t believe you !” - Monty Python.
“Stone” tablets? Luxury. Ours were dried mammoth dung.
You had one job.
Mentioning punch cards had me, but you blew it!
Punch cards. The “true” PC era.
And we wore the tanned leather on our belts, which was the style at the time
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Get off my lawn
I still have a cool laptop (with Mandrake and kde) with 192 megs of memory somewhere.
I’m pretty certain the first computer I installed Linux on was a Pentium 75 with 4MB of RAM. I know I ran it on some 486s booting off floppys at work. We were at 10,000 feet and couldn’t trust the lifespan of spinning rust.
https://shop.hak5.org/products/shark-jack technically runs openwrt.
SoC: 580MHz MediaTek MT7628 mips CPU Memory: 64 MB DDR2 RAM, 64 MB SPI Flashthats my current laptop
Edit: im exagerating but I really have 20-yr 32-bit Dell laptops running minimal debian linux. and my current laptop is 10+ yrs old Lenovo which I already replaced its screen, rams, keyboard, bluetooth, usb ports… and it’s still working flawlessly for daily tasks, video/music editing, coding and programming, internet browsing :D
I think my lowest was a 33 MHz 486sx (maybe DX) with 8MB of RAM.
I wouldn’t want to try it today though.
The first machine I ran Linux on was a 486DX 33MHz too. I think it had 8 MB (or some weird thing like 4 MB originally and randomly stuck 8 MB addition? I don’t remember anymore.)
I had the exact same configuration. 4MB RAM upgraded to 8MB. 40MB HDD upgraded to 200MB later. And the fugliest case with triangular pastel buttons you ever saw. Ran Windows 3.11 then Slackware Linux on that for many years.
I started on a DX2 66 MHz with 4 MB RAM and 420 MB HDD. 4 x 1 MB modules. Later upgraded to 20 MB RAM (added 4 x 4 modules) and a 1.2 GB Matrox HDD that need an extra driver to be used. With 20 MB I created a RAM drive, copied Doom to it and ran it - loaded real fast but frame rate was horrible.
That’s awesome. My 1993 self is very envious of your rig.
Who used those triangular pastel buttons? I remember seeing them on some friends’ computers but not on any Dells or Gateway 2000 machines. Maybe Compaq? Or Packard Bell?
I have not been able to find the case again since. It was a local shop that built it from parts, so it was not a big brand. I didn’t pick the parts either, since I knew nothing about PCs at the time, and it showed lol.
Edit: it was a white/beige mini tower. If I recall correctly, it was similar to a lot of cases at the time, with a black band across and a circular button on the right. The turbo and reset buttons were pink and teal in the shape of triangles. I purchased it in 1992 when I needed a PC for college.
Yeah, mine was similar. Had some old Win95 machines from work that were getting thrown away; scavenged as much RAM as possible into one case and left Red Hat Linux downloading overnight on the company modem. Needed two boxes of floppy disks for the installer, and I joined up a 60 MB and an 80MB hard drive using LVM to create the installation drive. It was a surprisingly functional machine - much better at networking than it was as a Win95 computer - but yeah, those days are long gone.
I was running my Gateway 2000 486 sx33 with Linux did she extended amount of time as a router with NAT. I’ve still got it somewhere in the loft.
Complete with cow-print box?
I saw Slackware running on a similar config, although it was probably a 486/50 or 486/66.
Are you using systemd? Because 317 MB of RAM is really low for a normal Debian installation with XFce. At my mom’s 2 GB ram laptop, it uses 850 MB on a cold boot.
850 sounds crazy. maybe you forgot to subtract cached memory?
It is because it is 32 bit. You can run a 32 bit distro on your machine too if you really want.
You can get a full Trinity desktop on Q4OS in 130 MB of RAM (32 bit edition).
I don’t think the difference between 32bit and 64bit is 2x in memory sizes, it’s way less than that. I run Q4OS, it runs at 350 MBs here.
Are you running Trinity or KDE?
Not sure why I get so much less unless it is that. Or are you saying you run Trinity 64 bit?
I agree that 32 bit is not often going to be 50% less in practice. Sometimes I think we should be running 64 bit kernels with 32 bit userland.
Trinity of course. That’s the point of low end computing with Q4OS. :)
Nice
I rushed to the comments when I saw a 1.6ghz CPU being called low end but I see OPs already been dealt with. I remember the first ever 1ghz CPU being an overclocked nitrogen cooled AMD Athlon. Me and my mates were all talking about it when it happened.
But why would a 1.6 ghz, single core CPU not be low end in 2025? Perfomance itself is very sluggish, and it has only been able to do very simple offline tasks for now. Yeah, yeah, many people used to run 512mb ram and 500mhz cpu setups… But that was in 2000 and whatever.
But why would a 1.6 ghz, single core CPU not be low end in 2025? Perfomance itself is very sluggish, and it has only been able to do very simple offline tasks for now. Yeah, yeah, many people used to run 512mb ram and 500mhz cpu setups… But that was in 2000 and whatever.
The post title says “ever” rather than “2025”. It’s cool for 2025 and we may get some interesting others, but many here will have ran it on something slower at some point.
Yes, the title say lowest I ever ran That was the lowest for me, I really don’t get the confusion. And even then, a celeron m 380 was lower end even for it’s own time
