Install Xubuntu on a computer with 2GB RAM

Support and Help
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Hello everyone,

I’m planning to install Xubuntu on a friend’s very old laptop to give it a new life. The specs are quite minimal:

· CPU: Intel Pentium P6200
· RAM: 2GB
· Storage: A standard 320GB HDD

I’d like to ask if anyone has experience or advice to share:

  1. Has anyone run a recent Xubuntu on similar old hardware?
  2. What kind of performance can I realistically expect for basic web browsing and document work?
  3. Are there any known issues or essential tweaks for this setup?

Any shared insights would be greatly appreciated!

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Love the idea of repurposing old laptops like this, excellent!!

My experience:

Not tried Xubuntu on older hardware recently. However, if you are willing to travel slightly further down the road I can highly recommend Bodhi Linux.

https://www.bodhilinux.com/

It is Ubuntu-based with a custom desktop environment called Moksha. Super light and super fast also for basic browsing and other light tasks.

I have it installed on an old Intel Atom netbook with 1GB RAM and it works very smoothly.

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The closest machine I own to yours is

lenovo thinkpad sl510 (c2d-t6570, 2gb, i915)

which is taken from my list of hardware used in Quality Assurance testing; where I list the make/model, CPU, RAM & graphics hardware… Whilst I list make/model somewhat for myself (so I can tell one box apart from another!), I list CPU and RAM as you do, but you don’t mention graphics hardware at all.

I do consider the graphics, esp. in regards kernel (or for LTS releases kernel stack)… As I do have hardware which will use 24.04 perfectly with the GA kernel stack, but it’s less fun with the newer kernels thus HWE kernel stack; esp. on the older hardware that I mostly use in QA.

The box I list does have Xubuntu installed on it; though it’s a multi-desktop install so it’ll have other desktop(s) & WMs installed as well (just something I like), and I decide which I’ll use at login time based on what apps I’ll use, to ensure the apps I’ll run will share (rather than fight) resources with the DE/WM I use… mine having a 250GB HDD (if I recall correctly), thus I don’t care about the multi-desktop install using an extra ~1GB of disk space - as its the RAM that is my limited resource.

My current Xubuntu install isn’t recent though I believe; the device isn’t one I use much anymore, as there is a black spot (I assume dead pixels) on the screen, and its got a lousy battery, so its rarely chosen for use, as I have other choices.

Due to the lack of RAM I do use it different to other boxes that have 4GB of RAM, which is still more careful than I’m using boxes with 8GB or more too. Before starting a program on that box, I quickly consider (mentally) what I have in RAM already (apps, libs/toolkits they use) and thus try and predict how the new app I want to start will go in regards RAM usage; but what I’m going here with Xubuntu/Lubuntu (or whatever DE/WM I’m using) is the same if I was using another OS (eg. Microsoft Windows, Apple MacOS etc) anyway. Outside of these mental guesses on performance I make, the performance is pretty much what I expect.

FYI: I expect the same with Ubuntu (or really the lighter flavors on that old box) as I do if using another GNU/Linux such as Debian… Whilst many will differ in their out of the box configuration; meaning largely what they install by default, plus some minor tweaks pre-made for you; I tend to discount those as I’ll adjust the box to make it work best for me anyway… and with that box it’s adjusting it for the very limited RAM starting from what apps I’ll need to use & working back from that point (not the base OS; but starting with the apps I need to use! then choose DE and/or WM, then maybe I can decide what OS can provide that)

I can’t remember any config changes I made with the current Xubuntu install; if I installed with calamares (used by Lubuntu and some other flavors) I’d have made swapfile changes post-install (increasing swap file size), but I don’t recall needing to do what with Xubuntu 22.04 LTS and its ubiquity installer; Xubuntu 24.04 LTS & later use ubuntu-desktop-installer which I’ve used many times on other even older hardware; most boxes I use have >2GB of RAM so swap is less critical.

My box has i915 which means the kernel stack (graphics) is less critical; but I do have other boxes of similar age where the graphics really matter & thus my needs will differ greatly; eg. older boxes that run better for me with 24.04 LTS when using the GA kernel stack (6.8), but not newer HWE stack… but you didn’t provide any graphics details. Xubuntu has released 4 ISOs of 24.04 thus far; 2 using the GA kernel stack, and 2 thus far using the HWE stack… whilst the latest HWE stack (6.14 kernel) is easy to find/download; the older ISOs are more difficult to find… though you can always install the later ISO & switch from HWE to GA via package changes if required. Graphics is something I’ve found I need to consider with older hardware.

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As usual, if you can justify spending a few bucks, replacing the old SATA HDD by a small SSD performance will improve a lot. If old PATA (AKA “IDE”) keep it until it breaks for good, something that can happen anytime now.

Also adding/replacing RAM modules to the maximum allowed is strongly recommended. That said, the type of RAM it needs, due to rarity, will be expensive to the point I wouldn’t be able to rationally justify such cost for that machine.

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I have Kubuntu on desktop & laptop. But was able to install Kubuntu on my 2006 Toshiba with 1.5 GB of RAM. On HDD it was slow & about 2 sec gray screen when going to swap. I could load Firefox & Zim, but anything more needed swap. But I also have Kubuntu on external SSD. That worked much better. Swap was barely a flicker & system was function, but not speedy.

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Thank you so much for sharing that specific and valuable real-world data! That gives me a lot of confidence.

You are absolutely right, I missed the graphics info. My friend’s **laptop** uses integrated graphics (it should be the **Intel HD Graphics** integrated into the Pentium P6200 chipset for laptops).

Based on your experience, if I stick to a single lightweight desktop (like Xfce or Moksha) and choose an LTS release, do you think getting a usable daily experience on this Pentium P6200 **laptop** with 2GB RAM is a realistic expectation?

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I used to run more or less recent Xubuntu on older hardware, but it was not a laptop, it was a desktop computer, I don’t remember exactly the specs but it was a single core AMD CPU. I’ve got it here somewhere, I’ll dig it up and see if it still works.

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I’ll pipe in here with personal experience. Lubuntu is slightly lighter than Xubuntu, though not as “pretty”. Lubuntu was OK for me on a 4GB machine, but bear in mind that if your friend is going to use a browser, which is almost certainly the case, 2GB is going to be horribly limiting.

I second @rubi1200‘s suggestion of Bodhi Linux, which is significantly lighter than Lubuntu. Bodhi is based on Ubuntu, though it’s not an “official” derivative, but it has been around for a long time. It’s a great compromise between usability and keeping things small!

Although you can get even lighter distributions, I like Bodhi because it’s part of the Ubuntu family and therefore both familiar and easy to use.

Unfortunately, you aren’t likely to get much Bodhi support on this specific forum (it’s for Ubuntu and official derivatives only), but you can get help on Reddit.

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Indeed.

Keep the open tabs to a minimum and that minimum is one, preferably without javascript and/or fancy eye candy. Following this rule should keep things under control.

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Hi

I would also vote in favor of LUbuntu flavor, where the LXDE GUI is using less memory.

I have installed LUbuntu on a machine which was Fujitsu Siemens amilo mini ui 3520 with Intel Atom 1,6GHz and 1GB RAM, but mostly for case that it had 32-bit processor and only few distributions supported that. This is not your limitation, I see that your CPU is 64-bit. So it is working, but it is very slow, like the computers were 15 years ago. I use it as print/scan server.

Recently I worked on PC with Celeron 2,8GHz + 225 MB RAM ! .. it was booting for 6 minutes into Windows, but then I was surprised that some historic version of MS Office (like 2010) worked there well and swiftly. Internet browser was another thing, that took ages to open any website.

That’s why I’m also thinking - how about installing some older flavour of Ubuntu which had lower requirements, but still has security support? Well yeah, Office there will be outdated, but with fewer memory requirements should work quicker.

For example Ubuntu 14.04 LTS still has support, and I see Minimum Requirements: Processor: 700 MHz (Intel Celeron or better) RAM: 512 MiB Storage: 5 GB of hard-drive space

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_version_history#Version_timeline

And yeah, problem with browsing is that today’s websites are very complex, so they do not work well on old computers with not much RAM available…

I think that it will be nicely usable computer for Office, listening to music, watching movies (not in UltraHD), browsing simple webpages, but you should forget pages like Facebook, Instagram and opening multiple websites at once.

Miro

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Only if you are able to pay a fortune.

Legacy support is for enterprises that can afford a high price for such things.

Official unpaid support for 14.04 expired in April 2019 after the regular 5y cadence, paid support was available until April 2024, paid legacy support after that timeframe depends on negotiations with Canonical…

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I can confirm @rubi1200. I have run Bodhi Linux on one of those cheapest of cheap netbooks, and it worked very well. It was one of those which came Windows XP installed.

This was years ago, but Bodhi was nice and refreshing experience for me.

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Sounds fine. If you can upgrade the RAM then I’d recommend it. Otherwise it’ll probably be OK

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Lubuntu works well on old HW and 2 GB RAM, but you need a lightweight browser (Brave? Forget Firefox). I’m running Lubuntu 24.04 on 16-year old HP laptops (Intel core 2, 1.7…2.0 GHz) with no problems on 2 GB. The SSD suggestion I can support 100%, it increases boot performance x4 (other parameters are difficult to measure).

But all in all, 4 GB is better.

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[Conclusion & Decision]

Thanks to all contributors. Special thanks to:

· @rubi1200 for the Bodhi Linux recommendation based on real-world testing.

· @Guirec for the similar hardware data.

· Everyone for the discussion on 2GB RAM experience and risks of old versions.

Decision: Proceeding with the Bodhi Linux solution. This thread has been immensely helpful. Marking as solved.

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