Post #2305757

2026-05-09 17:54 UTC

sometime soon I'm gonna restore an old PC, idk what specs I'm running on and need advice what distros can I install that are easy to install and not hardware demanding. I do not know how to CLI install. also, the PC has a read/write CD slot, we wanna use it to burn CDs, anything I need to know?

Replies (4)

@diffie@mk.absturztau.be 2026-05-09 21:34

@sleepybisexual@mk.absturztau.be I can also recommend putting there as much RAM as possible. DDR3 and older seems¹ to be quite cheap. ¹ I might have outdated information, but I guess nobody wants DDR2/DDR3 even with the AI stuff happening…

Open ##2317753
@diffie@mk.absturztau.be 2026-05-09 21:31

@sleepybisexual@mk.absturztau.be If you want some graphical app for CD burning, KDE's K3b should be fine if it's still a thing. I never had driver issues with CD/DVD drives on recent Linux.

Open ##2317756
@diffie@mk.absturztau.be 2026-05-09 21:28

@sleepybisexual@mk.absturztau.be Depends quite a lot on definition of what “an old PC” is. Does it have a 64-bit processor or just 32-bit? Many distros dropped the 32-bit support recently, the Linux kernel also seems to be quite aggressive in dropping support for older stuff, and (if it's very old) there is high probability of being unable to use up-to-date kernels seen. I had problems with distros like Arch on some 64-bit processors, since they require newer processors. Debian (and related distros) should be fine, however they don't seem to support 32-bit stuff anymore. Choose some more lightweight desktop environment. KDE might be fine, but XFCE or LXDE (LXQt?) seems to be a better choice for that, but I'm not sure, since I didn't use LXDE and LXQt for quite a long time. I personally prefer using KDE, or just a plain window manager (Sway, i3 or WindowMaker), but I still tend to prefer using KDE apps there. The latter option usually means much lower hardware requirements, but it may be too advanced for you. If you choose KDE or any other desktop environment supporting both Wayland and X11 (the installer usually installs both), you might want to try switching between the two. I have a low-end computer which runs KDE on Wayland much better (compared to KDE on X11 with any compositor config). Note that I'm really opinionated – I somewhat still like KDE, haven't used LXDE, LXQt or XFCE for years and I absolutely avoid GNOME. :neofox_angel:

Open ##2317757
@book@beige.party 2026-05-09 19:07

@sleepybisexual@mk.absturztau.be Mint is easy and relatively light.

Open ##3283616