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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Trying to rescue a 1GB RAM laptop (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I had an Aspire One D270 laptop with a 32-bit Intel Atom CPU and 1 gigabyte of RAM, so I installed Debian with Xfce on it, but even then it's running way too slow.

Is there anything I can do to make the laptop faster and more responsive given its limited memory?

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Maybe try Openbox instead of XFCE. Can't promise it'll add much memory but with 1gb RAM I guess every bit counts?

Edit: just had a quick look around, and it looks like your machine can be upgraded to a whopping 2gb RAM... It's still not great, but it is a 100% increase in memory.

Edit 2: I'm not actually recommending you buy RAM from memorystock.com, it just turned up at the top of my search results. The page should give you the type and version you'll need to look for, though.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

2 gb memory should make XFCE usable. That's what my crappy laptop has and XFCE works fine. I use Firefox with a few open tabs and watch YouTube at 720p.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

I once swapped a Debian install with XFCE to just running Openbox instead of a full DE and got down to 300Mb or so of memory usage. This was about a decade ago so obviously YMMV but given literally all I did was run Debian with just openbox and no DE, there's probably additional tuning to be done that can get them to a more usable state