I bought an old HP chromebook cheap on ebay that came with Zorin OS installed. It isn’t much, but just about manages to do what I need. The trouble is, Zorin seems kind of bloated and the Chromebook hasn’t got much memory. I don’t even have enough space to install updates.

I’m comfortable with running a pared-down OS that might be a better fit for a tired old Chromebook. What might work better than Zorin?

  • Eugenia@lemmy.mlEnglish
    8·
    9 days ago

    For 16 GB SSD with 4 GBs of RAM (which is what most Chromebooks used to be), you will need Debian with XFce, with 2 GB of swap partition. Nothing else will either fit, or work properly. I have given away 3 such laptops to friends with that setup (Arch might fit ok too, but because I was giving it to friends, Debian was easier to work with). After installing the v12 Bookworm Debian OS, with libreoffice, a couple of simple games (e.g. solitaire), Gimp, and that 2 gb swap partition, I was left with 5 GB free space. I had to occasionally do sudo apt autoremove to make sure the space wasn’t eaten away, but overall, it stayed steady (dh -h will give you that info). With Trixie, you might end up with 4 GBs of free space, as it’s bigger. Bookworm has updates until 2029.

      • Eugenia@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        8 days ago

        You will have to reinstall the OS, and redo the partition table (256 MB boot partition (that’s enough for a single OS), 2 GB swap, and the rest / root partition). Then install Debian with XFce on the / partition. You use it normally as with any other Debian-based OS, that Zorin is also one of them, but you use the terminal to update the system. It’s very usable.

  • Muad'Dib@feddit.org
    5·
    9 days ago

    Maybe you can have a look at PostmarketOS, depending on the specific model your Chromebook is. They support some Chromebooks.

  • iusemybrain@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    7 days ago

    if your trying to find an OS that is low on resources, there’s only one option: alpine linux. Yes it starts out as a TTY (no graphical environment) but they do have scripts to install the OS and a graphics environment of your choice.

    the one concern is driver support, generally (unless using a popular distro such as zorin OS) driver support for Chromebooks are limited. I’ve tried getting alpine Linux on my Chromebook and can’t because the wifi card would not work for it.

    that said, if you’re ready to manually configure driver support for it (which most likely will happen) the artix OS uses about 128 MB of memory. That said, if you have more, Linux will dynamically allocate more for core OS functionality

  • HackyMrHippie@lemmy.ml
    2·
    9 days ago

    I have 3 old Chromebooks (2gb/4gb ram and 16gb/32gb storage) and I run MX with XFCE which runs like a dream. Previously I used Arch with KDE which also ran smoothly enough which surprised me. One thing worth doing with whichever distro/DE you choose, remove all the software you won’t use and it makes a huge difference!

  • ISolox@lemmy.world
    1·
    10 days ago

    I would go with debian with a light weight desktop. If you have issues after that maybe puppy Linux?

  • moonpiedumplings@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    9 days ago

    I used to use Arch + KDE on a device with only 32 gb of storage space. I used BTRFS and transparent compression, and I got the actual Arch Linux install compressed down into 6 gb (where it would have been 10 gb uncompressed).