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I have dug up an older Acer Aspire 4720z laptop and I want to put it to work. It's x64, Pentium Dual Core ~1,5 Ghz, 80 Gb hard drive and 512 mb RAM. I'm planning to use it mostly for internet browsing and old PC games, probably music/video as well - just general purpose. Originally it had Vista and I have tried Ubuntu 16 so far, both didn't work well. My main concern - RAM usage. It seems to be the bottleneck of this system, so I need OS that accounts for this. Also I don't want to give up too much disk space to OS since 80 GB can get tight fast.
What Windows/Linux operating systems will be optimal for this configuration? Doesn't matter if x64 or x86 as long as it runs smooth with normal desktop and general purpose programs (office, paint-like, etc.)
I am also considering adding RAM up to 1GB, is it worth the trouble and what answer will be in that case?
Yes, I also used Ubuntu a long time ago, around 10th version and was pretty happy with it, that's why I decided to try it. So, just changing OS desktop to something less demanding should be sufficient change to free up enough memory for applications? I'm not going to run Photoshop or something that demanding there, mostly just browser and office programs. – Deo – 2017-01-11T16:35:47.973
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Changing the desktop made a big difference for me, but I just see that you only have 512MB RAM. I don't know how that's going to work out. Adding RAM to 2GB is a cheap way to make the laptop usable. Otherwise there are real light distros like Arch or Puppy Linux. I tried the latter, and it takes time to get used to the desktop, nothing like Mate. Arch may be the better choice. See https://www.linux.com/news/best-lightweight-linux-distros
– SPRBRN – 2017-01-11T16:49:04.423My goal here is to do the most with least effort/money. I am considering adding another 512 MB if it will have big impact (e.g. turn a car into a plane), otherwise (car -> slightly better car) I don't want to bother. – Deo – 2017-01-11T16:54:49.567
I think the problem will be browsing, unless you turn javascript off. But I may be wrong. I hope that extra 512GB is not wasted money because it's too little. – SPRBRN – 2017-01-11T17:04:08.400
@SPRBRN +1 for Arch. but it can be cumbersome for newbies. I've never used Puppy so I don't have much input on that but it's definitely more lightweight than Ubuntu. Debian would probably be my best suggestion for a lightweight distro for beginners. – DrZoo – 2017-01-11T17:27:17.547