HP Pavilion dv6500 Notebook PC
Intel Core 2 Duo T5250 @ 1.5GHz
2GB RAM
Hitachi 500GB HDD
Windows Vista
What distro would you recommend?
Can this be done with a USB or will a DVD be necessary?
I want to save it from ewaste because it has a ridiculous number of ports on the sides.
I have a device with 2gb of ram with mx linux, and it works fine. Here’s a few tips for any distro when using such configuration:
1 - if possible, enable multilib and run 32-bit versions from your heavier software, like the browser (the entire system as 32 bit helps a lot, but most distros seem do be dropping it)
2 - use zram
3 - in the browser, look for some form of tab suspender addon
4 - try alternative lightweight software for your stuff (for example, abiword instead of libreoffice)
5 - block ads in your network, to prevent the device to even process them
6 - don’t use the browser to wathc videos. Look for native players. In fact, avoid doing anything in the browser and look for native software when possibleI find it quite fun to use a constrained device like that, and it helped me change a few habits I considered to be bad for me, as well as it helped me focus more on my important stuff
I am running Mint 19 xfce 32-bit on a Pentium 4 with 1gb of RAM. Works okay. Not seeing showed records, but useable for, like, 2 or 3 tabs or for word processing. You could probably do a bit better with that system.
I was worried 32-bit would be necessary, but 64 went okay. It is slow, but I was expecting that. It’s quieter now though, and it shuts down faster.
USB should work fine assuming the system itself can boot to usb (googling it looks like it can, you may have t hit delete to enter the bios to tell it to boot to usb first though)… distro inherently isn’t a huge varient in terms of resources used however desktop environment is. You absolutely want something with a very light desktop manager, LXDE, XFCE etc… So depends, if you are looking for something very simple… I’d say probably Linux Mint XFCE edition, if your goal is to learn how linux works, don’t mind reading up some documentation, arch linux is amazing.
If you have experience with any distribution or like something, almost every distro has a version that’s distributed with a light weight desktop manager. The desktop manager is where the bulk of the system requirement weight is.
I took your advice. Mint and XFCE have been good to me thus far, so I went for it.
Very thankful I didn’t have to burn a DVD for it. I’ve done it before, but Ventoy is so much more convenient.Awesome, welcome to the club :) always fun to get new linux users, and also always great to find new uses for old hardware.
Damn, a dv6000 series, I had a dv6175 twenty years ago…
What are your plans for it, you mention saving it from ewaste due to it’s many ports, so I suspect you will use it for diagnostics or labwork.
If so, you would probably be best suited with an older version of Ubuntu, possibly something like 8.04 or so.
That should run decent on the machine and allow you to use the ports for whatever labwork/testing you may require.
But be careful and avoid browsing the public internet with it.
Spot on! Before wiping, Vista showed the last update to be ~June '06.
Sadly, it’s not as impressive in the ports as I initially thought (didn’t know what I was looking at).
Not real sure what I’ll end up doing with it. It’s in good condition.
That’s a really old system, here’s my recommendations in order:
All of these have minimum system requirements that are lower than your system, so they should install and run fine. USB should be fine to boot and install any one of these.
Thanks! I want to give these a shot after Mint finishes updating. Any edge will be noticeable.
I was worried about USB boot, but it went smoothly.
Mint is awesome, and normally that’s my goto for newer Linux users, and honestly even experienced ones. But it might be a little heavy for a system as old as yours.
Let me know if Mint ends up running alright for you, I’m curious to know!
I wasn’t sure what to recommend so I found this.
It took awhile, but it worked. Ventoy on USB drive. First had to take a video to see the Post screen in order to determine which F button to press (F9:boot order). After that no problems, just waited.
Turns out I just didn’t realize what some of the ‘ports’ were; abandoned monitor connections and a little remote control that slides out. There’s a DVD drive and headphone jacks, which I like. I am curious about Expandable Port 3, though. There’s a command that lists them isn’t there?
Didn’t really have much of a plan for it. I’m not sure what use case it’s best suited for. Tempted to give it as a gift.
