Want to save your aging computer? Try these Linux distributions

Having spent many years in technology, the so-called "planned obsolescence" is always frustrating. It's as if software and hardware vendors were trying to force consumers to buy newer hardware by preventing essential software from running on older hardware.

Let's take an example. When Microsoft announced Windows 11, it became clear that the new version wouldn't support much of the hardware that Windows had run before. At best, this can be a hassle, but at worst it can be costly. And many people (who want to keep using Windows) ended up buying new systems. But for some people, that was an impossible option, so they chose to stick with the Windows operating system, which eventually became unsupported.

In addition to these points, some modern OSes are not friendly to older hardware. But even if you find yourself in this situation, you can still find hope in some Linux distributions that are designed to run on older hardware. These operating systems should bring old hardware back to life and make it work like new.

Below are five such Linux distributions. These are all good enough distributions for home use on new or old hardware.

• 「Bodhi Linux」

         Bodhi Linux has been my first choice for about five years. Not only does this distro look great on older hardware, it has a unique desktop. Called Moksha, the desktop is similar to Enlightenment (another all-time favorite of mine), and has enough features to make up a full-fledged desktop OS.

The Bodhi Linux desktop allows you to interact with your computer in a unique way.

There is one caveat to using Bodhi Linux. It's that we have to rethink how we interact with the desktop. That's because Moksha's interface is very different from what you're used to. But that doesn't make it harder to use (it's actually the opposite). Moksha just takes a little getting used to. But it would be good to know that.

The recommended system requirements for Bodhi Linux are as follows.

• CPU: 64-bit 1GHz processor
• RAM: 768MB
• Hard disk: 10GB

With just the bare minimum, you can have a desktop computer that not only works perfectly, but also looks cool.

                                                                  

 

• 「Linux Lite」

                 

                            If you're looking for a more generic desktop interface, Linux Lite might be for you. Linux Lite employs a customized "Xfce" desktop environment to create an interface that's immediately familiar to all types of users.

The Linux Lite desktop has all the common features you're used to.

Even better, Linux Lite was designed from the ground up to be an extremely user-friendly distribution. So even users unfamiliar with Linux should be able to use the OS in no time. Linux Lite also comes preloaded with the Google Chrome browser, Thunderbird email client, GIMP image editor, VLC media player, Libre Office office suite, and more.

The minimum system requirements for Linux Lite are as follows.

• CPU: 1GHz
• RAM: 768MB (1GB recommended)
• Hard disk: 8GB (minimum)
  

• 「Puppy Linux」

                       Puppy Linux is a little different in that it's not as easy to install as the other distributions covered in this article. In fact, Puppy Linux is in the rather cumbersome category when it comes to installation, and is often best simply used as a live distribution. In this case, you would "install" it on a USB stick (you could also install it on persistent file storage) and boot it when needed. In other words, if you carry Puppy Linux with you, you can use any machine as a Puppy Linux machine. And without touching anything installed on that machine's local drive.

This distribution has more than enough software installed, including the web browser "Pale Moon", the email client "Claws", the word processor "AbiWord", and the spreadsheet tool "Gnumeric". Puppy Linux's desktop can feel a little cluttered, but it's still very intuitive to use.

Puppy Linux default desktop

The minimum system requirements for Puppy Linux are:

• CPU: "Pentium" (900MHz)
• RAM: 300MB
• Hard disk: optional
• DVD-ROM: 20x speed or faster, or USB

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