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
    131·
    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
        3·
        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
    7·
    9 days ago

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

    • dfgxx@lemmy.zip
      2·
      9 days ago

      If it can run on old phones, it can run even better on Chromebooks I think, yes it is very lightweight but because musl app compatibility is bit more limited than glibc

  • HackyMrHippie@lemmy.ml
    4·
    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!

  • dfgxx@lemmy.zip
    3·
    9 days ago

    Try chimera Linux, it is very lightweight (but also depends on the desktop environment)

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
    3·
    8 days ago

    I’ve also had a chromebook with only 30 GB of slow eMMC once. Adjusting I/O caching helped noticeably:

    # /etc/sysctl.d/20-flash-speed-settings.conf
# https://lonesysadmin.net/2013/12/22/better-linux-disk-caching-performance-vm-dirty_ratio/

# (vm.dirty_background_ratio = 10) percent of memory to use for caching
vm.dirty_background_ratio = 15
# (vm.dirty_ratio = 20) the max percent of memory to use for caching
vm.dirty_ratio = 30
# (vm.dirty_writeback_centicecs = 5) how often the buffer is checked for work to do
vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs = 1000
# (vm.dirty_expire_centisecs = 500) sets how long something can be in the buffer
vm.dirty_expire_centisecs = 6000

    And you might also want to set mount options in /etc/fstab to noatime or relatime and add commit=60 or so (default is 6).

    To note that dirty_expire_centisecs and commit trade speed for data safety. But a laptop has a battery anyway.

    About lack of space:
    keep the system on the eMMC and mount a thumbdrive as /home? (in /etc/fstab)
    Just don’t do much compiling on it (or move the compiling path to RAM); i’ve broke a SDcard-as-home with compiling Firefox on the Chromebook.

    Edit: ZorinOS is immutable, relying on flatpaks (high I/O and btrfs deduplication), no? Kinda the worst choice for such a device.

    • Crozekiel@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      8 days ago

      Edit: ZorinOS is immutable, relying on flatpaks (high I/O and btrfs deduplication), no?

      I’ve not seen anything about ZorinOS being immutable, it’s basically just Ubuntu with some stuff on top. By default it uses ext4 and the software store has access to flatpaks, but also snaps and typical native linux software.

  • Moodel@feddit.ukEnglish
    2·
    7 days ago

    Have you tried cleaning up the cache?

    ‘sudo apt autoclean’ will remove outdated cache files.

    ‘sudo apt clean’ will remove all cache files.

  • ISolox@lemmy.world
    2·
    9 days ago

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

  • inanimate_carbon_rod@lemmy.zip
    2·
    9 days ago

    I’ve been distro-hopping on a 2018 cheapo Chromebook for about a year. So far, I’ve tried Debian (Bookworm) with XFCE, AntiX, PeppermintOS, and now ARCH with Sway. None of the first three were particularly snappy, but they were all running full desktop environments. With Arch/Sway, I’m running about as light as I can get: no login manager, only 441 packages installed. Web browser is Helium. It’s early yet, but I think it does feel a little faster–most of the time. Helium still takes a few seconds to load, for example.

    Running bare Arch is a bit extreme, but I think the real difference probably comes down to using a WM instead of a full DE. Sway is pretty light, and from what I could find, Wayland is supposed to be a little lighter/quicker than X11, but if toy want to go that way, you could use i3. Configuration from scratch can be a bit intimidating, but I looked online for shared dotfiles I liked and customized from there.

    Good luck! Hope it goes all and is a fun experiment!

    My specs: Astronaut (rev 3) Chromebook. Intel Celeron N3350 dual core @ 2.4 GHz with Intel HD Graphics 500 integrated graphics, 4 GB RAM, 32 GB eMMC storage.