Linux distro for an old Presario C700 Laptop

S

Stoly

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jul 26, 2005
Messages
6,713
So my niece found an old Presario C700 Laptop. Its got a celeron Merom 550 1.8ghz 2gb of ram, 120gb HDD and windows vista 32bit

I could probably get it to 4gb I probably have a ram stick around, maybe even a SSD.

So any linux distro I could try?

BTW I'm looking to maybe do some RDP and web browsing.
 
You can try any distro basically. Ubuntu Mate or Mint are my choices for a desktop. But that Celeron laptop will be so slow that you'll be pulling your hair trying to use it. IMO it's criminal Intel was allowed to sell that CPU. It literally feels like your computer is on molasses or 10 years older of its age.
 
https://www.linuxliteos.com/

I have used this to salvage many old systems similar to yours. In fact I just put it on a similar era HP laptop with an early Athlon X2 mobile CPU with 4GB and a 7200rpm Hitachi drive for a broke friend who just does light web surfing. Hes been using it happily for a few months and hasn't complained to me so......................try it out!

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/compaq-presario-c700-upgrades-and-facts.237042/

Also maybe if you are feeling adventurous, do a CPU upgrade. Something like a T6670 (800MHz FSB, 45nm Penryn, dual-core) can be had for less then $10 and would be a nice improvement over that single core 533MHz FSB 65nm Celeron. Also as I recall 2GB + 1GB memory works fine in those, though 4GB doesn't.

And honestly my laptop is a similar era Vostro 1500 I put a T6670, 3GB, and an old Intel X25M 80GB SSD in and it runs Win10 LTSB 32-bit perfectly fine for web-surfing and running LibreOffice!
 
Last edited:
70 Polara said:
https://www.linuxliteos.com/

I have used this to salvage many old systems similar to yours. In fact I just put it on a similar era HP laptop with an early Athlon X2 mobile CPU with 4GB and a 7200rpm Hitachi drive for a broke friend who just does light web surfing. Hes been using it happily for a few months and hasn't complained to me so......................try it out!

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/compaq-presario-c700-upgrades-and-facts.237042/

Also maybe if you are feeling adventurous, do a CPU upgrade. Something like a T6670 (800MHz FSB, 45nm Penryn, dual-core) can be had for less then $10 and would be a nice improvement over that single core 533MHz FSB 65nm Celeron.

And honestly my laptop is a similar era Vostro 1500 I put a T6670, 4GB, and an old Intel X25M 80GB SSD in and it runs Win10 LTSB perfectly fine for web-surfing and running LibreOffice!
Click to expand...
will try that
 
I just made a few edits, so suggest rereading my post above. Good luck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
I'd seriously spend $50-$75 on a PC, shipped from eBay or your local computer recycler -- with an i3/i5 -- even sandy bridge. Spend another $20-$30 on an SSD and have something that works for 95% of desktop needs.

Edit: Here is an i5 for $40 shipped. Just add SSD.
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
/dev/null said:
I'd seriously spend $50-$75 on a PC, shipped from eBay or your local computer recycler -- with an i3/i5 -- even sandy bridge. Spend another $20-$30 on an SSD and have something that works for 95% of desktop needs.

Edit: Here is an i5 for $40 shipped. Just add SSD.
Click to expand...
I don't need another PC, I just want to maybe get some use from this one.
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
70 Polara said:
https://www.linuxliteos.com/

I have used this to salvage many old systems similar to yours. In fact I just put it on a similar era HP laptop with an early Athlon X2 mobile CPU with 4GB and a 7200rpm Hitachi drive for a broke friend who just does light web surfing. Hes been using it happily for a few months and hasn't complained to me so......................try it out!

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/compaq-presario-c700-upgrades-and-facts.237042/

Also maybe if you are feeling adventurous, do a CPU upgrade. Something like a T6670 (800MHz FSB, 45nm Penryn, dual-core) can be had for less then $10 and would be a nice improvement over that single core 533MHz FSB 65nm Celeron. Also as I recall 2GB + 1GB memory works fine in those, though 4GB doesn't.

And honestly my laptop is a similar era Vostro 1500 I put a T6670, 3GB, and an old Intel X25M 80GB SSD in and it runs Win10 LTSB 32-bit perfectly fine for web-surfing and running LibreOffice!
Click to expand...

Ya, something like this, or maybe peppermint.
 
I have https://www.bodhilinux.com/ running on a even older dell d600 Pentium M @1.6Ghz and 1GB of RAM. The Moksha desktop (a fork on enlightenment) takes some getting used too but it is very lightweight. It sits about 130MB RAM used at clean desktop. The distro is Ubuntu based so should have no problem on finding programs. I run Clementine and VLC fine on it mostly. Vivaldi browser runs pretty well, but modern browsing is going to choke a single core if you try loading multiple tabs at once.
 
Actually I considered installing windows 10 but even if it worked MS is dropping support for many legacy cpus, so it was a matter of time until it stopped working

I also thought about win 98 or 2000, but I really saw no point. I no longer have install media anyway.

I'll try a few distros mentioned and maybe even Win 7
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top