you can actually run it on ram and not disk (see tinycore linux) and have the system faster than even an ssd
this post was submitted on 25 May 2026
30 points (81.2% liked)
No Stupid Questions
48244 readers
1232 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Considering that Linux existed long before SSDs did...
I first installed Linux in 1993......
Explaining Computers did a video about running various Linuxes on various low performance machines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJGf8zVt3MI
As someone who is running a ancient compaq laptop, with 4gb of ram, Debian 13, I can say that it works just fine. Cant do gaming etc with it, but all I do with this is use the browser, IRC and watch a racing stream every weekend. Works perfectly fine with those.
@HuudaHarkiten thanks for this link. Today afternoon, l discovered that the display is not working. Any ideas on how l work with this laptop ?
If it has a video-out port, like a HDMI, plug that in and use a external monitor or TV. Other than that, open it up and check that the monitor connection is plugged in and not broken.
For future inquiries about problems with your machinery, please include the make and model in your question. It is impossible to give tech support if people have to guess which machine you are using.
2GB is cutting it short. Not for Linux, that runs fine. But the modern internet doesn't, regardless of what browser you use.
2x2GB RAM shouldn't cost much, that's useless for AI.
You can run Linux just fine from 2GB and a HDD, but expect it to be slower. Modern web browsers alone require that much RAM.
@jenesaisquoi l'd be working on lynx basically.
Firefox should be ok, if you don't open many tabs nor very complex webapps
You can run some distros from a 2gb USB stick. Not sure what these guys are talking about th.
I verify this, some years ago when my laptop's hard drive died, I installed Ubuntu Linux from a USB drive (with a live image on it) to a USB drive. It took a while for it to boot but it worked and I used it as my main machine for a couple of months.
But beyond that, there are Linux distros made specifically for running off of external media, Puppy Linux is an example.
If you don't plan to do heavy internet browsing, an HDD is good enough for a light distro. But an SSD will definitely improve the experience.
Regarding RAM, this is a tough one. If you use the right DE + terminal app combo, 2 GB should be good.
I "inherited" my sons netbook, which had 32GB flash, because Windows plus Office wasted 27GB and then wanted to download an 8GB update. I installed Kubuntu with LibreOffice and a number of other packages I needed for the project, and was way below 5GB used.
No, this is wrong, Linux can run on an HDD.
Linux runs on a potato, you may need to be picky about the distro the more resource constrained you are, but that's it.
Or may want a bigger potato for convenience.
You don't even need a HDD or SSD. You can just run from the boot media.
No, it is not true
The 2GB of RAM are going to hit you harder than the HDD, if you intend to run a modern browser on it…
This, the computer will work great for basic tasks but anything JavaScript heavy will slow things down.
Linux can run off an HDD.
Hell, there are versions of Linux that are designed to be run off a USB stick.
Hell, there's even Linux distributions that run off a floppy disk.
https://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/boot_floppies.html
https://krzysztofjankowski.com/floppinux/floppinux-2025.html
Running live from usb at the moment.
He's a big box store professional; in other words constantly confidently incorrect.
Also trying to sell you something .. potentially on commission.
If you want to run a modern current linux distro on a laptop with only 2gb of ram and 500gb then your options are very limited, but it is possible.
For example. Void Linux with Enlightenment will work. A browser will work ok for basic websites but heavy apps like Gmail will be unusably slow.
If you have no option to upgrade, you can still use a machine with those specs to run linux apps like Abiword, Gnumeric, GIMP, etc very well.
Also, putting in any SSD drive to replace the spinning one is the single best upgrade you can make in terms of performance and longevity on an old laptop.
load more comments
(1 replies)
The low ram is a problem but why not just try it? Its free
No, but an SSD really does make the computer a lot faster, no matter the OS.
the thing about linux is it depends what you put on it. there are lightweight distros. that being said if you can put an ssd in something do it as nothing outside of more ram when you are maxing it improves it as much as an ssd. I mean im sure if you go back far enough in cpu the drive may no longer be the bottleneck.
You can still run a modern Linux from a floppy disk. Run it from a USB drive or a HDD, they are cheap.
There are versions of Linux that don't need any internal storage at all, eg. Puppy.
Puppylinux is the first thing that comes to mind.
Then pxe boot + nfs root
You don't even need an ssd or hdd. The ram will hurt more.
Linux can easily be run on your 500 MB HDD, it can also be run from an USB stick or even a DVD.
Linux can even run on the original Raspberry Pi, a single board computer with only 512 MB RAM!
You should probably look for a distro that is made for older systems, but if you do that, it should work very well. There are obviously limitations with only 2GB RAM. So I wouldn't use a resource heavy desktop like KDE/Plasma.
I my Raspberry PI got Linux running on an SD card. Thats not SSD either, is it?
load more comments
(1 replies)
This depends a lot more on what you plan on doing once the OS boots. I accidentally loaded Win11 on an HDD (disk 0 was HDD, not SSD) for a few hours. It was noticeably slow, but it ran my diagnostics utilities well enough.
If you're using it for light web browsing, basic office software, etc, then it might be fine.
But something else caught my attention - you inquired about "restoring" it at shops, meaning you intend to pay money. SSD and RAM are obviously what anyone would upgrade, and you're balking at it. More to the point, you expect to run Linux, but didn't even install it as-is to test it out?
There's some missing context here. Also, 2gb laptops haven't been a thing in a very long time. You might very well get a better deal by just buying a used newer model that already has what you're looking for.
view more: next ›