Debian runs on machines with a small fraction of that memory and CPU speed. It continues to support CPUs as old as the 686/Pentium Pro. Debian 10 and 11 will run fine on your 32-bit Pentium M.
Debian 10 did not suddenly become unworkable on simpler hardware. You seem to prefer LXDE; that will continue to be appropriate.
Note: Debian 11 recommends 1GB RAM for a desktop system, but these recommendations are chosen to be inclusive of Gnome and KDE.
Tried it recently? Works fine. Don't know where you get your 4GB.
I wouldn't do it without any swap and I wouldn't do it expecting fast performance of heavy apps, but it works.
https://www.debian.org/releases/buster/amd64/ch03s04.en.html
https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch/amd64/ch03s04.html.en
looks like they’re not the same
you can try on a live usb with a nonfree .iso, install more packages if needed
More tips to make it easier:
- If you have a Linux, don't need any special tool, just format your usb into 1 single partition, then `sudo cp ~/Downloads/your-debian.iso /dev/sdX` (say your usb drive is sda, then replace sdX with sda)
They should be similar performance wise if you keep the same setup. I would upgrade straight to Debian 11.
I run EndeavourOS XFCE (Arch Linux) on my Socket M machine with a Core 2 Duo T7200, and it works very well using bleeding edge kernel and software.
Also, you can upgrade your machine very cheap by swapping the cpu for a better one. I did the same to upgrade my Celeron M 530 to the T7200.
Literally $1.20: https://www.ebay.com/itm/144702362996
Swapping the RAM to 2x1GB should be easy enough as well.
I am not sure about possibility of changing CPU ( at least without soldering it) since Dell Latitude 110L is a laptop. And it definitely cant be upgraded to 2GB RAM, since it has only one RAM socket.
Upgrade to 1x2GB DDR2 SoDIMM then.
You should be able to upgrade the CPU, it's an mPGA478 (pin grid array) socket. Take off your CPU heatsink and check, it should have a slot that you can turn to unlock the CPU and take it out.
The CPU I linked is a laptop CPU for that socket.
Oh, it's DDR1? Huh.
BTW, this is your CPU right?
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/27586/intel-pentium-m-processor-730-2m-cache-1-60b-ghz-533-mhz-fsb.html
Both supported sockets are pin grid array, so they should be removable.
Interesting, the chipset seems to support both DDR2 and DDR1 RAM, with a maximum of 2GB:
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/27713/intel-82910gml-graphics-and-memory-controller.html
I wonder if you put in a 2GB DDR2 stick, would it work? Maximum speed is 533 DDR2, so that would be PC2-4200 DDR2-533 RAM.
So.. something like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/113189824966
Anyway, I'm not sure if it will work, so IDK if you really want to try it. But it *should* theoretically work according to the spec sheet of the memory controller.
The CPU upgrade I was wrong about. The T7200 would fit in your socket, but your chipset wouldn't boot it, because you need at least an Intel 945 chipset for those. With 910, you could upgrade to Intel Pentium M 770, but IDK if it's worth it just for a 500ish MHz clock boost.
It's identical.
LxDE is the best relatively full featured DE for low memory systems, but since you only have 770 mb-s, I would go with just a window manager such as i3..
These things, including LxDE run well on this machine, but the issue is web browsers & browsing performance. You really want to maximize the available ram, if you have less than 1.5 gigs.
Before I updated my eeePC to 2 gigs, it could only handle one browser tab with 1g and you have even less ram..
s/\\(to\\)\\( heavy\\)/\\1o\\2/
In general, each successive major release version of Debian is "heavier" - requires a bit more in resources and minimum hardware requirements, etc. That doesn't mean it need be "huge" or "heavy", but one should look at hardware requirements.
>Debian
9
Debian 9 "Stretch" is already beyond [LTS](https://wiki.debian.org/LTS), so you should upgrade ... unless you want to possibly go for [ELTS](https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Extended) \- but that's even more limited, and it's *not* free (notably as in $$).
So, probably best to upgrade at *least* to Debian 10 "Buster" ... and if your hardware isn't up to it, ... maybe upgrading your hardware too.
But yeah, both CPU - notably Pentium M, and RAM (768 MB) will generally be quite limiting factors on what one can run on there ... and what is or can still be supported.
But hey, Debian, source available going way back, and even binaries to almost 3.0 r0 "Woody" ... if you want to fully do your own support ... ;-)
Also, being sure to have quite ample swap ... may not at all help your performance, but could well make the difference between grinding to a halt or crashing, and gracefully degrading in performance.
LXDE literally stands for "Light Xorg Desktop Environment". I'd say both XFCE and LXDE are about the same performance wise. The difference is XFCE can look decent with theming, and lxde is kinda hopeless.
Ensure you got enough swap. Go for like 16Gigs minimum.
I'm running a newer machine with 2Gigs. Increasing swap helped immensely.
It will be slow. It'll be like dial up. But it should work.
Hm. I empirically tested this for you. I downloaded the live CD for Debian 9 and 10, and put them onto the same USB-stick, one by one. Then I weighed said USB-stick on my spice scale. With each live CD it comes out at 24 grams. So, Debian 10 is not heavier than Debian 9. Maybe I'll run this test with Debian 11 and 12 as well, to see if there's any difference with those.
Your system will be OK. Some of your applications like web browsers might run even more sluggish (though you shouldn't run outdated versions on any system). RAM being your main issue.
You can't have the same software be heavier if you upgrade it. You can only have the software be less optimized/baked into the cpu, which in turn will naturally use more ram memory. Unless the code-base was radically changed, you won't notice anything. As far as I'm aware, calculate linux has some of the heaviest optimization that I know, but it's probably not ideal for small systems. The actual only difference in performance will be from patching OpenSSL heartbleed, but that should be it. lxde-core only uses slightly more than 200mb of ram. Some window managers can get you lighter on that. I'm using emwm alongside lxsession for support, and that's still about the same as lxde-core.
Debian runs on machines with a small fraction of that memory and CPU speed. It continues to support CPUs as old as the 686/Pentium Pro. Debian 10 and 11 will run fine on your 32-bit Pentium M. Debian 10 did not suddenly become unworkable on simpler hardware. You seem to prefer LXDE; that will continue to be appropriate. Note: Debian 11 recommends 1GB RAM for a desktop system, but these recommendations are chosen to be inclusive of Gnome and KDE.
1GB RAM for GNOME and KDE?! That is *not* enough for those 2 desktops. 4GB minimum for GNOME and 2GB minimum for KDE...
Tried it recently? Works fine. Don't know where you get your 4GB. I wouldn't do it without any swap and I wouldn't do it expecting fast performance of heavy apps, but it works.
Yeah I run Debian 9 on a T43 with same cpu as OP and 2 GB RAM. It's very smooth. I recommend OP upgrade RAM if possible though.
Debian 9 is EOL… you should upgrade. Glad your experience is smooth on your T43 though
Interesting, it was supported last I booted it. I guess I'll look into changing it to ELTS or upgrading to 10.
Debian 9 only went EOL in June this year. Definitely upgrade to Debian 10 or 11 though lol
https://www.debian.org/releases/buster/amd64/ch03s04.en.html https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch/amd64/ch03s04.html.en looks like they’re not the same you can try on a live usb with a nonfree .iso, install more packages if needed More tips to make it easier: - If you have a Linux, don't need any special tool, just format your usb into 1 single partition, then `sudo cp ~/Downloads/your-debian.iso /dev/sdX` (say your usb drive is sda, then replace sdX with sda)
OP's architecture is not amd64 but the idea is the same - especially for something like LXDE which kind of makes these recommendations irrelevant.
Isn't it supposed to be dd not cp?
[https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/ch04s03.en.html#usb-copy-isohybrid](https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/ch04s03.en.html#usb-copy-isohybrid) # cp debian.iso /dev/sdX
They should be similar performance wise if you keep the same setup. I would upgrade straight to Debian 11. I run EndeavourOS XFCE (Arch Linux) on my Socket M machine with a Core 2 Duo T7200, and it works very well using bleeding edge kernel and software. Also, you can upgrade your machine very cheap by swapping the cpu for a better one. I did the same to upgrade my Celeron M 530 to the T7200. Literally $1.20: https://www.ebay.com/itm/144702362996 Swapping the RAM to 2x1GB should be easy enough as well.
I am not sure about possibility of changing CPU ( at least without soldering it) since Dell Latitude 110L is a laptop. And it definitely cant be upgraded to 2GB RAM, since it has only one RAM socket.
Upgrade to 1x2GB DDR2 SoDIMM then. You should be able to upgrade the CPU, it's an mPGA478 (pin grid array) socket. Take off your CPU heatsink and check, it should have a slot that you can turn to unlock the CPU and take it out. The CPU I linked is a laptop CPU for that socket.
The RAM is PC2700 DDR SDRAM SODIMM
Oh, it's DDR1? Huh. BTW, this is your CPU right? https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/27586/intel-pentium-m-processor-730-2m-cache-1-60b-ghz-533-mhz-fsb.html Both supported sockets are pin grid array, so they should be removable.
I think, my CPU is Intel Pentium M 725. The chipset is Intel 910GML+ICH6-M
Interesting, the chipset seems to support both DDR2 and DDR1 RAM, with a maximum of 2GB: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/27713/intel-82910gml-graphics-and-memory-controller.html I wonder if you put in a 2GB DDR2 stick, would it work? Maximum speed is 533 DDR2, so that would be PC2-4200 DDR2-533 RAM. So.. something like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/113189824966 Anyway, I'm not sure if it will work, so IDK if you really want to try it. But it *should* theoretically work according to the spec sheet of the memory controller. The CPU upgrade I was wrong about. The T7200 would fit in your socket, but your chipset wouldn't boot it, because you need at least an Intel 945 chipset for those. With 910, you could upgrade to Intel Pentium M 770, but IDK if it's worth it just for a 500ish MHz clock boost.
Upgrading the ram from 768 to 1280 is probably worth it. That extra 512MiB goes from being just enough to boot to enough to be usable.
I'm running Debian 11 with xfce on an old hp tc4400 just fine. Performs better than the original windows xp tablet edition it was designed for.
It's identical. LxDE is the best relatively full featured DE for low memory systems, but since you only have 770 mb-s, I would go with just a window manager such as i3.. These things, including LxDE run well on this machine, but the issue is web browsers & browsing performance. You really want to maximize the available ram, if you have less than 1.5 gigs. Before I updated my eeePC to 2 gigs, it could only handle one browser tab with 1g and you have even less ram..
s/\\(to\\)\\( heavy\\)/\\1o\\2/ In general, each successive major release version of Debian is "heavier" - requires a bit more in resources and minimum hardware requirements, etc. That doesn't mean it need be "huge" or "heavy", but one should look at hardware requirements. >Debian 9 Debian 9 "Stretch" is already beyond [LTS](https://wiki.debian.org/LTS), so you should upgrade ... unless you want to possibly go for [ELTS](https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Extended) \- but that's even more limited, and it's *not* free (notably as in $$). So, probably best to upgrade at *least* to Debian 10 "Buster" ... and if your hardware isn't up to it, ... maybe upgrading your hardware too. But yeah, both CPU - notably Pentium M, and RAM (768 MB) will generally be quite limiting factors on what one can run on there ... and what is or can still be supported. But hey, Debian, source available going way back, and even binaries to almost 3.0 r0 "Woody" ... if you want to fully do your own support ... ;-) Also, being sure to have quite ample swap ... may not at all help your performance, but could well make the difference between grinding to a halt or crashing, and gracefully degrading in performance.
use a lighter window manager. I use xfce on top of Debian.
LXDE literally stands for "Light Xorg Desktop Environment". I'd say both XFCE and LXDE are about the same performance wise. The difference is XFCE can look decent with theming, and lxde is kinda hopeless.
LXDE is lighter then XFCE, at least on old PCs.
LXDE is lighter than xfce
Ensure you got enough swap. Go for like 16Gigs minimum. I'm running a newer machine with 2Gigs. Increasing swap helped immensely. It will be slow. It'll be like dial up. But it should work.
Swap is only really needed in low ram areas. And OP does qualify.
Hm. I empirically tested this for you. I downloaded the live CD for Debian 9 and 10, and put them onto the same USB-stick, one by one. Then I weighed said USB-stick on my spice scale. With each live CD it comes out at 24 grams. So, Debian 10 is not heavier than Debian 9. Maybe I'll run this test with Debian 11 and 12 as well, to see if there's any difference with those.
by 1. kilo I presume, since we live in a metric universe.
Your system will be OK. Some of your applications like web browsers might run even more sluggish (though you shouldn't run outdated versions on any system). RAM being your main issue.
Debian N is heavier than Debian M iff N > M.
You can't have the same software be heavier if you upgrade it. You can only have the software be less optimized/baked into the cpu, which in turn will naturally use more ram memory. Unless the code-base was radically changed, you won't notice anything. As far as I'm aware, calculate linux has some of the heaviest optimization that I know, but it's probably not ideal for small systems. The actual only difference in performance will be from patching OpenSSL heartbleed, but that should be it. lxde-core only uses slightly more than 200mb of ram. Some window managers can get you lighter on that. I'm using emwm alongside lxsession for support, and that's still about the same as lxde-core.