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I am looking for a Linux OS that will support my older hardware in my laptop (from 2014). I would like to have a simple, not bloated desktop, but also not too ancient-looking ;)

edit: By "hardware" I mainly mean wifi and webcam - I do expect Linux to run on a ten-year-old cpu.

Here's some more information: The laptop is an HP pro Book, in case that matters. Linux really caught me when I started to use ElementaryOS something like 15 years ago. I have been happy with ElementaryOS, but the recent versions don't seem to support my hardware. At least, it didn't work anymore after an update. So I want to move away from this. (It also doesn't support my USB camera on my computer)

Last time I used Ubuntu it brought a lot of bloatware like Amazon search and strange stuff. Also I don't know how well Ubuntu supports old hardware.

Maybe Debian with a modern desktop might be a solution for me?

Or does this not depend on the distro, but more on something else (like the kernel)?

Edit: Using a live version of Ubuntu was a good idea. I booted from it and got greeted with a "missing firmware" message that seems common (many questions on that on the internet). So I've got a starting point although I haven't yet fixed that.

My webcam worked out of the box :):) yeah!

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    Try it. Ubuntu offers a "Try Ubuntu" mode. Download Ubuntu, boot with the Shift key held down, and see what works. Commented Mar 24 at 12:30
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    Try 24.04 LTS versions. ubuntu.com/download/flavours Light weight flavors: Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Budgie Flavors of Ubuntu only come with three years of supported life (five years applies to Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server but not flavors) I like Kubuntu which is more mid-weight. Underlying kernel & drivers in flavors are same as Ubuntu. Just different gui and default packages. Commented Mar 24 at 13:50
  • Using the try-out-mode and LTS versions for sure is a good idea. However, I don't have much trust in the hardware compatibility because ElementaryOS is based on Ubuntu. Thus if it doesn't work there, why should it work with "original" Ubuntu? Commented Mar 24 at 15:41
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    @anjuta elementary OS is a smaller-userbase distro with relatively heavy modifications relative to Ubunut. Whatever fails on that might also, or might not, fail on Ubuntu. You'd need to actually look at what goes wrong before making such statements. Commented Mar 24 at 18:35
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    I run Xubuntu 24.04 on my HP laptop (circa 2009) with few issues (although Zoom locks it up solid.) I'm with everyone else, download a live version and try it out, or even get a secod HDD and try it that way. Commented Mar 24 at 19:09

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11 years old isn't that ancient for most common Linux distros. If it didn't work after an update, most likely something simply broke and you might try a clean reinstall.

If it really, seriously doesn't work. As in you're getting illegal instruction exceptions thrown or lots of incompatible driver errors in dmesg... Well, that can happen if you have an unusual processor. I had a similar circumstance some years ago with a system that used a VIA C3 processor. Perfectly good processor, but they decided to implement the 3dnow! instruction when every other designer went with cmov. So anything compiled for generic 586 on it would crash.

If you have something like that going on, then you'll be wanting to look for a "source based" distro. Where everything gets compiled according to your specifications.
Probably the best desktop distro for that is Gentoo or one of its derivatives.
I don't know if Source-Mage is still around, but it might have a modern incarnation.

Most of the rest are for IOT devices and are pretty terrible about being up to date and actually letting you run desktop applications.

For Binary distros, there's usually a path to compile things yourself, so if it's just a few things that need custom settings you might be able to hack it a bit.

Arch is usable for it with some effort as they at least make custom compiling things relatively easy, but they're primarily binary-based, so it'll be a lot of extra effort.

Stay away from Debian-based stuff unless you enjoy manually walking source compile dependency trees... It's technically possible, but they don't make it easy.

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  • Thanks for your answer. I hope I won't have to go that deep into Linux to compile my own OS. The processor is an Intel i5 iirc, so pretty common. Commented Mar 28 at 18:58
  • @anjuta Yeah... Pretty much any modern linux distro should run on anything newer than a first gen i5... So unless your processor is damaged or you have something weird with your motherboard it should work. Webcams that ever worked will probably still work. Wifi is also pretty good about continuing to work. So unless you have something old and weird enough that support has been dropped... I'd say just boot it up on a live image and look up any error messages you get to see if there's an easy fix. Commented Mar 31 at 17:43
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I have a laptop with BIOS 2012 with Xubuntu 22.04.5 installed on it. Your 2014 laptop should not have any issues running Xubuntu which does not demand heavy resources.

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  • Thank you for your answer. I clarified my question. I was not in doubt regarding cpu/RAM, but regarding webcam and wifi device. Commented Mar 28 at 18:54
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I just set up a business laptop from that era for giving it away to a friend.

All the modern Linux distros I tried (Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, Cinnamon edition; Fedora 41; debian stable; AlmaLinux 9 XFCE spin) work just fine.

Don't worry; just try. If something about Ubuntu bothers you (and there were a lot of things that bothered me; I hadn't worked on Ubuntu for > 15 years), just use a different "large" distro. Just don't go for the small "niche" ones. "Rejecting" some specific piece of modern software infrastructure, for example, does not make your laptop run faster, just the likelihood that someone fixes the problems with your specific system lower; that's just my two cents. ("If in doubt, one of the big distros." is IMHO pretty solid advice, because you can always more easily find competent help when you're using something that a million developers use rather than a biased pick of a couple dozen.)

Even if it doesn't work, setting up one of these takes less than 10 minutes of work (not counting waiting for copying of files, which will mostly depend on the speed of your laptop's storage).

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  • You're totally right about the number of potential helpers (that is difficult with eOS) and the quick setup. What do you mean by '"Rejecting" some specific piece of modern software infrastructure'? Commented Mar 28 at 18:56

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