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
    121·
    2 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
        2·
        11 hours 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.