SkyLords on Nostr: Old Exper Netbook Experiment: antiX vs Puppy vs Bodhi A small continuation of my old ...

Old Exper Netbook Experiment: antiX vs Puppy vs Bodhi

A small continuation of my old Exper netbook experiment.

The machine has an Intel Atom N455 at 1.66 GHz, 1 core / 2 threads and only 2 GB RAM.

I wanted to find the most suitable lightweight Linux distribution for this old hardware, so I tested antiX, Puppy Linux and Bodhi one after another from USB on the same netbook.

I tried to use them in roughly the same way and pushed each system a little to see how they behaved under the same limited hardware.




**antiX**
Old Exper Netbook Experiment: antiX vs Puppy vs Bodhi A small continuation of my old Exper netbook experiment. The machine has an Intel Atom N455 at 1.66 GHz, 1 core / 2 threads and only 2 GB RAM. I wanted to find the most suitable lightweight Linux distribution for this old hardware, so I tested antiX, Puppy Linux and Bodhi one after another from USB on the same netbook. I tried to use them in roughly the same way and pushed each system a little to see how they behaved under the same limited hardware.





**Puppy Linux (TrixiePup64 Retro)**
Next I tried Puppy. The first surprise was RAM usage. While idle, it was already using around 1.2 GB out of the available 2 GB. At that point Puppy was already in a difficult position for me, but I continued testing anyway. When I started pushing the system harder, things went downhill quickly. Before Chromium could properly open, I ended up with a black screen. I restarted and tried again, thinking it might have been a one time error, but the system still struggled under load. Chromium also seemed to put noticeably more pressure on the CPU. So Puppy was eliminated.





**Bodhi**
Bodhi surprised me the most. At idle, it actually used less RAM than antiX. That immediately made me think I should not dismiss it too quickly. I connected to the internet, opened the browser and started adding tabs. Even then, RAM usage still looked very good. Then I did the same test I had done with the others and opened 6 different websites in 6 tabs. From a pure RAM usage point of view, Bodhi looked excellent. But RAM was not the only thing I cared about. Usability mattered more. With antiX, opening the same tabs did not create noticeable lag. With Bodhi, lag started after around the third tab and the fan began spinning much faster. I do not expect miracles from this netbook. I was simply trying to find the operating system that suited it best. And that is where antiX won.

**Result**
Bodhi surprised me the most. At idle, it actually used less RAM than antiX. That immediately made me think I should not dismiss it too quickly. I connected to the internet, opened the browser and started adding tabs. Even then, RAM usage still looked very good. Then I did the same test I had done with the others and opened 6 different websites in 6 tabs. Stacker News was one of them too. 😄 From a pure RAM usage point of view, Bodhi looked excellent. But RAM was not the only thing I cared about. Usability mattered more. With antiX, opening the same tabs did not create noticeable lag. With Bodhi, lag started after around the third tab and the fan began spinning much faster. I do not expect miracles from this netbook. I was simply trying to find the operating system that suited it best. And that is where antiX won.

Have any of you used antiX, Puppy or Bodhi on old hardware?

What worked best for you?

#linux #antix #puppylinux #bodhi #oldhardware #netbook #retrocomputing #buildinpublic