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Microsoft pushed 16GB RAM as must-have for Windows 11 for years, now sells an 8GB Surface Laptop for $1,299
(www.windowslatest.com)
this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
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Meanwhile, my old Linux laptop is chugging along quite happily with 2GB.
That's actually...impressive
What do you typically use it for though? My PC is central to the media I consume, the games I play and as a creative outlet. I don't think I'd be able to use most of the tools I enjoy with such little memory.
It's not my main workstation or gaming PC, which is probably why 2GB is plenty comfortable enough.
Light web browsing, printing stuff, word processing, running presentations at my writer's group, occasionally running a Game Boy emulator or playing a video ... never anything particularly demanding. I only use it when I need the portability, because otherwise why would I want to do things hunched over a tiny laptop?
All very light uses, sure ... but for that kind of stuff, it does great. Feels responsive and snappy pretty much all the time, despite being a shitty old Chromebook from 2016.
What Distro are you using? Because I'm looking for a light weight distro that I can install on cheap laptops. I assume with 2gb it must be fairly light.
Most distros are fairly light weight by default, it’s the desktop environment that will be the deciding factor. Someone else said they were running Debian with XFCE on a 2 gig system.
There are other lightweight desktops but XFCE is quite good.
But you might not even need that unless it’s a really old or really low spec laptop. I’ve got a 2012 MacBook Pro with 4 gigs of ram running Arch with KDE plasma and it’s quite snappy. Although, it did run out of memory once when I tried compiling a browser from the AUR.
Thanks for all the info! I'll have a look into xfce.
Gallium OS with XFCE.
I'd only recommend it for chromebooks specifically, though.
Which distro/setup do you use? I tried loads on my old 4GB macbook air and they were all dog-slow unfortunately.
Gallium OS (now defunct, sadly), with a somewhat outdated version of XFCE.
I know, I know. It would be better if I was using a more updated Linux version, and some of the stuff on it is horrifyingly outdated. (I forget what kernel it's on, but the version number starts with a 4.) But while Gallium OS is no longer maintained and updated, I still want to use it for the old Chromebook because it has a custom-altered kernel that plays especially nice with Chromebook hardware. It runs very efficiently (17+ hours of battery life), and all the weird Chromebook hardware quirks work flawlessly out of the box. So far, it hasn't caused me any issues*, and I'll keep using it like this as long as it remains issue-free.
*The one issue I've had from the outdated OS is that I haven't been able to install FadeIn for Linux. It requires a more recent kernel version than Gallium ships with, and I can't update Gallium's kernel without losing the unique features that make it run well on Chromebook hardware.
If anybody ever makes a successor to Gallium OS optimized for Chromebook hardware but using modern, updated Linux packages, I'd love to know about it!
Judging from my experience here, I'd recommend looking into it and seeing if you can find any distros that are especially tailored to old Apple hardware. If such a thing exists, I bet you'll get much better results with it.
Thank you for taking the time for such a detailed response. My MacBook got a frustrated toss in to a skip unfortunately, as it had a duff battery and the hinges were loose. I was asking for my next (unavoidable) project, as low spec hardware always seems to come along and find me!
I think FydeOS is like Gallium: https://fydeos.io/
But I see Gallium was built on Xubuntu, so presumably Xubuntu should also just work for you.
Otherwise, Peppermint and Puppy Linux are message for older low ram devices as well, and lastly, if you haven't already, you might want to look into mrchromebox:
https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/
Alternatives like that are what I'd probably go to if I had no other choice and needed an updated system, sure.
But none of those have the chromebook-specific kernel tweaks that make Gallium work so well on Chromebooks. In any other distro, I'd probably have issues with the weird Chromebook-specific buttons not working, the weird chromebook-specific touchpad not working, perhaps some other hardware (like audio) not working, and I'd lose the optimizations that make it run quick and efficient on the quirky hardware.
I mean, Fyde was originally meant for Chromebooks, and has support for Intel devices back to 2010 I think.
It sounds like you're talking about drivers?
Otherwise, if you do want essentially an updated Gallium, there's this guide which is on running Xubuntu (again, what Gallium used as it's base) on old Chromebook:
https://www.quantulum.co.uk/blog/xubuntu-on-a-chromebook/
It shows how to tweak things as needed.
I could maybe find more specific details if I knew what specific Chromebook you had.
Mr.Chromebox also makes it so you can run other distros by installing the firmware needed for your Chromebook so you shouldn't have issues with any buttons etc. Which should be a replacement for the custom kernel tweaks Gallium did manually. I don't know how far back they go though, since you mentioned it's a 2gb ram machine.
Same here. My Debian xfce consumes around 2GB ..I don't do anything fancy, most work stuff, email and web browsing.
Heh... My old laptops usage rarely creeps above 1GB. With only 2GB available, I'd be in trouble if it was using all 2GB.