Which distro should I use on an IBM ThinkPad T41 for speed?

Question

I am planning to install Ubuntu on my old laptop - IBM ThinkPad T41. The laptop has 1 GB RAM, 50 GB hard disk, 1.6-GHz Pentium M processor and 32MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 graphics card. I would prefer to install and run Ubuntu with Unity 2D on this system, but would also want my system to be fast and responsive.

My question is this: will the Unity 2D interface run fast on this system, or should I install Xubuntu or Lubuntu instead?

Thanks.

Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! Question like this that are open ended should be posted in the Ubuntu Forums, please see the FAQ for what is ontopic here, thanks! You might be interested in reading through this as well http://askubuntu.com/questions/65083/what-different-des-and-shells-are-available — jrg, Mar 15 '12 at 14:01

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 14 '12 at 16:16

I had this same Thinkpad model before switching to W510. I ran Unity 2D from 11.10 and didn't experience dramatic lags and graphical performance issues. Metacity is very efficient and doesn't consume much resources.
Because it's very easy to switch to Unity at login time I recall that Unity was a bit slow and Compiz consumed a lot of memory compared to total amount I had.

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 14 '12 at 16:15

2

Ubuntu Unity 2D should work fine on that system. Nothing fancy is needed to run 2D and yours is just fine.

answered Mar 14 '12 at 16:15

jaorizabal

3,748

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited May 10 '15 at 15:37

2

Don't you forget of the little sister of ubuntu: Lubuntu!

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Lubuntu 11.10 requires a minimum of 128 MB of RAM to run and 256 MB of RAM to install with the graphic installer. The recommended minimum RAM to run a live CD session is 384 MB.

Lubuntu 15.04 requires for advanced internet services like Google+, Youtube, Google Docs and Facebook at least 1 GB RAM

edited May 10 '15 at 15:37

rubo77

32,486

answered Mar 14 '12 at 16:38

maniat1k

8,130

Tachyons · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-23T14:11:18.347

1

You can use unity 2D in the given configuration.But for faster experience lxde is the better choice

Installation

      sudo apt-get install lxde

Alternatively you can chose Lubuntu (ubuntu derivative with lxde de)

edited Mar 23 '12 at 14:11

answered Mar 14 '12 at 16:36

Tachyons

17,281

Which distro should I use on an IBM ThinkPad T41 for speed?

4 Answers4