Aging netbook OS choice?

[Digipack0]

Hi all,

I have a old-ish netbook that has the old beginner XP on it that I want to pass down to the eldest for school work etc and give it new life.

Would Ubuntu or Chrome OS be a good choice for something lightweight?

[MARSTG]

Chrome OS could be problematic with drivers, I would say more Ubuntu or Linux Mint.

[enaberif]

Is Chrome OS even publicly available?

I would go with Linux Mint

[Mr. Friendly]

not Ubuntu?

[Lysrin]

Mint is less demanding on older/lower performing PC hardware. Plus you don't have to get into the Unity Launcher. I like the Cinnamon launcher personally and switch my Ubuntu installs to use it (have to use Ubuntu at work for some things but don't have to stick with Unity). If you go Mint it is just nice and clean in that sense overall I think.

[djbrad]

My wife has that old and still alive circa 2007/2008 compaq laptop with SINGLE core celeron 2.1ghz in it, 2GB RAM.

When she complained that windows 7 was always slow and stuck at 100% cpu downloading updates, I installed LinuxMint 18.x XFCE 64 bit.

Even with only 2GB ram, it is very quick and does everything she needs (web surfing, facebook, youtube, etc).

Or you could try any other xfce or lxde distribution, there's a lot of choice.