Distro recommendations for a Dell 3120?

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I have no experience with Chromebooks. I recently ordered a used Dell 3120 for around $40. I realize it only has 16gb of disk space. What lightweight distro would you recommend? Would it be recommended to buy an SD card and boot from that?

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Id never recommend booting from an sd card (having done so myself). That causes quite a bit of heat and, before you know it, a dead sd card

If this is for basic web browsing/maybe a little development, I’d personally recommend alpine. Its a little different from most distros (it uses musl instead of glibc) which also helps with speed and storage size

If you wanted a glibc distro, your best bet is probably plain debian. By this point most distros are just forks of debian/ubuntu (ubuntu being a fork of debian) so the lightest thing is to just use the original. Or (if youre up to installing it) arch should work anywhere

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If you still need help then here.if you try boot from sd card then you done because you can’t use sd card to install os because sd has low write and read speed this means you brick your sd card in any way.here are some os i recommend to install on your laptop…

1. Puppy Linux

  • Size: ~300 MB
  • RAM: Runs on as little as 300 MB of RAM.
  • Description: Designed to be lightweight and run entirely from RAM, Puppy Linux is a great option for older machines. It also has a user-friendly interface and comes with essential applications pre-installed.

2. Lubuntu

  • Size: ~1.5 GB
  • RAM: 512 MB – 1 GB of RAM.
  • Description: Lubuntu is a variant of Ubuntu using the LXQt desktop environment, which is very lightweight. It’s designed to use less system resources while maintaining usability.

3. Tiny Core Linux

  • Size: ~16 MB (CorePlus version ~160 MB)
  • RAM: 64 MB minimum.
  • Description: One of the smallest Linux distros, Tiny Core Linux is extremely lightweight. It boots fast and runs efficiently on very limited hardware, though it requires manual configuration.

4. Bodhi Linux

  • Size: ~740 MB
  • RAM: 512 MB minimum.
  • Description: Bodhi Linux is based on Ubuntu but uses the lightweight Moksha desktop environment. It strikes a balance between a small footprint and a polished desktop experience.

5. AntiX

  • Size: ~700 MB
  • RAM: 256 MB minimum.
  • Description: AntiX is a Debian-based distro aimed at low-powered machines. It’s systemd-free and comes with several lightweight window managers like IceWM or Fluxbox.

6. SLAX

  • Size: ~300 MB
  • RAM: 512 MB minimum.
  • Description: SLAX is a modular, small Linux distribution that can run from a USB stick or other portable media. It’s designed for ease of use and portability.

7. ArchBang

  • Size: ~600 MB
  • RAM: 256 MB minimum.
  • Description: ArchBang is based on Arch Linux but comes pre-configured with Openbox. It provides the simplicity of Arch with a lightweight environment out of the box. *

If you need more space use extenal hard drive to install and run from it. or i have another solution for you.

keep your internal hard drive and install fyde os to it. and get your extenal hard drive install linux on that. so you keep two os at once.

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