Recommend a version for my HP Mini

I have a cute little HP Mini “notebook” I bought at a garage sale for $15.00.
I put in a 500 gb drive and it is big enough to sync in everything from my shared personal folders.
For the last few years it has been running an older version of Fedora, with a light duty desktop. I figure it is time for an OS upgrade. Fedora no longer supports 32 bit systems. I was pointed toward Lubuntu.
I would be grateful if someone could recommend a version for me. It looks like the latest 32 bit version is a few releases back, and I’m not sure which one to grab. If a new 32 bit release is due soon, I can wait a little while.
If at all possible, I want to preserve the Mini’s drive’s partition structure. It has a separate /home partition.
It would also really help if I can run the Synology drive syncing package. On Fedora, it is based on “Neptune.”
Thank you,
Stefan

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Oh dear . . . I just read backwards through the blog, and saw that there will be no further 32 bit versions of Lubuntu after 18.04.5 LTS.

I’m going to leave this thread open until the end of the day, in case someone might suggest a Linux distro with ongoing 32 bit support. I’ll erase it then to reduce clutter.

Thank You

Did you scan the site?

Lubuntu 18.04 LTS was the last supported release of Lubuntu for i386 yes, but there was a later non-LTS release (so we released the more modern LXQt on i386 too :slight_smile:).

The Lubuntu team documented i386 here, and I wrote a bit about i386 when Lubuntu 18.04 LTS reached EOL for flavors, such as here but elsewhere too.

FYI: As I’ve written many times, I’m still an i386 user, and what I’d use (& do use) I’ve also said. My IBM Thinkpad t43 still has 18.04 on it, the others still Debian…

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Debian still supports i386. Choose LXDE during installation and it’s like old Lubuntu. Choose the 32-bit netinst ISO from here: Debian -- Getting Debian Or if you need a live ISO, there’s a ton of different live ISOs of Debian for i386 here: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/i386/iso-hybrid/ Choose whichever one has your desired desktop environment, and you should hopefully be good to go. And if you find you need non-free firmware, here’s an i386 installation image for that: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/current/i386/iso-cd/

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Thank you, everyone.

Shall I delete this, or let it stay in case someone has a similar question?

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I’d say let it stay. People use 32-bit systems, and Lubuntu seems like a lightweight choice, so having some guidance for when one discovers that Lubuntu no longer supports 32-bit systems seems quite helpful. And you’re in the Offtopic zone, so AFAIK, we’re fine having it here.

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I have good experiences with SparkyLinux LXQt (32 bit version). It is almost like Lubuntu. Very stable as well. Some say it is even better, since it has no snaps (yet). It is a direct derivative of Debian, with an active group of maintainers.

Debian 11.4 (32 bit) LXQt is very good too. In my experience Debian 11.4 (64 bit) still lags behind with supporting relative new hardware. Probably it is ‘perfect’ for you, considering the age of the mach ine you want to use. I would give Debian a first try, and, if necessary, after that SparkyLinux. The both are very alike, but I personally do not like the website of the SparkyLinux website (bloated with ads).

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You could just install an anblocker into your browser. Look in your browser’s add-on store for “Adblocker Ultimate”. It’s a “Recommended” extension in Firefox, and a “Featured” extension in Chrome.

Yeah, I know that. But really… a community website bloated with ads?

I’ll have to be honest. SparkyLinux attracted my attention when I was still actively using a tiny 64-bit laptop with 32-bit UEFI. Since I love LXQt and Lubuntu could not “deliver” on that old machine, Sparky was a good choice. I’ve moved on to a new laptop. Not state of the art, but powerful enough to not be hindred by snap loading of btop, thunderbird and firefox, and a few more apps.

I tried Debians LXQt on my new laptop, but there are problems with the wireless driver which the current kernel of Debian11.4 does not address yet. It has been solved in the kernel used by Lubuntu 22.04. So, for me two reasons to stay with Lubuntu (snaps perform ok-ok, and wireless works flawless).

I prefer a system without snaps, so I have a tendency to move away from the overall beautiful impression that Lubuntu gives me. Maybe I change my mind after Debian11 has catched up.

BTW you could have kept Debian 11 and installed the linux-image-686 backports package which currently gets a much newer Linux kernel 5.18.

Reference: Debian -- Package Search Results -- linux-image-686

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Yes, that is what I’ve read. I’ve tested the procedure in a VM, and it works :slight_smile: Does not seem to loose any functionality. I still don’t understand exactly why my rtl8821ce card is not properly supported in Debian 11.4, since its kernel is > 5.2 in which that particular card is first supported (if I am informed well). Well, it works, but looses connectivity all the time. Seems to be fixed with kernel 5.15.0 (which I am using now with Lubuntu 22.04.1). I also don’t understand why the card works flawless with SparkyLinux 6.4 which uses kernel 5.10.0. I’ve also tried some hobbyist version of the driver from github, which does not work well (in my case) on Debian 11.4 (even with blacklisting the kernel driver).

Anyway, I am a fan of free software, as in free beer. That does not imply that I like the hassle of loading binary-only free-firmware addtionally on a stick while installing Debian. So, I will see what I will do… stick with Lubuntu (which LXQt implementation I like most), or move back to Debian (or SparkyLinux) which offer a snap-free world.

Update
After I’d put Debian 11.4 on a stick, and installed the system on a USB attached hard-drive, I was able to boot my little laptop from it. With the default Debian 11.4 kernel, the internal rtl8821ce card did not work (as expected). After inserting a rt2800 stick, which is supported out of the box, I was able to install the 5.18 kernel. And yes, the onboard wireless card is recognized and works file. Now it is very tempting to migrate away from Lubuntu 22.04.1 to Debian 11.4 (with the 5.18 kernel), since LXQt on Debian is still version 0.16. That earlier version does not suffer the lxqt-powermanagement problem as does LXQt 0.17.

Or altenatively, migrate back to Lubuntu 20.04 would a good option for me too.

Update 2
Cautious as always, I’ve been doing some more testing on my temporary Debian 11.4 with upgraded 5.18 kernel. In fact, I’ve been testing in a VM. After apt-installing various packages which I usuallly would install on a pristine production-desktop, I ran into a version bump with several library-packages. After happily installing numerous software, it went wrong when I’d tried to build the Guest Additions for the VirtualBox environment. Not totally representative, since on real hardware this software would never be included, but anyway. I’m finished with this experiment. Seems I’m not moving to Debian 11’s LXQt with upgraded kernel on my new laptop (with the exotic wireless card that is not supported by the default kernel).

https://www.peppermintos.com

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