I have an HP Stream 11 that I want to use for word processing and some light web browsing - I’m a writer and it’s a lightweight laptop to bring to the library or coffee shop to write on. Right now it’s got Windows and it’s unusable due to lack of hard drive space for updates. Someone had luck with Xubuntu, but it’s been a few years and it seems like Xubuntu is no longer trying to be a lightweight distro for use cases like this.
My experience with Linux is very limited - I played around with Peppermint Linux a bit back when it was a Lubuntu fork and I used Ubuntu on the lab computers in college. I can follow instructions to make a live boot and I can do an apt-get (so something Debian-based might be best for compatibility and familiarity) but I mostly have no idea what I’m doing, lol. I used to do DOS gaming as a kid so having to do the occasional thing via command line isn’t going to scare me off but I’m not going to pretend to have knowledge I don’t. I’m probably going to go with Mint on my gaming laptop next year but I suspect it’s not the best choice for my blue bezeled potato (although I might try it anyway).
If you have 4 MB of RAM or less, I would recommend 32 bit regardless of CPU.
The machine he linked to has 2 GB of RAM. A 64 bit distro will eat half of it getting to an empty desktop and a couple browser tabs will eat the rest.
Anything with more RAM, I completely agree with you.
I mean, I feel that the 4mb (I assume 4gb) of ram needs a 32 bit os claim is downright untrue.
I have a Thinkpad X301 that’s been upgraded to 4gb of ram, and I run Debian 12 stable, 64bit, and performance, even on a laptop from 2008, like mine, as long as I used pale moon for browsing, was stellar. I use xfce on that laptop.