Mostly title. The Vista in question is a Acer Aspire M1610. Around 2007.
#Is LM18 MATE (32bit) the best LM that can run on a cheap Vista?
bright iris
errant garnet
it's no longer supported. the repos might not even work anymore.
I would recommend Debian 32 bit with lxqt
this is the official downloads area for 32-bit Debian net-installer. (you can choose your desktop through the install process) Note 32-bit is the i386 architecture.
you can write the ISO (with proper CD writing software as a disk image not a data CD to a blank CD
or you can use a program like Ventoy, Universal USB installer from pendrivelinux.com, to write the iso to a USB IF YOUR OLD COMPUTER SUPPORTS BOOTING FROM A USB DRIVE
restive anvil
Actually, that is a 64bit CPU. If you can, get that memory upgraded to 4 or 8GB (should be supported, but it might be hard/expensive to get 4GB DDR2 modules) and pick any distro you like. https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/33925/intel-pentium-processor-e2200-1m-cache-2-20-ghz-800-mhz-fsb.html
cobalt wind
LM18 is long EOL and so is the last 32bit version LM19.x If the device is connected to internet it is not wise to sun such unsupported OS with no updates even for web browsers. If the computer is for offline use only then even the EOL LM18 or 19 may be acceptable.
However as others point out if the CPU supports 64bit then just install the newest 64bit version, Mate or Xfce are both reasonably OK for low-spec HW. Limit will be RAM so upgrade to 4 or 8 GB if possible and enable zram (compressed swap inside ram).
Consider using alternative low-resource-hungry distros such as Devuan (systemd-less fork of Debian). While not so convenient to configure and make everything work Devuan is fantastically memory-saving and I can run a virtual machine with less than 1 GB RAM reasonably OK (actually, 768 MB RAM) and using such VM even with GUI for backup purposes of another computer.
restive anvil
If one is actually confronted with 32bit hardware, LMDE still has a current 32bit version.
cobalt wind
Debian and therefore also LMDE is one of the last mainstream Linux distros supporting i386 arch, however debian12.x is probably the last one and debian13 may not have i386 arch release anymore. However packages still probably continue to be built for this arch but no official iso anymore since debian13 is expected.
Arch
bright iris
<@802903706890010644> no. Just run LMDE on it
As before stated, it's actually only running 32bit Windows, but the computer may be 64bit. Still, LMDE isn't too hard to install and will give results.
wild hill
As before stated, it's actually only running 32bit Windows, but the computer may...
You can use CPU Z to check the instructions set and look for x86-64
Even mint xfce should work fine