How Installing Arch Linux Brought My Old Laptop Back to Life

As a software developer, I rely on having a capable and reliable computer to do my work. But like many people, I also have an old laptop lying around that has been collecting dust for years because it‘s too slow and underpowered to keep up with the demands of modern applications. Or at least that‘s what I thought until I discovered the power of Arch Linux.

The Laptop

The machine in question is a 2010 Dell Inspiron 1525 with the following specs:

Intel Pentium Dual-Core T2390 @ 1.86 GHz
3 GB DDR2 RAM
250 GB HDD
15.4" display with 1280×800 resolution

By today‘s standards, this laptop is a dinosaur. It originally came with Windows Vista, which was later upgraded to Windows 7. But in recent years, even performing basic tasks like web browsing or word processing felt painfully slow. Booting up took over 2 minutes, and opening a single tab in Chrome caused the fan to spin up loudly as it struggled with the load. I had essentially given up on using it for anything other than the occasional file transfer.

Why Arch Linux?

I had dabbled with Linux on and off over the years, but my knowledge was limited to more beginner-friendly distros like Ubuntu and Mint. I vaguely knew about Arch‘s reputation as a more "advanced" distro that gives the user full control over their system, but assumed it would be too overwhelming for a relative Linux novice like myself.

However, the more I read about Arch, the more I realized it was exactly what I needed to revive my old laptop:

Minimalism – Arch follows a "Keep It Simple, Stupid" (KISS) philosophy and only includes the bare essentials, so you‘re not wasting resources on unnecessary bloat.
Customization – With Arch, you build your system up from scratch, choosing every component to suit your needs and preferences. This is in contrast to other distros which make many of those choices for you.
Rolling Release – Arch provides a rolling release model, meaning you get access to the latest software as soon as it‘s released upstream, without having to wait for the next major distro release.
Excellent Documentation – The Arch Wiki is renowned as one of the best sources of Linux documentation on the web, covering everything from installation to the nitty gritty details of system configuration.

In short, Arch seemed like it would provide the leanest, most optimized system for my limited hardware while also giving me total control and access to the latest software. Plus, as a developer, I liked the idea of really getting my hands dirty and learning about the guts of a Linux system.

The Installation Process

I won‘t lie, installing Arch was more involved than any other distro I had tried before. The installation process is entirely command-line based and requires a decent understanding of partitioning, file systems, and other low-level concepts. Luckily, the Arch Installation Guide held my hand through the whole process.

Here‘s a high-level breakdown of the steps I followed:

Choosing a Desktop Environment

One of the benefits of building an Arch system from scratch is having total control over your choice of desktop environment or window manager. You‘re not limited to the defaults provided by other distros. As a developer coming from Ubuntu, I was used to the GNOME desktop, so that‘s what I went with initially. However, in the interest of minimizing resource usage, I also experimented with some lighter weight options.

Here are a few recommendations based on my experience:

GNOME – A full-featured and user-friendly desktop environment, but can be a bit resource heavy on older hardware.
Xfce – A lightweight desktop environment that still provides a familiar and intuitive interface.
LXDE – An ultra-lightweight desktop environment that‘s ideal for old or low-powered machines.
i3wm – A minimalist tiling window manager that‘s popular among developers and power users.

In the end, I settled on Xfce as a nice balance between features and resource usage. It provides a conventional desktop metaphor that I‘m used to as a Windows and Ubuntu user, but consumes a fraction of the resources of GNOME.

Performance Improvements

So, how did Arch perform on my old Inspiron compared to Windows and other Linux distros? In a word: spectacularly.

Boot times decreased dramatically, from over 2 minutes on Windows to under 30 seconds with Arch and Xfce. Memory usage at idle went from over 50% to around 10%. I could open multiple tabs in Firefox without the fan going into overdrive. Suddenly, this ancient laptop felt downright snappy!

Here are some concrete benchmarks I collected using the Phoronix Test Suite:

Benchmark	Windows 7	Ubuntu 20.04	Arch Linux
Boot Time (seconds)	135	48	27
RAM Usage at Idle (MB)	1200	700	300
Firefox Startup Time (ms)	2500	1200	750
Compile Time (seconds)*	1620	960	720

*Compiling the Linux kernel 5.10 with default configuration

As you can see, Arch blows Windows out of the water in every category, and even shows significant improvements over Ubuntu. This is especially apparent in resource-intensive tasks like compiling software, where Arch‘s minimalism and lack of background processes really shines.

Package Management

Another area where Arch excels compared to other distros is package management. Arch uses a package manager called pacman (no, not that Pacman) to install, update, and remove software packages. Pacman is fast, simple, and powerful, pulling packages from the official Arch repositories which are constantly updated.

But the real magic of Arch‘s package management lies in the Arch User Repository, or AUR. The AUR is a community-driven repository that contains user-submitted package scripts for software not included in the official repositories. This means that even if a program you need isn‘t officially packaged for Arch, chances are someone has created an AUR package for it.

Installing packages from the AUR does require a bit more manual work than from the official repos, since you need to download and build from the package script. But there are helper tools available like yay that streamline the process. As a developer, I appreciate having access to such a wide range of open source software, even if it‘s not officially supported.

Here‘s an example of installing Visual Studio Code from the AUR using yay:

yay -S visual-studio-code-bin

Contrast this with Ubuntu, where I would need to manually download the .deb file from Microsoft‘s website and install it using dpkg. The AUR makes it easy to install and manage even proprietary or niche software without having to worry about dependencies or updates.

Security Considerations

Of course, with great power comes great responsibility. Installing Arch means taking on a lot more responsibility for system security and maintenance compared to other more hand-holding distros.

Some key security considerations for an Arch system:

Keep your system up to date by regularly running pacman -Syu to pull in the latest security patches and bug fixes.
Be cautious when installing packages from the AUR. Always check the package script and PKGBUILD for anything suspicious before building and installing.
Use strong passwords and consider implementing full disk encryption during installation.
Enable a firewall using iptables or ufw to restrict incoming network traffic.
Regularly audit installed packages and remove any that are no longer needed to reduce attack surface.

As a developer, I also appreciate Arch‘s adherence to upstream software sources and vanilla configurations which avoids many of the security pitfalls that come with distros that heavily patch or modify packages. By staying as close to upstream as possible, Arch reduces the risk of introducing distro-specific vulnerabilities.

Conclusion

In the end, installing Arch Linux gave my old Dell laptop a new lease on life. It went from being a sluggish paperweight to a perfectly serviceable machine for web browsing, document editing, and even some light development work. And perhaps more importantly, it gave me a much deeper understanding of and appreciation for the internals of a Linux system.

Arch isn‘t for everyone, and I wouldn‘t necessarily recommend it as a daily driver for non-technical users. It requires a significant time investment to get set up and a willingness to get your hands dirty when things inevitably break. But for power users and developers who want total control over their system and access to the latest software, Arch is hard to beat.

This experience has also made me rethink the culture of disposability in consumer technology. There‘s so much perfectly good hardware out there being discarded simply because it can‘t keep up with the bloated software we‘re trying to run on it. Installing a lightweight Linux distro like Arch is a great way to extend the life of older devices and reduce e-waste.

As we become increasingly conscious of the environmental impact of our technology choices, I believe we‘ll see more and more people turning to solutions like Arch to keep their devices running longer. And with initiatives like the right to repair gaining steam, I‘m hopeful that we can shift towards a tech ecosystem that values longevity and sustainability over planned obsolescence.

So if you have an old laptop gathering dust in the closet, I encourage you to give Arch a spin. It may just surprise you with what it‘s still capable of. And at the very least, you‘ll come away with a better understanding of and appreciation for the power of open source software.

How Installing Arch Linux Brought My Old Laptop Back to Life - Bomberbot (2024)