How to switch an old Windows laptop to Linux | Hacker News Reader

How to switch an old Windows laptop to Linux

theverge.com

48 pointsURfejk30 comments

I realize that these articles are well intentioned, but I really wish the authors would take a more measured approach. My general advice prior to switching to Linux is: use open source applications under your existing operating system first and ensure the distribution works by testing it on the installation media prior to installing it.

The diving in head first approach has two big drawbacks. You are learning everything at once. That can be a painful process, particularly for people who know how to use a particular piece of software and have never generalized their skills. The second problem is that Linux (or particular Linux distributions) doesn't work well with some hardware. It is easier to shrug that off if you find that out prior to installing and spending hours troubleshooting.

Two other thoughts: choose Linux for what it is rather than choosing it for what it isn't. If you're switching to Linux because it is more performant on older hardware is good. Switching to Linux because your old operating system is slow is setting a mindset to hate Linux. Also keep in mind that switching to Linux is a personal decision and it's okay to say that Linux is not for you. No one is forcing the switch: not the old vendor you dislike and not the enthusiastic advocates.

I'm sorry if this rubs some people the wrong way, but I believe that most of these articles are setting people up to hate Linux rather than embrace it. That is saddening since it is a great operating system that makes life so much easier if you approach it with an open mind.

Not only those excellent points, but also why not just install Linux on the best hardware you have?

A bunch of people's experience of GNU/Linux is going to be based on running it on old hardware.

Select new hardware with freedom in mind: * no dodgy nVidia videocards * research the wireless chipset * research GPU passthrough capabilities of the CPU * install Windows (if you really need it) in a VM * profit

This is old but still good as an overview:

https://davidyat.es/2016/09/08/gpu-passthrough/

Better yet, install Linux on all of the hardware you have!

More seriously though, it is difficult for many people to application software. Switching from a commercial to an open source operating system takes that difficulty to the next level since it usually means changing almost all of the software that you use. (Unless, of course, you use open source applications under a commercial operating system.) I suspect a lot of people like to advocate Linux to those using older systems because those people have less to lose.

It is easy for existing users to promote installing Linux on the best computer because we are already familiar with its strengths, we know how to deal with its quirks, and we know that it fits our needs.

> I realize that these articles are well intentioned, but I really wish the authors would take a more measured approach. My general advice prior to switching to Linux is: use open source applications under your existing operating system first and ensure the distribution works by testing it on the installation media prior to installing it.

They do. From the article:

> Like any serious upgrade, start with making a complete backup of your Windows system. Installing Linux shouldn’t hurt your Windows setup in the least, but I don’t believe in taking chances.

> Two other thoughts: choose Linux for what it is rather than choosing it for what it isn't.

The article is targeted for people who are on Windows 7 and can't run/afford Windows 10 and stuck with an operating system that no longer gets any security updates. That's a given for the target audience from the outset, so we need to keep that context in mind when prioritizing.

Personal goto's: https://www.slax.org/ https://lubuntu.me/ # official ubuntu https://lubuntu.net/ # not ubuntu's :)

Also usually try these on to see how they work: https://reactos.org/ http://kolibrios.org/en/ # just brilliant! and the OS size is refreshing. just did we allow other OS's to get to GB's big. rah! https://www.haiku-os.org/ # ya, I greatly miss BeOS 5

Anyone having luck with this?

I got old asus EEE-pcs and some plastic macbook. I tried xubuntu on both and it's just not nice to use.

Maybe just vim is fine, but web browsing, installing telegram... Todays standards don't fare too well.

I'd love to see a comparison to the pinetab or even pinebook pro (which would have the benefit of a fresh battery).

Same here, I've installed fedora on 3 different laptops which were previously running w7 and for each of them everything was too slow for any real usage

Try Antix.

Sounds dedicated for this purpose, might give it a try :) thanks.

You are welcome.

GNOME? Wayland?

I installed Ubuntu Mate on a laptop with Core 2 Duo T2330 and 2GB of RAM. I swapped out the HD for an SSD and later added an extra 1GB of RAM.

My son used it a lot for his online classes with Microsoft Teams.

wow, teams surprises me. In a browser or with the native client?

With the native client.

If you don't start anything else, you need less than 1GB of RAM.

Have you tried different clients? I like Links on my old 2011 netbook. Falkon even let me watch YouTube videos with good framerates, which I didn't expect.

http://links.twibright.com/

https://www.falkon.org/

I've had success with Ubuntu, Arch, and Neverware on my old plastic Macbooks. All of them were pretty easy to install and I have no major when complaints using them

I like Zoris OS for low specced machines that I just want to install something and move on with life.

Edit: If you're fine with more manual work, Alpine/Void with sway is also fun.

Do you mean Zorin OS?

I do indeed. Thanks for the fix.

I use mine as a controller for my 3D printer (But anything powerful enough to send text through usb would do). The screen resolution make some software a real pain to use.

Debian Stable runs quite a bit lighter than any Ubuntu derivative in my experience. Though you do need a minimum of 1GB RAM plus swap space for web browsing workloads, so the original Asus 700 netbooks would not be useful.

I think with older hardware you have to be quite careful about how stuff is drawn to the screen. For example if the distro comes with a display compositor enabled by default, you might want to disable it or see if there is a faster alternative. You might want to avoid watching videos in the browser where it has to composit the video with everything else on the page in a relatively inefficient manner, and instead stick to watching videos with something like mpv where it can draw straight to the screen, and make sure to configure it with whichever video output seems to be fastest on your hardware, etc etc.

The show stopper here indeed are "modern" websites and electron apps, which telegram is iirc. They eat up all your ram quickly, and are are CPU hog, no matter how light weight the rest of your OS is. Linux doesn't magically make your hardware faster than it is.

But in other more traditional use cases, lubuntu can make quite a difference to Windows 10.

As another user pointed out, Debian is a bit lighter than Ubuntu. Also you could try out Alpine Linux which is even lighter without renouncing to the usual desktop, office apps, firefox etc. https://alpinelinux.org/about/

I tried bunsenlabs and antix now and can't see this working out :/

- without load the computer gets quite hot. I can smell hot (not burning) plastic; ACPI(?) claims 70c and the fan exit is slightly hot to the touch. Just doesn't feel good.

And fixable problems:

- On both I had to fix wifi first (EU bands where not included)

- on antix firefox crashes

- couldn't make wifi connect on bunsenlabs

I'm using old 32bit Compaq nx6110 notebook where left half of the keyboard doesn't work as a evening sofa youtube viewer. Of course in browser it is too slow so I have rss reader with channels I watch and I use youtube-dl to download new videos in the evening in 360p and then I watch it in mplayer. It is basically single purpose device as it cannot do anything else.

I recently tried to give new life to an old Pentium 166 MMX with 80MB of RAM.

It runs Windows 2000 and DSL. A couple of things make it hard to turn it into something useful: it needs a 6 pin din keyboard connector; USB is only available after boot, so I can't boot from a pendrive.

Boot from DVD. Could probably find a drive cheap, or even borrow one.

The 6-pin DIN connector is the same protocol as PS/2. It just needs a physical adapter.

I rather they would recommend cloudready (identical to chromeOS).

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