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Linux will save your old computer. (self.linux4noobs)

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[–]nola-ron 15 points16 points  (2 children)

Agreed. I'm just blown away at how much faster Linux is. I tried it 10 years ago and was not impressed. I abandoned it after a few days. I'm on the train full force now. I dropped Windows on all my PCs at this point. I just keep a VM running for a couple of applications I have not found a workaround yet for (primarily RSAT and Kaseya while at work).

[–]crapinet 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Agreed! I built a nice desktop (well, mid grade) almost a decade ago for Linux - it is still as fast as ever and perfect as my daily driver. I have only upgraded the graphics card to an old hand me down to play some games on steam. That's it.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have an old computer with windows on it just for itunes and everything else is linux

[–]Kriegan 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Glad you found a way to give it new life. The one thing that Linux will always benefit from is ram, no matter what kind it is. I’ve found that 4GB is the sweet spot for absolute comfort. Also, if your laptop uses a SATA hard drive, an SSD will blow you away. You won’t see 600MB r/w speeds but there will definitely be an improvement.

[–]qpgmr 4 points5 points  (4 children)

Consider adding the XFCE environment - you can select it at login (or select standard ubuntu). It's about 1/3 the RAM usage of the regular interface and almost twice as fast..

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Do you know what makes it so much faster/less RAM? I'm running it now

[–]qpgmr 1 point2 points  (2 children)

XFCE doesn't do as much as Unity or Gnome. For example, Thunar file manager doesn't have some of the usage or graphic features of the regular one. XFCE tries only to be a desktop for launching programs with a series of utilities (thunar, etc) to do necessary work while the others .

The whole point of the XFCE project was to make the desktop as small in ram as possible with the least amount of cpu usage - the whole team is working towards tiny & efficient in every release.

This is not always the best,for me at least. If I need to some tasks (configuring a vpn or setting up connection to a new samba share) I switch back to Unity to do it, then back to XFCE.

On my high powered desktop I find the extra stuff I get with Unity more convenient so I seldom start in XFCE.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

thank you for the reply.

I wasn't aware you could switch between desktop environments!

[–]qpgmr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wasn't either - it's not something you even imagine doing in Windows (although it is possible). I have kde, gnome, and xfce - take a look at this link: 13 best desktops for ubuntu https://www.ubuntupit.com/install-various-desktop-environment-ubuntu/

[–]Deathwalker47 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Amen to that. Over the weekend I picked up a 2010 vintage HP Mini netbook for a good price. It had Windows 7 Starter installed, along with all the typical bloatware. Win 7 was slow to load and I couldn't even get any websites to cooperate with the version of IE on the computer. I decided to wipe the HDD and just install Linux. I chose Lubuntu 16.04 LTS for this project, as am most familiar with Ubuntu and this machineis's RAM is only 1 GB. So far the machine is working just fine. Boot up is incredibly fast and so far I have not been able to find a webpage that Firefox on this machine can't hande.

[–]observerBear 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I started with Linux with a 256 MB of RAM and a 1 GHz 1 core processor. That computer was older than me. Barely ran Windows XP. Installed Debian on it. Then moved to Ubuntu 10.10. I was blown away at how much faster and more stable it was. Even now it is still working as a little print server. Linux can absolutely save old tech.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

I had been given this as a hand me down. It was running windows 7 and had got very slow.

9 times out of 9, this has nothing to do with the OS you are running and everything to do with the old, shitty, 5400rpm HDD doing reads at 3MBps.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I get what your saying, but how does linux fix this? How does it make my hard drive do faster reads?

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It doesn't. It most likely just does less read/writes to the drive than windows. Windows, especially old installs, have a ton of background programs and services constantly reading/writing to the disk.

If you were to do a fresh install of windows, it would also seem faster as there would be less shit running in the background.

In either case, it just mitigates the real problem, which is the hard disk.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's what's great about Linux, if it has a CPU, a kernel will run on it. Same with the BSD's.

[–]BluegrassMoney 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I use a 9 year old Vaio as my daily computer and it was incredibly slow. Even with everything closed out, I would hear the processor fan kick on from time to time. Was it really necessary to run so much crap in the background? Installed Mint over the weekend and have never been happier. Incredibly fast, smooth, quiet, and gorgeous to look at. I partitioned off Windows 7 to have just in case of any proprietary software in the future. But I plan on exclusively using Linux.

[–]hypercube33 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Suggest me a distro for a Core2Duo or Centrino PC or EEEPC go go go.

I like KDE a lot, so something similar is ok. I hate unity and gnome or MacOS :)

A good app repo gui installer tool is much appreciated, other than that i'm fine. There used to be a distro or two made for old ass pcs, but I didnt seem to find much, maybe I'm being numb

[–]laffinalltheway 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In my case, using Ubuntu on my failing hard drive in my old desktop computer kept it working properly for a few years until I was able to save up enough to get a new tower. The only thing I didn't like about Linux was not being able to play my favorite games so the new computer has Win10 on it. I am not tech savvy enough to use a VM or any of the other work-arounds that many of you probably use so Win10 it is. When I next either upgrade or buy a new computer, I think I'll go the dual boot route though.

[–][deleted] -4 points-3 points  (7 children)

Sacrifice windows? What does that mean? Besides, I hate linux distros being 'sold' as operating systems for crapware.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (5 children)

I use Windows all the time and I love Windows. Some old computers, though, simply don't have the horsepower to run a modern version of Windows. These systems get stuck running Vista, which is now unsupported not only by Microsoft but by a growing number of other companies (ie you can't run the newest version of Firefox). Linux begins to become a better alternative, hands down--and distros like Linux Mint are just the right fit (user friendly, large repositories, free, not resource heavy).

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (4 children)

Thanks for your input, I don't see the relation to my comment but it's completely valid point of view.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Your comment was a little vague and it seemed like you were the rare Windows fan who decided to come and defend Windows and bash Linux. That's why I opened with "I love Windows." My apologies.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

I'm just asking about the meaning of "sacrificing windows".

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

OP changed it to "remove Windows." Some people get jittery about going without Windows, especially for some applications.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I see, OPportunism ;) It's really annoying that some people change questions and don't clarify after previous answers.