[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
Dear Neil, > My wife has an old laptop, over seven years now, and says it is getting a > bit slow. (Not an SSD). I agree it is time for an upgrade. She has been > looking around the internet and has come across chromebooks. I have told her > that it would not be a good idea to go in for one of those. Too slow for a > start. > > Did I do the right thing? Why not post again here with the specifications of the laptop? The Neofetch package can be useful in this regard. I'm writing this on Fedora, on a 12-year old Intel Core Duo 8400 PC, with 4GB of memory and, as in your case, a spinning-disc hard drive. And, quite honestly, it works beautifully. Of course there are things that it can't do - Blender has dropped support for its GPU (so no 3D rendering), and it struggles a bit on Youtube's 1080p resolution. However, in terms of general usage it's more than fast enough. Also, I got Lubuntu running on an Eee PC netbook with just 1GB of memory with LXDE (Light X Desktop Environment) and that too was similarly speedy - just replace 'struggles with 1080p resolution' with 'struggles with 720p resolution'. I don't think the screen was able to display 1080p anyway! Thus, it's nice to have new/powerful hardware but there are lots of options to revitalise slower computers. Notwithstanding that I don't know the precise specifications of the laptop, I'm sure there are many here (myself included) who would happily recommend lighter, more efficient software as an alternative to buying new hardware. Laptops are very expensive at the moment with the demand for video calling: I helped my Grandmother buy a laptop in February which was £250; after lockdown started it jumped up to £400! Do tell me if you'd like such suggestions for 'lightweight' software. Best wishes, Sebastian Freenode: 'seabass' PS. That Eee PC was before systemd and snaps were introduced to Ubuntu - 1GB of memory is certainly a little tight these days. LXDE was great though, and it has since been deprecated in favour of LXQT, which looks much the same but is made with different code. Still very light though! PPS. Also, attempting to install Linux Mint on that netbook was the first and only time I have seen a 'kernel panic'. Linux is very reliable! :) -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG https://mailman.dcglug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq