I pieced together this old laptop: Compaq 610. Celeron dual core 1.86ghz, 2gb ddr2, and a 40 gig hard drive I pulled from my broken PS3 since the reason I got it is that the hard-drive went bad and the previous owner just told me to keep it after I informed her. I'm starting up school again, so I plan to take it to class. Currently running Ubuntu 12.10 because I just so happened to have it on an old flash drive, but it runs a bit slow (could very well be the fact that I have a ~7 year old PS3 hard drive in it). I was wondering what an ideal distro would be to keep it snappy. All I need is the ability to browse, view videos, read pdf's, and have a document writer. I'm running Mint on my TV's computer, but I feel that would be on the slow side as well. I'd prefer something with a standard desktop feel like Ubuntu or Mint, but I have a good amount of confidence in myself to get used to any distro fairly quickly.
Oh boy, you have a lot of choices. Its mainly preference, but you're mainly going to need to change the kind of DE you're using. This can be done in the OS you already have, but I recommend switching distributions for a smoother transition.
LXDE and XFCE are supposedly snappy, but you could go even further and just try to get a window manager like Awesome to run on its own instead.
Afaik the best distro for just messing around with different DE's and window managers is Arch Linux, given its skeletal install and binary distribution, but if you're familiar with Ubuntu I'd recommend something like Xbuntu, which is basically the same distribution but with XFCE instead of Unity/Mutter/Gnome.
I use Arch and Awesome on all of my crappy machines.
I think I'll give xbuntu a try in the morning and go from there. Maybe I can snag some of our tech ram and an HDD out for recycle at work as well...
Don't use Xubuntu. Lubuntu is the same concept, but it is officially supported by Canonical (people who made Ubuntu). It also uses even less resources and is more up to date.
Take Evilcop's advice over mine. I don't actually know much of anything about Ubuntu or its derivatives. I use Arch on everything I own and have been for several years.
So yeah try Lubuntu.
ZorinOS served me quite well on low-end systems.
[url]http://zorin-os.com/[/url]
[QUOTE=Drumdevil;43121929]ZorinOS served me quite well on low-end systems.
[url]http://zorin-os.com/[/url][/QUOTE]
Zorin-OS has always seemed pretty silly to me. It's just an Aero-like theme over Ubuntu with Wine included. Lubuntu's desktop environment is close enough to Windows where it wouldn't be too jarring.
Honestly, Lubuntu is the best distro for low end that doesn't give up on functionality and ease of use for it. Distros like Arch use even less resources, but you're going to have a very tough time adapting to it. Not so with Lubuntu.
Been using Lubuntu for the last couple hours on it, far snappier than Ubuntu. Just had to go get Libreoffice and Chromium and it was all good. Thanks all!
[QUOTE=Levelog;43128287]Been using Lubuntu for the last couple hours on it, far snappier than Ubuntu. Just had to go get Libreoffice and Chromium and it was all good. Thanks all![/QUOTE]
If you happen to need the Ubuntu Software Center instead of the dedicated Lubuntu one, just search for "software center" in the synaptics package manager. Good luck!
[QUOTE=Dr. Evilcop;43130281]If you happen to need the Ubuntu Software Center instead of the dedicated Lubuntu one, just search for "software center" in the synaptics package manager. Good luck![/QUOTE]
Thanks, should be good though. Got my wifi working after some messing around with the drivers, and then installing my printer was easier than on windows. Should be all I need for class.
[QUOTE=Levelog;43130662]Thanks, should be good though. Got my wifi working after some messing around with the drivers, and then installing my printer was easier than on windows. Should be all I need for class.[/QUOTE]
Awesome, I'm glad it worked out well for you!
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