Our household has inherited a clunky old Lenovo laptop. It's got a Celeron 1.6 GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM, and a 40 GB hard drive. It originally had less RAM, probably 1 GB, but I can't be sure. It may have had as little as 512MB. It has Windows XP Home, which boots up sssssssslllllllloooooooowwwwwwwwwllllllyyyyyy. It took forever to try to find a driver for my external Seagate hard drive, and never did succeed. Even when I simply right clicked on My Computer to find out its specs, it took a really long time. This thing is at least 10 years old. The previous owners probably never once reinstalled the OS or defragged the hard drive.
It's going to be my roommate's computer. He's a novice. He owns a nice Dell touchscreen desktop with Windows 7 that boots up quickly. I think he'll be annoyed with the turtles-in-molasses speed of this laptop. Hence, I'm thinking of slapping Linux on it for him. I could just reinstall XP, but the license key on the bottom has just about rubbed off. It's not readable by me (though I haven't tried younger eyes yet). I know there are ways around this, but they're not legal ways.
My roommate's needs are basic. He's going to run LibreOffice Calc, CherryTree (http://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/), Skype, FreeFileSync, and he'll upload digital camera jpegs, probably with a card reader. That's it. These are all things that can be done easily in Linux.
So, my question: Should I go with Kubuntu or a lighter-weight distro like Lubuntu? I know back when I was using Ubuntu 8.04, Kubuntu was a lighter-weight distro, but I'm not sure if that still holds today. Kubuntu has the advantage of my having used it for several months now, so I know my way around it pretty well. However, if this older machine would perform markedly better with Lubuntu, that may be the best choice. I should be able to run any of that software in either distro.
Or since he's a ground-level novice, should I consider reinstalling XP? Is Linux/Kubuntu/Lubuntu truly over its power-user-only ways so that it's now novice friendly? He won't have to install the OS or any of the software. I'll handle all that. I have found that Linux is definitely still more finicky than Windows about mounting drives. With Windows you can get away with just sticking in a thumb drive when you want and pulling it out whenver. Not so much with Linux. I would have to educate him with that. I do think the fact that he won't have to use any antivirus, schedule scans, updates, etc. is a big plus for Linux.
One final question: Is it very hard to find a web cam that's Linux-supported? Skyping is important to him and the laptop has no cam.
Edit: And he'll be printing with a Kodak photo printer (normally just documents).
It's going to be my roommate's computer. He's a novice. He owns a nice Dell touchscreen desktop with Windows 7 that boots up quickly. I think he'll be annoyed with the turtles-in-molasses speed of this laptop. Hence, I'm thinking of slapping Linux on it for him. I could just reinstall XP, but the license key on the bottom has just about rubbed off. It's not readable by me (though I haven't tried younger eyes yet). I know there are ways around this, but they're not legal ways.
My roommate's needs are basic. He's going to run LibreOffice Calc, CherryTree (http://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/), Skype, FreeFileSync, and he'll upload digital camera jpegs, probably with a card reader. That's it. These are all things that can be done easily in Linux.
So, my question: Should I go with Kubuntu or a lighter-weight distro like Lubuntu? I know back when I was using Ubuntu 8.04, Kubuntu was a lighter-weight distro, but I'm not sure if that still holds today. Kubuntu has the advantage of my having used it for several months now, so I know my way around it pretty well. However, if this older machine would perform markedly better with Lubuntu, that may be the best choice. I should be able to run any of that software in either distro.
Or since he's a ground-level novice, should I consider reinstalling XP? Is Linux/Kubuntu/Lubuntu truly over its power-user-only ways so that it's now novice friendly? He won't have to install the OS or any of the software. I'll handle all that. I have found that Linux is definitely still more finicky than Windows about mounting drives. With Windows you can get away with just sticking in a thumb drive when you want and pulling it out whenver. Not so much with Linux. I would have to educate him with that. I do think the fact that he won't have to use any antivirus, schedule scans, updates, etc. is a big plus for Linux.
One final question: Is it very hard to find a web cam that's Linux-supported? Skyping is important to him and the laptop has no cam.
Edit: And he'll be printing with a Kodak photo printer (normally just documents).
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