cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/19622913
A friend of someone related doesn’t have a laptop nowadays, but needs one. Now we have 2 old laptops at home, and we want to give her one so she can do some things on it. Since she isn’t used to laptops and the old laptops wouldn’t run a Windows 11 (I don’t want to install a Win10 because of end of support and lacking security features), I guess installing a simple Linux is fine. Now comes the big question: Which Linux distro should I install? (see requirements below)
Laptops:
- Acer Aspire ES 15, AMD dual-core E1-7010 @1.5 GHz, 4GB RAM, 1000 GB HDD
- HP Pavilion 17-e030ez, Intel Pentium @2.4 GHz, 4GB RAM, 10000 GB HDD (I’d choose this)
Tasks:
- Office Stuff (I thought about OnlyOffice)
- Internet surfing
- Banking via Web
Requirements:
- needs to have full German support
- needs an easy software installation center
- should be easy to learn
- optionally, her friends (which probably use Windows/ Mac) should be able to help her (since she never had a laptop before)
- eventually German forum/ German Guides
I’m using Linux/ Manjaro for myself but don’t have any experience with beginner-friendly distros. I used a KDE neon for some time and also have used Ubuntu, and to be honest, they seem beginner-friendly too.
Please let me know your opinions, thanks!
Linux mint or ZorinOS. Try both and use the one you like more…
Could I recommend changing the HDD to an SSD?
Really helps the snappiness of the computer.
I have a lot of SSDs at home and I wouldn’t mind shipping one to y’all since I also live in Germany
I’ve got a lot of experience in that domain, since I’ve upgraded/installed by helping 7-8 friends & family to switch to linux in the last year here in Greece.
So the two most important things here is the speed of the CPU, and the amount of RAM. With 4 GB RAM on both laptops, means you need to aim for XFCe or Cinnamon, not gnome/kde, and not generally heavy distros like ubuntu/fedora. Also, you need to instruct them to not open a gazillion browser tabs, they will hit the swap (and eventually crashes) with 4 GB of ram.
The Acer laptop scores only 600 points on the Passmark CPU test, which means that it’s only good for XFCE. So I’d suggest the Linux Mint XFCE edition.
The HP laptop has 1400 points, which are plenty to run Cinnamon (the default Linux Mint edition). For comparison, most new laptops sold today have over 12,000 cpu points, some go to 30,000.
Mint is the easiest to update, and install new software, and it will provide a familiar look to the user. I highly suggest though a few changes done by you before you give them back their laptops (if you’re the one making the installation):
[Cinnamon HP laptop]
- Install the Cinnamenu panel addon, to provide a more modern look to the main menu (and then modify it to look nice)
- Install the dconf-editor and disable tap-n-drag. This default behavior can drive mad Windows users.
[XFce Acer laptop]
- Modify the looks of the window manager to not have too many buttons, make it more windows-like.
- Unfortunately, tap-n-drag is not possible to be disabled on XFce
[for both laptops]
- Download Chrome. While Firefox is the preferred browser, Chrome is actually faster (particularly on youtube), and it consumes less RAM (tick its checkbox to consume less ram in the settings). This is seen as an anathema here, but the truth is, in lower end spec PCs, the speed difference between the two browsers is apparent.
- Setup their youtube to play at 480p by default, and disable autoplay. Anything else will be very taxing to the cpu.
- Install games from the repos for them, so they don’t waste all their space with flatpaks later. Simple games like: sudo apt install aisleriot ltris gweled xye lbreakhouthd frozen-bubble gnome-mahjongg gnome-chess stockfish
- Second keyboard language if they require it
- Set up the power options to make sense
- Create a webapp launcher for Photopea (using the chrome option, as it’s twice faster on photopea than firefox), so they have a photoshop clone easily accessible (gimp won’t cut it).
- Set up the distro to be able to run appimages (test it with the new version of kdenlive for example from their website)
- Install OnlyOffice appimage and set it up in the menus. Onlyoffice provides better msoffice file compatibility than libreoffice.
- Install ublock origin or lite on the browsers, to avoid most ads and speed up the experience.
Wow… thanks for this detailed info & guide! I’ll probably use the HP laptop with Mint Cinnamon, cause I don’t like that old retro look of xfce. A friend told me to try Lubuntu too, so let’s see.
I didn’t know about that Chrome/ Firefox performance “issue” on old laptops, so thank you! Isn’t there a way to disable flatpak at all? Thought on my Manjaro I could disable it, so eventually there is an option there too. OnlyOffice and uBlock were my guesses too. I’ll probably set up NextDNS and KDE Connect too.
That guide is great. Also, you can easily find some extra ram on eBay or Kleinanzeigen. I strongly recommend adding at least 4gb. Switching from a 1tb HDD to a 128-256gb SSD should also be pretty affordable and it will do wonders speed wise.
She doesn’t have much money for a new laptop and since she won’t use it often, it’s enough to check mail, e-banking, … And we have some old laptops at home nobody uses, so we thought we could give it to her as a gift.
Eventually, she’ll buy a new ~400$ laptop later with some good specs, but that’s not in the upcoming months. But thanks for the help.
Check your pms.
The XFce version of Linux Mint is not the same as the default XFce. It’s been modified to look like the default Cinnamon Linux Mint. You can’t tell them apart most of the time, so it doesn’t look retro. At 600 points of cpu, xfce can run well, and work better than Lubuntu. Lubuntu is great for less than 400 points cpu, but if you have more than that, you are wasting your user experience (the xfce linux mint edition is much better than lubuntu’s in user experience).
I suggest you don’t disable flatpaks, you just disable it from the menu so it’s not visible to be clicked. But let it in, just in case it’s needed. Right click on the cinnamenu (if you install that), open preferences, and then open menu editor. There, you can make the flatpack menu entry invisible.
Pop! OS
Fedora silverblue. No maintenance. Works ootb. Easy to use. No brain overload
Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Zorin OS Lite, Peppermint OS.
I second mint But i always ask myself Manjaro or mint… I am a total noob, but maybe you can clear that a little bit up, why mint and not manjaro
I was suggesting mint for cinnamon since it would be relatively familiar to anyone using windows, at least in form. Decently managed software store.
I’m a big fan of Mint. It’s great for beginners but also for anyone who just wants to run their PC with minimal hassle. Considering those are pretty low power machines, I’d go for the Xfce editions too. Personally, I think Xfce is a bit sparse but it runs well on older hardware.
There are also a few distros specifically for older hardware, but I don’t have experience with those. I’d suggest starting with Mint and seeing how that goes.
If you want blazing fast on an old machine, I always keep a flash drive with some good old slitaz. Can’t beat that all in ram configuration on the slitaz minimal windowed version. But that’s not really the question here. If the cinnamon variant is slow, xfce.
Coming from someone who nuked their grandmas computer and installed ChromeOS Flex on it since she can’t screw that up too badly and just needs a Facebook/search machine.
Tho, now I am wishing for a ChromeOS Flex version that is just Firefox since adblock will be dying on chrome with manifest v3.
Chances are she won’t even notice if you put Linux on her machine. My wife certainly didn’t. I tried to explain the concept of different OSs to her but she didn’t care. The Firefox icon looks a bit different, but that was the only thing she noticed.
Mint
Kubuntu.
They want a desktop, not a slideshow.
I’d think about something with Xfce on it, like a Fedora Xfce spin
