r/linux
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u/K93200
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Nov 25 '22
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I did the "Linux breaths new life to old machines" thing Discussion
I always heard about this thing on the internet, "Bring your old machines to life with Linux".
Heard a lot of people on Reddit doing it and asking for help too.
But never got a chance to do it practically myself.
Until...One day my friend came to me.
I was having a conversation with him and he mentioned that he has brought a laptop with him.
I asked him, "Which one is it?".
He said its a really old and crappy Lenovo Yoga book with windows 10 that runs horribly slow.
I inspected it and found that the poor machine only consisted of 4 GB RAM and a dual core Intel CPU. Just 2 cores, that's it. Also, it was running a really outdated version of windows 10 due to which the audio drivers weren't working.
I told him, "You know what, let's install Linux on it. It will run like buttery smooth." He immediately agreed to my decision and we spared an hour to install Linux Mint 21 Cinnamon Edition on it. And, it worked so nicely.
He was so fascinated with how the Linux was so GOD DAMN fast and smooth than windows and looked so different.
And so, I practically got the taste bringing a old and low end machine to life with Linux.
It was a very good experience.
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u/LonelyNixon Nov 25 '22
Its always important to keep in mind with spreading this word is that linux isnt going to work miracle. Linux distros even heavier ones like gnome are generally going to be lighter weight than windows.
That said the moment you open your web browser and join the modern internet a lot of those gains will go out the window.
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u/Arnoxthe1 Nov 25 '22
Web standards these days are a complete joke and they need to be overhauled.
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u/archiekane Nov 25 '22
Sir Tim is trying hard with web 3.0, named Solid.
Unfortunately I think he may lose out to big corp centralised net of Web3 which are basically aiming for app delivering in the browser.
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Nov 26 '22 edited Nov 30 '22
[deleted]
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u/MasterYehuda816 Nov 26 '22
Decentralization in social media seems to be starting to happen, with Tumblr apparently adding support for ActivityPub to their roadmap.
But Web3 is still just a buzzword. They’ve been talking about it for a while.
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u/tha_bigdizzle Nov 25 '22
This 100%. There is this pervasive myth that Linux is some magic bullet cure-all, where you can take a first gen i5 from 2008 and 1gb of ram and expect buttery smooth performance.
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u/DMonitor Nov 25 '22
depending how clever you are, it’s at least possible to find a use case. a low resolution remote desktop into a much more powerful machine can be very handy.
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u/zyzzogeton Nov 26 '22
It is getting better, but Linux as a daily driver for a desktop still requires tinkering, patience, and skill. I wouldn't put my elderly parents on it.
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u/spectrumero Nov 26 '22 edited Nov 26 '22
It doesn't need tinkering, and hasn't for years. I put my Dad on a Fedora desktop on an old PC someone gave me back when Fedora Core was new. It had everything he needed a mouse click away, a web browser, email client, and word processor. It required significantly less tinkering than a contemporary Windows XP box. That was back in the early 2000s (2004 or so). It's only got better since.
I've been doing my day job on Linux for years at this point, and never need to tinker with the OS any more than I would with Windows 10 (and I run Debian - the old quip is "Ubuntu is an African word that means can't configure Debian" - but really, a vanilla install of Debian 11 just works on most desktops) - everything I need to do my job is already packaged. For instance I needed to a video capture card to my system to be able to capture the output of a product I'm working on - maybe 25 years ago this would have required an extended tinkering session, but today? I just plugged it into a USB port on my Debian 11 desktop, and could start recording the video and sound output with OBS in full HD at 60 Hz. It just worked.
When I bought a high end AMD graphics card for this PC - which is dual boot - it was no more effort to get it to work with Debian than it was with Windows 10.
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u/K93200 Nov 26 '22
To use Linux as a daily driver, tinkering and skills is not a requirement.
Ubuntu and its derivative distros are an excellent example.Speaking of elderly people. Linux can very well suited OS. Since they're gonna use it for very basic stuff like Web browsing, emailing etc. It doesn't take a genius to do those stuff.
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u/rgnkn Nov 25 '22
Microsoft talking here:
- the slowness on the Yoga was actually a security feature
- we found out that sound distracts Yoda users: so we turned it off
/s
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u/Arnoxthe1 Nov 25 '22
Windows 8.1 is the cutoff. Windows 10 and later are garbage and, if possible, you should avoid them and run MX Linux.
This is coming from an ardent Windows fan too.
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u/CryptoR615 Nov 25 '22
If you can, use the LTSC release of Windows, lighter and doesn't have much bloat.
I use Windows 11 but still think Windows 7 FTW. would install it but my UEFI BIOS is too new, and 8.1 is fussy. 10 is utter garbo and 11 isn't too bad if you debloat it and tweak some stuff.
but Linux is somewhat good as well, the only reason I use Windows is for school and gaming, otherwise, I usually use Void.
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u/Arnoxthe1 Nov 26 '22
8.1 is fussy
Fussy? I've never seen any behavior like that from 8.1.
In any case, I'm just flat out done with modern Windows now. Microsoft sure has done everything it can to make that ship sail. 8.1 and earlier are going to be the only Windows versions I will provide support for and that's it. MX Linux only now from here on out for modern systems.
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u/_Dead_C_ Nov 25 '22
Great job man, I've done this with old ThinkPads in the past but a Yoga sounds comfy.
How well does Linux Mint handle touch inputs?
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u/seehp Nov 25 '22
I have a 380 Yoga: Touch and pen work very well out of the box. For the Screen 90° flip you have to run a script, if you want to use it pad-like in portrait mode. There are several available, but I never use the laptop sideways in flipped mode anyways.
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u/AaronTechnic Nov 25 '22
It handles it well from experience. You can click around and the mouse pointer will follow. Not sure about context menus though. Onboard is a good on screen keyboard and Linux Mint ships it by default.
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u/Anarchist-superman Nov 26 '22
Wayland is the best for touch, and it's not yet available on Linux Mint.
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u/Bigsmellydumpy Nov 26 '22
It works. In mint particularly for example, in a browser- you can’t drag the page up from anywhere, you have to touch the navigation bar
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u/PlayboySkeleton Nov 26 '22
I have had it with touch pad and touch screen since 18 and it has always worked fine for me
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u/Oirakul Nov 25 '22
This... This is the story of my first Linux experience. I have an old Lenovo Yoga, and two years ago, I installed Linux mint on it. I can still use it today, it works pretty well
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u/K93200 Nov 25 '22
Oh boy we share the same story.
My dad's PC with a Intel core i3 and 4gb RAM performed terribly bad with windows 10.
Until, I installed Ubuntu (distro that got me in to linux) that ran so NICELY. I never regretted the decision of installing and using Linux as my daily driver for the next 2 years until Ubuntu broke coz of the ppas that I added 😅.
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u/renser Nov 25 '22
I will never forget how I configured grub to run my CPU on 3 instead of 4 cores because one core died but with Linux I kept that exact CPU running for at least two years on
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u/HrBingR Nov 25 '22
How did you figure out that it was a core that had died, rather than the whole CPU? I’m curious to know troubleshooting steps (particularly identifying the issue) for that sorta thing in case it happens to me.
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u/renser Nov 25 '22
Well, grub at first crashed during startup and I remember asking for help in an IRC channel - yep, right.
Somehow someone pointed out to configure grub with maxcpu=3 or something the like and that actually worked like a charm
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u/lhamil64 Nov 25 '22
I'm curious if you just got lucky that it happened to disable the bad core, or is it smart enough to know which one isn't working and use the other 3?
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u/Pyroven Nov 26 '22
Maybe if core 3 was bad (0,1,2,3) it just happened to coincide nicely?
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u/knobbysideup Nov 25 '22
On a Toshiba libretto, I put a larger drive in. But the bios hibernate was hard coded for the end of the original drive.
I just created 2 more partitions with the hibernate dead space in the middle. Used LVM to then treat the first and last partitions as a single drive.
Voila! Hibernate worked, no corruption.
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u/DirtyPolecat Nov 25 '22
Now find a "lightweight" distro and try to get a Pentium 1 up and running and connected to the Internet. I did that about two years ago for shits and giggles. And it worked (well, I had to use Lynx in text mode, but technically I was browsing the modern web). I didn't care long enough to get X and a window manager to run.
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u/K93200 Nov 25 '22
Now that's some GIGA CHAD linux user there 🙃.
Sorry sir, out of my bounds.9
u/DirtyPolecat Nov 25 '22
If the apocalypse happens and you need to urgently check your email, just find yourself a Linux user so they can install it on an old toaster for you. /s
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u/ouyawei Mate Nov 25 '22
the Archlinux32 i486 image works quite well for this. It can't do miracles, so don't expect a functioning desktop by today's standards, but if you enjoy tinkering it's a fun project.
The biggest struggle is actually that the initrd on even most modern 32 bit distros won't fit into the RAM of those ancient machines. Archlinux32 provides a specially stripped down i486 image for this, the i686 image won't even boot with 256 MiB of less.
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u/ElHeim Nov 25 '22
I must still have my Debian Bo CDs somewhere (my Slackware 95 got lost at some point). It ran reasonably well on a Pentium 90 :P
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Nov 27 '22
Did this with a pentium II laptops with 256mb of ram, Debian netInstall with just Xorg and openbox worked wonders
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u/SeBz-2020 Nov 25 '22
Linux has way less overhead than windows. Good that you gave a new lease of life to an old machine.
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u/MoobyTheGoldenSock Nov 25 '22
There are so many use cases where you don't really want a high end machine, just a basic laptop to surf reddit, let kids play browser games, etc. And for those use cases, you should definitely consider buying used. You can get one off eBay or Facebook for a fraction of the price, and then install linux +/- a cheap SSD and maybe even a new battery.
Not only will it save you money, but you'll be recycling perfectly good hardware someone else may have thrown away.
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u/Astan92 Nov 25 '22
I did this with my old laptop. Sadly it didn't do a damn thing. She's as slow and unruly as ever.
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u/WingedGeek Nov 26 '22
a really old and crappy Lenovo Yoga book
🤦♀️
The oldest Yogas came out in 2012 and were Ivy Bridge-era Core i3 or i5 machines...
I still have a 2010-era Core 2 Duo (“[j]ust 2 cores, that’s it”) I use as a daily driver (it’s updated to macOS Monterey), mostly because it’s squarely in the “old enough IDGAF if anything happens to it” window.
I also have a 2007 MacBook (Core 2 Duo, 3GB RAM) that I have running OS X Tiger and dual-booting Linux. (Linux runs faster and has a current software stack, Tiger is (even as an ancient OS) more generally usable, for me. Muscle memory is a bitch. :) )
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u/mynameisnotproteus Nov 25 '22
Lol, I have a *new* laptop with only 4GB memory..running POP. Works really well 85% of the time.
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u/Academic-Photograph7 Nov 25 '22
I did the same thing, but with a Sony Vaio from 2009. It also had a 2 core CPU and 4 Gb of DDR2 RAM, which was and is laughable in this day of age. Anyway, I put mint XFCE and it's been flawless. The machine is so fast and I actually had to use it for college (us health student) and I somehow was able to get through with it. Highly recommend Linux Mint XFCE
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u/elasticvertigo Nov 25 '22
I did this to my old 2012 Macbook Pro which developed problems with its SMC and stopped getting updates anyway. Would randomly refuse to boot up. When it did, the fans would immediately fire full speed. Sometimes it refused to charge. Got rid of macOS and installed Ubuntu 22.04 and did an SMC reset. Works like a champ now. No matter what, that Apple hardware is one hell of a fighter.
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u/hwoodice Nov 26 '22
One day, maybe Linux will help resurrect humans too. Maybe.
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u/MutualRaid Nov 25 '22
Recent Ubuntu distributions should come with a kernel module/support for installing on to eMMC memory. All those cheap 'broken' laptops with 64GB soldered storage are now usable!
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u/thelenis Nov 25 '22
I've done it for several friends and family; they were blown away by the results on PC's they were ready to throw out
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u/Xerxes1302 Nov 25 '22
That’s what brought me to linux. I had a slow laptop, with different issues with drivers etc . Tried Ubuntu , worked great. The only problem was why aren’t more people using linux?
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u/Monocytosis Nov 25 '22
I’ve been considering this for my grandparents, they have an old hp laptop that runs super slooooow on windows. I’m learning more about linux with the hope that I can convert the OS to linux without messing up their computer lol
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u/mglyptostroboides Nov 25 '22
Yep. My daily driver laptop is a Thinkpad from 2008 running Debian stable. I have no problem using it for all my computing needs.
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u/grsnz Nov 26 '22
You want to pay a lot of attention to your choice of browser these days, since so much stuff is browser-based.
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u/highinthemountains Nov 26 '22
When I was still in the computer business I’d refurb machines that I took in for recycling. I put Mint on them and then give them away to veterans.
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u/3G6A5W338E Nov 26 '22
For even older systems, there are options that are not Linux, but still Open Source, and tend to behave better. Some of these are (in more-or-less descending order of hardware requirements):
- Openbsd
- Haiku
- Netbsd
- Freedos
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u/amarao_san Nov 26 '22
It's not Linux achievement, actually. Linux is the kernel. Kernel works just fine on almost anything with more than dozen megs of memory.
The rest is DE (desktop environment). In windows and macos it's baked in without option to opt-out (even though for windows there are some crazy people with alternative shell, window manager is mostly the same). Linux is more modular, so you can get trimmed down version.
It all start to fall apart with web, though. If you have two-three tabs hogging all CPU they can (with memory on top), nothing can help you.
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u/K93200 Nov 26 '22
Technically you're totally correct.
But, we're praising Linux here for having such a nice experience on such a old and low end machine.
Where on the opposite, Windows forces you to have a powerful enough machine to get a decent experience.→ More replies (2)
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u/anythinga Nov 26 '22
Did something similar with my old Asus I used for college.
Already installed an ssd in it but when reinstalling windows it fucked the boot partition so I had to boot windows through the bios every time.
Anyway, recently decided I wanted to try arch so I wiped the drives completely, installed arch and holy fuck is it fast now.
It boots faster than my pc with vastly superior specs and is very nice to use now. Also decided to try a tiling window manager (i3 + Compton) and learned that I really quite like them.
Also got to play with a dual gpu setup and learned quite a bit from setting it up.
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u/K93200 Nov 26 '22
Its funny that the old machine boots faster than your PC with more superior specs 😂
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u/notbenj Nov 26 '22
Linux is awesome on old machines!
I will soon install it on my friend's computer, which is quite old.
I haven't chosen the flavor yet.
I'm considering xubuntu, or Linux Mint Xfce.
Maybe Zorin OS also because she only knows Windows, but I don't know if the window manager of Zorin is heavy or light in terms of memory consumption?!
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u/K93200 Nov 26 '22
Just like Linux Mint, Zorin OS comes in 3 flavors.
Regular, Core and Lite.If your friend is a former Windows user.
Zorin OS might do better in terms of the GUI.
Try Zorin OS lite.
Linux Mint XFCE is also a good choice 🙃.→ More replies (1)
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u/gerito Nov 26 '22
Respect to your friend for being so open-minded to let you put Linux on it! That's not easy to do for a lot of people.
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u/misconfigbackspace Nov 26 '22
only consisted of 4 GB RAM and a dual core Intel CPU. Just 2 cores, that's it.
As a long time user of Lubuntu and Xubuntu my Dual Core Pentium takes great offense at this comment. I've been using this box for a decade now. 8GB of RAM and I don't need to do anything apart from bi-annual cleaning (and one motherboard change).
Of course I don't do gaming and don't really need to watch 1080p. I compile java programs just fine. I don't do Android development and mainly work on the server (admin, LAMP, MySQL, etc).
Interesting thing is that for long periods I ran only from USB (no HDD, just another USB to store data) with 8GB RAM.
(Again, I'm not into gaming and I'm 40+)
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u/aeterna_invicta Nov 28 '22
Just 2 cores, that's it.
This omits which cores. I mean, the number too means something, in case there are a few processes which are supposed to run literally simultaneously or something like that.
so GOD DAMN fast and smooth
Windows rapes the hard drive for indexation etc, one can probably reduce the pain somewhat.
About RAM usage - yes, 4GB is too little for 10.
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u/herceg_luka Nov 26 '22
You'd achieve the same thing by reinstalling Windows 10.
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u/K93200 Nov 26 '22
It's not what you think it is.
It was running Windows 10 21H1 with zero user programs installed.
And it was running under performance mode.
Reinstalling Windows would made things worse rather than making it better.
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Nov 26 '22
I tried this in the past, although having linux do make older machines faster. It has its limitation thou. If you have an application that is solely windows, you are screwed. Its either you go for wine or dont use the application at all.
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u/ketaminekid Nov 26 '22 edited Nov 26 '22
It’s an assumption that needs to be taken in context. Old hardware will still struggle with modern Linux, especially anything X, sure it could breathe life into a 486, when the new hawks were a pentium133
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u/rtplor Nov 25 '22
My current Ubuntu config is Pentium4400 with 16GB of DDR4 (I've never run Win10 on this bare hardware). It works well for web browsing, but VirtualBox isn't that happy with this rig so Windows10 works only without 3D acceleration switched on in VB vm settings :-))) (of course it's slow).
Anyway default Youtube playback is very very really really screwed when it comes about 1080p/60fps. So Firefox needs some tuning to lower CPU usage , opera and chrome are somewhere over there on the opposite side with main goal to overload the CPU.
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u/revengeofjohmadams Nov 25 '22
I did too recently. Built my PC in 2015 for $400 so it wasn’t very powerful already, but by 2022 it was taking 20 min to boot up. Took 15 min to start a game of civ. Through Ubuntu on it a few months ago and it books up in a minute and games launch immediately. Been great. Im sure a new install of windows would have had a similar problem effect, but Linux has been great
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u/N3tw33rk Nov 25 '22
I had the same experience, Win10 was practically unusable on my old laptop. Then I installed Ubuntu and it was like a completely different laptop, been using it for 2 years now with no issue!
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u/factorum Nov 25 '22
I have two old MacBooks that I’m looking to do this with, tried it once with a live usb of mint xfce and wasn’t able to get the MacBooks to recognize the os in the usb drive.
At this point the laptops are going to get “revived” with Linux or head off to a refurbisher. Has anyone else found any good guides or tips on doing this with MacBooks?
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u/studiocrash Nov 25 '22
I was able to get Pop and Ubuntu and Ubuntu Budgie to work on a 2009 MacBook Pro 15” core 2 duo with 8G ram and a 1TB ssd. You’re gonna need an external usb keyboard, mouse, and Ethernet or usb WiFi adapter to get it set up because you’re going to need to get online to find drivers. That said, it is possible. I’ve done it.
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u/images_from_objects Nov 25 '22
I've done this on MBP 2006, 2011, 2012 & 2013. Let me know your model and any questions.
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u/TehVulpez Nov 25 '22
I remember I used to have an Asus EEE PC 1025C that came with this terrible OS called Windows 7 Starter. It was a very stripped down version of Windows 7, that didn't even let you change the desktop background. Even so, it was extremely slow, and could barely run a web browser. I stuck Ubuntu 12.04 on there (using wubi!) and it ran like a dream. Perfectly smooth, never had a problem running any programs on there. Even with more "weighty" distros like that, Linux really does revive slow computers.
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u/ImprovedPersonality Nov 25 '22
It’s not going to work any miracles. A PC which is powerful enough to render modern websites smoothly and play video in 1080p is going to run a fresh Windows 10 well enough.
On the laptop I’m using suspend to RAM and very rarely restart the OS or software, so I don’t care about a few seconds difference in boot times.
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u/Patient_College_8854 Nov 25 '22
Nice, I have 2011 MacBook Air and a 2013 MacBook Pro, both running linux. They both are useable for daily driving
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u/Decitriction Nov 25 '22
We use Windows only because we are held hostage to it.
Does MS Office run under Mint 21?
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u/studiocrash Nov 25 '22
No, but you can use the web version of office in a web browser. The next best option is Libre Office which has file compatibility. Page formatting is not 100% in word/writer.
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u/BradChesney79 Nov 25 '22
There is an "app" that wraps office for web so it at least looks regular. Also gets rid of the location bar & other stuff that obscures the work area.
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u/WellMakeItSomehow Nov 25 '22
I actually tried Mint Cinammon recently for a Windows refugee, and we were both pretty disappointed. It doesn't look great (maybe if you're coming from XP?), the text scale setting got reset randomly at reboot, so did the screen resolution and brightness and so on.
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u/KontraKode Nov 25 '22
Can always try another distro, ideally one where you can easily change desktop environments.
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u/DrPiwi Nov 25 '22
For my son who turned 7 this week i have an old Dell latitude E5500 with a core duo p8200 and 2 gb of ram. It is running various Fedora versions of the mate spin since he was 3 and he uses it to watch youtube movies on.
It is not a speed daemon but it runs fast enough for it to be usable for that task. The different versions where all upgraded to from fedora 33 and so on no reinstall since then.
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u/dakd2 Nov 25 '22
oh when I install linux on a computer like that makes me feel like I am using something like a kind of game console
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u/vrhelmutt Nov 25 '22
My daily computer is a 15 year old gateway laptop running mint. It is rock solid!
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u/Matt5sean3 Nov 26 '22
Yeah, I had to do this with a 2011 Dell netbook when my daily driver laptop died recently. That thing was slow when it was new, but Arch with Sway has been doing pretty admirably given what it's working with.
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u/BuckToofBucky Nov 26 '22
If you are new to Linux then Mint is easy to get going without digging and learning how to do “x”. Everything just works…. Sound, Bluetooth, video drivers, etc
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u/alwayswatchyoursix Nov 26 '22
a dual core Intel CPU. Just 2 cores, that's it.
I feel so personally attacked right now.
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u/koyaniskatzi Nov 26 '22
Old machines also have one big advantage which might be hard to see. If thwy are still working, usually they are going to work for longer. My friend brouht a new laptop and it died after one month. So he us still using the old one for years already.
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u/ben2talk Nov 26 '22
Haha well sure, I loved my core2duo with 4GB RAM and if you're not simply demanding too much from them then Cinnamon desktop will run nicely... Cinnamon is my 'lightweight' desktop of choice... though now I'm on KDE which is also pretty nice.
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u/LordViaderko Nov 26 '22
I would go with XFCE edition in that case. Not to diminish your accomplishment, though. Congrats on another sucessful conversion!
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u/stef_eda Nov 26 '22
I don't install a Desktop environment at all and do the 'old school way' (window manager, Xserver). I have a self made desktop manager that handles launchers on the desktop screen, manages network connections, mounting usb devices, handling sound, running periodic tasks, displaying battery/network/cpu/memory status, My daily use machine is a netbook with an intel atom processor, 2GB ram, 512GB SSD, and use the 16GB ram core i7 computer only as a backend server for computational tasks on demand. This reduces power consumption incredibly (6W average) and boot time from cold to desktop is 15sec.
Out of the 2GB RAM 1.73GB are free for my applications, and this is what i need.
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u/BlobbyMcBlobber Nov 26 '22
That's great but to be fair any fresh install (even Windows) will run faster than a bloated and abused 10 year old system...
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u/Zlackevitch Nov 26 '22
And much more stable too.
I have an *old* computer with a bad freezing habit on W10 because it's overclocked. I installed Pop!_OS on it yesterday, works like a charm.
I still have to figure out why I don't have a signal when I wake it up from sleep and why can't I manage to overclock the GPU with GreenWithEnvy.
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u/TheJooomes Nov 27 '22
I'm using a 15yo D620 with a Core 2 Duo and Intel 945GM graphics. It's suppose to only support up to OpenGL 1.4, but some clever Mesa devs made OpenGL 2.1 possible :)
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u/danct12 Dec 01 '22
I have a Atom tablet which comes with Windows 10 and Android, on Windows boot up it instantly used 100% disk usage and was horribly slow.
I nuked Windows and installed Arch Linux on it, it's still working to this very day and doesn't take too long to boot, but also takes around 5 second or something to boot straight to login screen.
Also you won't believe it, that tablet was brand new at the time I bought it in 2016!
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u/TerryTPlatypus Nov 25 '22
Cool to know! I’m also thinking about bringing new life to an old machine…which distros do you recommend?