Could I use some sort of linux?

toString · 9 May 2011 at 10:41

I have a very old Acer TravelMate 2420 (must be 4 or 5 years old now).
It's a Pentium M 1.7ghz, 512 ram, built in wifi

I have xp sp3 on it and its pretty sluggish at times. I use it for sofa usage:
browsing
youtube
msn messenger

Do you link some sort of linux option would be 'faster'? And still be able to run these programs (msn messenger might be a dealbreaker....)

Also, I've never used linux before...

Stick to xp?

alex24 · 9 May 2011 at 10:46

Very possibly. Quite often just not having to run A/V is enough to speed up an old machine.

Burn off a linux boot disc, for a distro of your choice. Popular ones include Ubuntu and Linux mint. Then boot the disc and try it out. It'll be faster once it's installed properly too. You may want to change the desktop environment if it's not fast on the system though. There are more knowledgeable folk here than me who can advise you about that.

EDIT: Oh, and you can't properly run MSN messenger, but chat clients will still let you use the same network. MSN messenger is woeful anyway.

toString · 9 May 2011 at 10:50

Msn might not be too much of a sticking issue as I could use skype, hopefully thats more linux friendly?

alex24 · 9 May 2011 at 10:52

Not really, though you can get official skype client for linux I believe but when I say they use the same network it's basically transparent. So a program like Pidgin can log onto the msn network and chat is just the same. Just less of the bloat and crapware associated with the official windows client.

If I could give up Windows for linux I would. I'm tempted on my netbook but windows xp gives me better power management features.

alex24 · 9 May 2011 at 10:54

You can get Ubuntu here, but if it's not snappy you can try something more lightweight as well. Ubuntu is quite easy to transition to from windows.

russ0r · 9 May 2011 at 11:07

Can I just pipe up and suggest Ubuntu netbook edition (http://releases.ubuntu.com/lucid/ubuntu-10.04-netbook-i386.iso). It's a bit more lightweight than the full-blown distribution, and you're basically using that laptop as a netbook anyway

Also regarding MSN, give aMSN a try. I haven't used it for a while but a few years ago it was about as close as you could get to MSN Messenger on Linux.

PermaBanned · 9 May 2011 at 11:51

I thought the Netbook Edition was discontinued with the release of 10.10?

russ0r · 9 May 2011 at 11:58

Superewza said:
I thought the Netbook Edition was discontinued with the release of 10.10?

It was. But a netbook version of the current LTS release (10.04) is still available, and will presumably remain supported until 2013.

alex24 · 9 May 2011 at 12:04

It was also my understanding that you can just download the netbook edition packages on a normal install if you want. Might have changed, but that's how it was when I last used it almost a year ago now.

jack.mitchell · 9 May 2011 at 21:24

If you would like to delve a little bit deeper I would strongly suggest CrunchBang linux. It is based on Debian (same base as Ubuntu) and is lightweight.

http://crunchbanglinux.org/

Also aMSN and pidgin are both fully capable msn clients, so I wouldn't worry about that in the slightest!

Icm76 · 9 May 2011 at 21:56

toString said:
It's a Pentium M 1.7ghz, 512 ram, built in wifi

I put together an ulta cheap PC for my neighbours - ancient AMD Athlon @ 500Mhz. Slow, but it runs xubuntu at just barely acceptable speed.