Linux the way to go?

iviv · 1 Jul 2009 at 12:24

My brother's laptop is old, about 6 years old now. 1.8Ghz Celron, 1Gb ram and a GO5650 graphics card. And the hard drive has died as well. After looking around, I can pick a replacement IDE laptop hard drive up for £40, but for just 80Gb that's awful value for money.

But what alternatives are there? I know you can run live linux installs off a cd or flash drive, is this an option? Then use the £40 I'd have spent on a hard drive to buy a larger external drive for him to keep all his music and files on?
Though if I were to do this, would it better to run linux off the drive instead?

I'm a total linux newbie, been happy with windows so never felt the need to try it, but I'm guessing installing windows on a usb hard drive would be rather slow. And if I did go with this option, what would be the best distro to use? He only really uses his laptop to listen to music, mess around with his ipod and blackberry, and chat with friends on MSN, with a little gaming, but not too much. So a simple interface would be preferable, he just wants something that works.

Thanks in advance!

eXor · 1 Jul 2009 at 13:10

iviv said:
He only really uses his laptop to listen to music, mess around with his ipod and blackberry, and chat with friends on MSN, with a little gaming, but not too much. So a simple interface would be preferable, he just wants something that works.
Thanks in advance!

Try a couple of Linux Live CDs and see if they're up to the task. e.g. Linux Mint, Ubuntu.

If you can't get some stuff to work, then you could always run Windows on the external drive.

iviv · 1 Jul 2009 at 14:26

Would you be able to run windows xp off an external drive at any decent speed?

I'm about to try damn small linux, to see if that's any good, since I just realised that with only one CD drive, he wouldn't be able to do anything that needed a CD if he was running a live CD, would he?

eXor · 1 Jul 2009 at 15:46

iviv said:
Would you be able to run windows xp off an external drive at any decent speed?

I'm about to try damn small linux, to see if that's any good, since I just realised that with only one CD drive, he wouldn't be able to do anything that needed a CD if he was running a live CD, would he?

Booting XP from a USB drive is possible. [1]

If you can't get XP to boot from a USB drive, and if you can find an opening of sufficient size, you could run a rounded IDE cable and a Molex connector through it, to an externel 3.5" hard drive.

You can copy the contents of an Ubuntu ISO to a hard drive / flash drive partition, and boot from there. Thus freeing up the CD drive for other things.

Why Damn Small Linux? You have enough male sheep to cope with a more fully featured distribution.

iviv · 1 Jul 2009 at 19:18

I picked DSL just because it was a small download to start with, and I could poke about with some things. It worked fine, though because of a hardware fault (The annoying nipple mouse is broken) I've had to set the bios to disable them when a usb moouose is preasent, so if I use linux it seems I have to do that (In windows, you have to install the touchpad drivers to disable it).

Anyway, the main problem seemed to be wireless. The laptops have Intel PRO Wireless 2200BG cards, if that helps. I'm going to try downloading ubunto, hopefully that will come with enough drivers to cover it. Thanks for the help so far! And I'll look into getting XP installed onto my hard drive instead, that would be handy.

BigglesPiP · 1 Jul 2009 at 19:20

A lightweight linux distro is certainly a good way to get a supported (security updates) OS that runs smoothly.

GarethDW · 2 Jul 2009 at 00:34

iviv said:
He only really uses his laptop to listen to music, mess around with his ipod and blackberry, and chat with friends on MSN, with a little gaming, but not too much.

Uh-oh.... what games in particular does he play?

yashiro · 2 Jul 2009 at 01:22

Find a cheaper HD, install XP and be done with it.

No itunes on Linux. No games. Syncing mobiles is shakey. MSN file transfers are iffy too.
Insurmountable obstacles? Not really, but I doubt he will put up with them. Plus you are of no use in terms of Linux technical support for him.

craptakular · 2 Jul 2009 at 07:36

I found out the hard way, forcing people onto linux isn't the way!

I forced my parents onto ubuntu and it was a disaster! You get questions like "where's my computer gone??" "where is word?" "can i use outlook?" I was basically like full-time support for it. Bad times for my life.

iviv · 2 Jul 2009 at 09:34

yashiro said:
Find a cheaper HD, install XP and be done with it.

No itunes on Linux. No games. Syncing mobiles is shakey. MSN file transfers are iffy too.
Insurmountable obstacles? Not really, but I doubt he will put up with them. Plus you are of no use in terms of Linux technical support for him.

Are second hand 'bay hard drives worth looking at then? I don't think I'm going to find a new drive for much cheaper than that. Its IDE, and obviously 2.5" form. OcUK's cheapest is £50!

And yes, ideally I would like to avoid linux since we don't know anything about it, but I'm just trying to check out all my options.

To be honest, I'm not sure how much time he spends gaming anyway, I think its mainly used just for chatting on MSN, so I was planning on getting him using pidgin, firefox (which he uses anyway), one of the linux itunes alternatives, and that should be most things sorted, though the remaining problem would be the blackberry. I know even less about these than linux though!

The reason I'm not looking at spending too much is that he's training for the Royal Marines, so the time he spends at home is very limited. I do have a WD 500Gb external drive which I'm considering using to stick windows on, as in the above link. Though can you boot from USB devices with a dell D800?

Thanks!

craptakular · 2 Jul 2009 at 09:47

Coulld you not boot up a live cd on your comp and see how he gets on with it for a few hours?

Could rule linux in or out without wasting money on HDD.

iviv · 2 Jul 2009 at 10:34

There's no way to install apps onto a live CD, is there? I mean, as long as there's a way for him to play with his ipod music (which I have on my external drive anyway), and use MSN he'll be happy. So if I could get a live CD with an itunes replacement on it, he'd be fine, then he could use my pc if he needs to do things with his blackberry.

PhilGQ · 5 Jul 2009 at 10:14

Sadly while linux does most things but there are always the things it won't do and if doing one of them is what's important to you then it game over. Its one thing inflicting it on yourself quite another to ask someone else to do it it.

Get your brother to buy the hard disk 120GB is for £50 isn't that bad £80 for 320GB is ok too if he wants more. The laptop will probably perform better with a the new hard disk anyway.

UniqueID · 7 Jul 2009 at 09:25

windows has been preinstalled on every computer for the last 10 years. until linux can match that you're not going to find many people willing to put up with linux.
Linux can be a good replacement for windows from the command line, but for your normal home desktop nothing really beats windows which has been designed to be used by braindead monkeys.