Spec me a Linux Distro for my wife's laptop

spudbynight · 2 Jul 2015 at 17:51

I'm thinking about installing Linux on my wife's laptop.

It is a Dell XPS l501x

It has a Core i5 480m which runs at 2.66 Ghz. Nvidia GT420 graphics.

At the moment it runs Windows 8.1 but she is having issues with it being rather sluggish. In fact it has been sluggish since moving to 8.1. She also has a habit of downloading stuff onto it that she doesn't want or need.

She isn't tech savvy in any way whatsoever and I was thinking about a dual boot setup with a Linux distro to see how she fares. There isn't anything I can think of that she needs to run that she can't get a suitable equivalent on Linux.

I was thinking about Elementary OS - any thoughts? I am better of with something like Mint, if so Cinnamon or Mate?

I did run a live distro of Ubuntu a while back for her but it did cause her laptop to overheat so ideally I want a distro with excellent out of the box hardware support.

spudbynight · 3 Jul 2015 at 10:59

arfoll said:
imho whatever you're running. Easier to maintain and when the inevitable problems come you'll be able to answer. I went from Xubuntu -> Arch Linux -> Fedora on my other half's laptop. Tbh I'd probably put Xubuntu back on there, I'm really not a fedora fan (but decided to stop wasting my time configuring arch on her laptop).

On that kind of spec you'll have no issue running whatever DE you want, just let her try a few, I find people from windows seem to really like xfce.

I'm not actually running Linux on any machine myself so that isn't a consideration. I haven't used Linux to any extent since the 90s.

spudbynight · 3 Jul 2015 at 14:42

And for someone IT savvy but not proficient in Linux, how much of a headache will it be for me to maintain this for her? I really want something I can deploy and leave her to it.

spudbynight · 3 Jul 2015 at 19:47

Installed Elementary OS and it was laggy as anything I have ever used. Installed Mint and it runs like a dream. No issues.

Lets see what my wife makes of it.

spudbynight · 3 Jul 2015 at 20:55

Yes, not sure what was causing the issues but it was unusable. I wasn't invested enough in it to try and find out the issue either.

spudbynight · 4 Jul 2015 at 13:13

Managed to find out the cause of the overheating. The laptop has a Nvidia Optimus enabled GPU setup. This means it has an Intel GPU and an Nvidia GPU. On Windows it automatically switches between them. With the out of the box drivers on Linux both run at full tilt causing all the heat.

There is a driver package called Bumblebee which resolves this. All running nice and cool now.

spudbynight · 4 Jul 2015 at 15:15

Yes, went with Mint Cinnamon. Very happy with it so far. My wifes laptop should be perfectly able to cope with any OS thrown at it.

The reason Windows 8 was sluggish is because it was nearly constantly at about 100% load on the hard drive. I spent a year trying to figure out the cause without success.

She has Windows 8 and Mint in a dual boot setup now. She hasn't needed to boot into Windows so far.

spudbynight · 6 Jul 2015 at 08:54

I did a fresh Windows 8.1 install. It was still sluggish. Believe me I've spent 12 months trying to figure out the problem without success.