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Quote:
Originally Posted by Blossom
They've made XP pretty much inoperable for internet this past year. It's time to install a different operating system on my netbook. I really have no choice.
So I'm looking at Linux Mint. What do you think? I want internet, ability to run a few office like Libre Office programs and some old windows programs like yWriter.
Its a Toshiba NB200 with RAM upgraded to 2GB.
Pros?
Cons?
This is a huge leap for me.
Will I need drivers for sound, keyboard like Windows does or how does that work? I am a total newbie to Linux.  |
The biggest con I can see is "low end machine". I'd want a lot more than 2GB RAM.
Also be aware that Linux is
different. You will need to learn a new OS with new GUI, and new programs to do what you normally do. That learning curve is the biggest roadblock to Linux adoption on the desktop. Most folks learn just enough about the PC to do what they need to do and stop. Even new versions of existing stuff can get resistance because they will be different.
I did something like this a while back on an old Acer netbook. It had a 1.6 ghz Atom processor, 1.5GB RAM, and a 40GB HD. It used onboard ATI graphics. It came to me with WinXP Home.
I repartitioned the disk to create a slice for Linux and installed Ubuntu, on which Mint is based. I chose Lxde as the lightest weight GUI. The end result was a machine which dual-booted and I could choose Linux or XP at boot time.
I like Ubuntu because it does the best job I've seen in a Linux distro of figuring out what it's installing on, setting itself up, and Just Working. Connecting to the Internet tends to be a problem with other distros, but Ubuntu handles it fine. Once installed, it should be able to connect to the Internet.
Linux has generic drivers for most peripherals, so you shouldn't have a problem. The folks with driver woes tend to have high end graphics cards from nVidia and AMD-ATI that are not well supported by the open source drivers.
You can install a browser and things like Libre Office and have what you mostly need.
Running Windows programs requires installing Wine. I don't know offhand if yWriter runs under it, but it should.
Just don't expect snappy performance. Linux
really likes RAM, and tries to run entirely in RAM if it has it. With 2GB, it won't. Linux on the old netbook here works but is slow. (I could theoretically take RAM to 2GB from the 1.5GB it has, but I don't believe the performance boost would justify the cost.)
One thing I do plan to do is replace the HD with an SSD. Those are getting cheap. I found a budget line 120GB SSD for $30. SSD technology has been steadily improving, so the fact that it's a budget line drive doesn't scare me. I don't expect failures.
Since a major factor in slow speed is disk I/O, going to SSD should be a nice performance boost. There isn't a lot on the netbook I need to preserve, so I'll likely just back up some files to a USB frive, then pull the HD and swap in the SSD and do a fresh install of Linux. I spend most time on the Linux side now. Not having XP in the mix won't be a loss.
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Dennis