Old Netbook - OS suggestions please

[Podie]

My mother has a Dell Inspiron 1210 Netbook. It's a bit old, and she'll be getting a replacement at Christmas.

It's an Atom processor, 80GB HDD, with 1GB RAM - hardly going to set the world alight.

It had XP, but was sluggish. I've tried Ubuntu 14 and Mint 13 and they're both still a bit slow (35 second boot up!).

I don't expect miracles, but a reasonable boot up, ability to use a web browser and ideally Open Office or Libre office to be able to read the odd Word doc.

Suggestions for a linux distro?

TIA

[pherlopolus]

Linux puppy is my goto distro, really lightweight but covers 99% of what I need.

[ZesPak]

Lubuntu or Mint

[Podie]

ZesPak said:

Lubuntu or Mint

Tried Mint and it was a bit slow.... giving Lubuntu a go. Puppy is a bit too light.

[ajprice]

Can you upgrade the RAM to 2GB? Might help things if you can.

[ZesPak]

Podie said:

ZesPak said:

Lubuntu or Mint

Tried Mint and it was a bit slow.... giving Lubuntu a go. Puppy is a bit too light.

I've had a similar one, although it was a samsung, I had half a dozen of OS on there. These were my results, in order of speed:

1. Mint
2. Windows 8
3. Ubuntu
4. Windows 7 starter
5. Windows XP

Didn't try Lubuntu on it, let us know how you get on. I was pleasantly surprised by the Windows 8 speed but it was a beta version and kept complaining that the resolution of the netbook was too low. It was a paltry 1024x600 though, so can't really point any fingers to Windows.

Edited by ZesPak on Friday 29th August 10:35

[Podie]

ajprice said:

Can you upgrade the RAM to 2GB? Might help things if you can.

Sadly 1GB is the max.

[sgrimshaw]

ZesPak said:

kept complaining that the resolution of the netbook was too low. It was a paltry 1024x600 though, so can't really point any fingers to Windows.

FWIW, that can sometimes be overcome - depends on the graphics driver being used:

http://www.howtogeek.com/134022/how-to-run-modern-...

[NormalWisdom]

Stick a cheap SSD in it

[mcflurry]

NormalWisdom said:

Stick a cheap SSD in it

Not much point IMHO as it's going in <6 months

[plasticpig]

I installed AndroidX86 on my old Asus netbook. Ran pretty well until the hard drive died.

[Hoofy]

plasticpig said:

I installed AndroidX86 on my old Asus netbook. Ran pretty well until the hard drive died.

Interesting. As an idiot, will I succeed in installing AndroidX86?

[plasticpig]

Hoofy said:

Interesting. As an idiot, will I succeed in installing AndroidX86?

Possibly. If there is an ISO which supports your netbook/laptop then you can just create a new partition on you hard disk and dual boot windows/android which is how most people run it. It's relatively simple to do.

[Hoofy]

plasticpig said:

Possibly. If there is an ISO which supports your netbook/laptop then you can just create a new partition on you hard disk and dual boot windows/android which is how most people run it. It's relatively simple to do.

Thanks! Will have to see if I have any disk space left.