Linux: which variant is easiest for Win XP user to adapt to?

[Jonny_]

My old XP laptop is pretty much useless these days. It's bogged down with all manner of crap such as third party antivirus programs and the like, struggles to run bloated modern browsers, no longer updates and is generally a sluggish pain in the arse to use.

The hardware is fine, and was fairly quick in it's day (AMD Turion ML34 1.8Ghz, 1Gb RAM, Radeon X700) although gutless by 2014 standards. The battery even holds a charge despite being 8 years old. It's got a pretty nice screen too. Far too good to throw away, so I'd like to try installing Linux on it to see how I get along with it. If I find something I can get on with I'll also install it on my desktop XP machine which is mainly used for storing photos etc.

I tried Puppy linux several years ago, as it booted and ran from USB, but I hated it: it was awkward to use and looked dreadful.

Of the modern Linux distributions, then, which one behaves most like Windows XP in terms of the user interface? Basic things like right click for context menus, double click to navigate through folders, copy/paste commands, settings all in a central Control Panel, that kind of thing.

Mint looks like it could be worth a look, are there any others I should consider?

[Jonny_]

skelters said:

On older laptops and PC's I've had success with Lubuntu. Seems to work well.

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=lubu...

Thanks, that definitely looks worth a try!

[Jonny_]

Marvellous, thanks chaps. Seems that Mint and Lubuntu are the favourites, then. I'll try both, as it seems reasonably easy to make a bootable USB for either.

Will let you know how it goes!

[Jonny_]

davepoth said:

More than reasonably easy. Download Unetbootin:

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

Which will do all of the legwork for you on a lot of the distributions - you don't even need to download the ISO in advance, just click the one you want and it'll do the rest. For any other distributions just download the ISO and it will make a boot USB from that. Very handy tool.

That's precisely my plan!

I say reasonably easy because there's always a good chance I'll balls it up

[Jonny_]

That's the ball ache: drivers.

Mint ran fine on my laptop from the DVD, but it has an oddball wireless card with an on/off switch that requires a specific driver just so it can be turned on!

After much digging around I failed to make it work, sadly.

I'm still going to try it on the desktop PC as that uses a USB wifi dongle, no silly switch to cause problems so it might work...

The laptop, however, is running much better now I've binned the AVG antivirus and installed MS Security Essentials instead. How long until that becomes obsolete and unsupported, probably not very, but for now it's usable and is doing a grand job of ripping hundreds of CDs to my new NAS so that I can play all my music through any PC, smartphone, tablet, smart telly, console or wifi enabled tea towel in the house!

Edited by Jonny_ on Wednesday 3rd September 11:02