Re-purposing a laptop

[systemcrash]

My little sister got a hand me down laptop and moans that its way to slow. Its quite old now with a 10GB hard drive, So im going to format it for her as a netbook. I have a XP disc i can use to reinstall, but i am wondering weather to use it because of all the updates and SP3 patches would kill her hard drive space so ZorinOS seems the better choice. I want to keep it similar to windows because that's what she'll use in school.

Her laptop didnt come with a XP CD but the one i have is without a license key so i would have to get hers off the laptop before i format it, just in case i need to go back to windows..

Just looking for general opinions on the matter

[kendall.a]

I'd like to suggest that you consider Mint. I don't recall how much disk space it uses, but I've found it to be quite user-friendly for someone with absolutely no background in Linux.

[systemcrash]

I was reading around and there where some posts saying that i should use XP for older laptops as its more compatible. I understand that it's more compatible and more programs are designed for windows then linux. But for older laptops with 10GB HD and 250ram Xp seems the lesser choice since you'd have to install the updates a firewall and antivirus to be protected, All that hogging limited resorces.

Kendell: Thanks for the advice, everytime i start a thread with something that relates to linux someone always mentions Mint, but i never give it a go. So i think i will. and i'll have a mess around in a virtual machine to just in case she runs into any problems. And if she don't like it or cant get use to it i'll try another.

She'll be on it quite often so she'll get the hang of it eventually , My main concern is the Performance or resources, What are peoples preferences between others like Puppy and xubuntu

[wdhpr]

A full Mint install will eat up about 4GB's of disk space here are the minimum requirements. Puppy linux is great I still use Puppy booting off a USB drive, although its rather basic without the bling. Xubuntu may be a good option, its light weight and should have a good selection of apps available in the repository. Look here For system requirements.

[Ritho]

Originally Posted by wdhpr

A full Mint install will eat up about 4GB's of disk space here are the minimum requirements. Puppy linux is great I still use Puppy booting off a USB drive, although its rather basic without the bling. Xubuntu may be a good option, its light weight and should have a good selection of apps available in the repository. Look here For system requirements.

We are talking about someone who has never used linux before right? Puppy is not a good idea at all. Xubuntu is better, but Mint has the LXDE version of Fluxbox, both of which are easier on system resources. LXDE also has a smaller "foot print" coming in at 3GB installed.

My opinion though would be to install the full normal Mint version. And if it runs well on the laptop, your sister will get the best user experience possible.

[Anupam]

I would advise to go with the fluxbox versions of distros, which are supposed to be lighter. I had an old system lying around with P-III, and 256 MB of SDRAM. I had installed Mint full version on it. It was really very slow, and things just crawled.

Most modern Linux systems are heavy on system resources. Often I read on sites, that if you want to revive an old system, you should install Linux... but what they do not tell you, is that modern Linux distros like Ubuntu won't even support old systems, and won't have the necessary drivers etc. Also, they are heavy on system resources. So, you will have to go for a lighter distro like Puppy Linux, or Xubuntu as suggested... or distros with fluxbox versions.

[wdhpr]

I believe we did this thread justice.

By the way how much Ram does this laptop have?

[Anupam]

systemcrash mentioned in his second post that the laptop has 10 GB hard disk, and 250 RAM.

[systemcrash]

I have ran into a little snag, I have run a boot cd to clone her HDD onto a spare one i had but it wont show up one the list of HD's, I have tried 2 external HD's but neither show up. I can't access the bios either, I have push F12 for boot Options and it allows me to boot from a external drive, USB, or CD I want to make a clone of it so if needed i can re-use it, Because her computer came without a installation CD i went to make one of my own in a virtualbox for her, I disconnected it from the internet and used her activation key to make a activated copy but it said Product key is invalid. So i need to make a clone of her HD just in case.

Is it possible to just run mini Xp off a disc, and open the contents of the internal HD select all and copy to the external HD and have a proper clone of the activated copy? I havn't tried it that way before

[MidnightCowboy]

Zorin OS4 Lite is LXDE

http://zorin-os.webs.com/apps/blog/e...ite-has-landed