Older XP laptop to ubuntu

John Eurt

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May 30, 2014
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I have an older Compaq laptop with a Turion64 cpu and 1 gb ram. My son uses it to play games online nothing big just facebook games, Disney.com, nickjr, and the 1st COD. It has windows xp home edition and I was wondering if Ubuntu would be a better option over windows because this thing gets bogged down by windows. With the amount of RAM windows uses up plus the shared ram for video there just isn't much left for everything else. A friend recommended Ubuntu saying it's less of a memory hog than windows is and would run better on this older laptop. I'm trying to figure out if this is true or not before I wipe everything out.
 
Solution
For older machines I would definitely recommend Lubuntu which does not take too much RAM and is quicker. I am using this lubuntu remaster to install on old machines:
http://bit.ly/lubuntuw7Trusty
it has also changed look too mimic Windows :) The only problem for you could be that this one does not load English by default (although it is also installed), but should be easy to switch it. Also includes Broadcom wifi drivers and some other software.

dmroeder

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Jan 15, 2005
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If you are going to try out Ubuntu, I'd probably use Xubuntu or Lubuntu instead. The desktop environment that comes with Ubuntu will probably be a bit much for that machine. Xubuntu is the same OS but with a less resource hungry desktop environment.

Or try Linux Mint XFCE edition.

The nice thing about these OS's is that you can make bootable thumb drives using something like Universal USB Installer. Once you've made the bootable thumb drive you can boot the OS and see how it performs without wiping out XP. Of course it won't perform as good on USB as it will on your hard drive, but you'll get the idea.
 

Juhele

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Feb 28, 2014
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For older machines I would definitely recommend Lubuntu which does not take too much RAM and is quicker. I am using this lubuntu remaster to install on old machines:
http://bit.ly/lubuntuw7Trusty
it has also changed look too mimic Windows :) The only problem for you could be that this one does not load English by default (although it is also installed), but should be easy to switch it. Also includes Broadcom wifi drivers and some other software.
 
Solution