linux ubuntu to replace XP

[jackdaww]

we have a very nice 15" dell vostro laptop -- 2.1ghz 2gb ram 250gb hdd ddr2 intel pentium III 32bit .

it is running windows XP .

only used for internet , no games etc

DAK if it would take windows10 ?

if so would we get the latest creator version?

i have heard win10 wont be supported on certain hardware .

thoughts welcome.

many thanks.

[bungeejumper]

Until this year I ran Windows 10 on my six year old Samsung N150 Plus, which I had upgraded from 1gb to 2gb and which was my weapon of choice when camping in France, because it had zero value if it got wet.

Yes, it did everything, but to be completely honest, it struggled because it was having to do so much file-swapping - it could take 45 seconds to load an ordinary program like Thunderbird. I never did investigate whether I could have improved it by enlarging the virtual ram, but I suspect that the recent trend for including videos on every damn web page would have finally overwhelmed it.

This year I replaced it with a similarly cheap Acer laptop running 4gb of ram, and the difference was properly astonishing.

BJ

[Infrasonic]

You can try W10 for free without a licence by downloading it from the MS site here...https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/softwar ... /windows10

2nd option down.

Using the tool to create installation media (USB flash drive, DVD or ISO file) to install Windows 10 on a different PC (click to show more or less information)
Follow these steps to create installation media (USB flash drive or DVD) that you can use to install a new copy of Windows 10, perform a clean installation or reinstall Windows 10.

Another option would be to try something like Linux Mint (generally regarded as the easiest to use for beginners), which via a web browser (Firefox comes as standard) can do pretty much anything you can do in W10 online (even MS office online if you have a Hotmail/Outlook.com account).
You can also go 'lightweight' with many Linux distros like Mint, Ubuntu et al, so that if it is a bit sluggish with the full fat version just bump it down and install a less resource hungry distro.

You can try Linux out without committing by running a 'live' version from a USB flash drive (just bear in mind it will be slower than if fully installed to your hard drive/SSD). When you boot up you'll have the option of choosing XP (or W10 if it will run...) or Linux as long as your BIOS has USB switched on as a boot option.

I'm currently running Mint this way with my W10 desktop box.

... it struggled because it was having to do so much file-swapping ...

Replacing the hard drive with an SSD will help here (if it's possible to do) as the latency is a magnitude less.
Even on my 8GB RAM i5 desktop box an SSD made a very noticeable speed/response difference over a HDD 'C' drive.

[Breelander]

we have a very nice 15" dell vostro laptop -- 2.1ghz 2gb ram 250gb hdd ddr2 intel pentium III 32bit .
DAK if it would take windows10 ?

I'm afraid not. Windows 10 requires a processor that supports the NX bit.

The NX bit, which stands for No-eXecute, is a technology used in CPUs to segregate areas of memory for use by either storage of processor instructions (code) or for storage of data...
...the similar XD bit feature in x86 processors beginning with the Pentium 4 processors...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NX_bit

In addition, there's no support in 10 for upgrading from XP (or Vista, come to that) so if it had worked it would have had to have been a clean install. Plus you'd have to buy a licence to activate it.

Linux is your best bet if you want to give it a new lease of life.

[jackdaww]

we have a very nice dell laptop running XP - just used for web browsing .

is there a simple way to install linux without too many problems ?

would it be advisable to delete the XP OS ?

many thanks.

[ten0rman]

Personal experience, ie it crashed my system, does not lead me to support Ubuntu. Instead, I would suggest Mint, which perhaps surprisingly, is based on Ubuntu!

In respect of printers and scanners I can't comment on FredBlogs's problems, other than to say my scanner is a Canon LiDE 25 which worked perfectly right from the start, and of the three printer's I have used, only one gave me some trouble and that could have been down to using after market ink cartridges. FWIW, the Canon LiDE 25 scanner appears to be a badge engineered device and was recognised as such on installation. The three printers were HP 880C (with after market cartridges), HP 6122, and HP 7160. Also, HP does provide a Linux driver.

Using Mint, you should be able to run it (try it, albeit slowly) from the source medium (DVD or USB stick), or install it along side XP - provided you have enough room on the hard disk. Otherwise, you can, if you wish, allow Mint to wipe the disk, and thus perform a clean install.

Good luck,

ten0rman

[Infrasonic]

we have a very nice dell laptop running XP - just used for web browsing .

is there a simple way to install linux without too many problems ?

would it be advisable to delete the XP OS ?

many thanks.

Post the model number and specs (CPU, HDD size, amount of RAM etc.) if possible.
That way we can try to head off any potential issues before they occur.
Running a modern large Linux distro might require a bit more horsepower than your laptop currently has (very old CPU's might have compatibility issues running more modern browser versions for instance), in which case a small lightweight legacy Linux distro/browser would be more applicable.

[tsr2]

we have a very nice dell laptop running XP - just used for web browsing .

is there a simple way to install linux without too many problems ?

would it be advisable to delete the XP OS ?

many thanks.

My experience of trying to run the latest Linux Mint on XP era hardware was that it wouldn't run. I suspect that Mint requires a more up to date CPU.

Q4OS might be a workable option, but I haven't tried it myself.

I wouldn't delete XP, at least to start with, it gives you the option to swap back until you have got a Linux version that works for you.

[ten0rman]

Fred,

Initially I used Mint v.13. No problems with hardware other than that previously mentioned. Then, when Mint v.13 became life expired, I moved straight to v 18.1 - still no problems. I did try v.17.x dual booting with v.13, but because v.13 was working so well, I had no incentive to really get to grips with v.17.x so eventually I deleted it.

Actually, there is another point which jackdaww might like to consider. I started using Firefox & Thunderbird with Windows XP long before I converted to Mint. Despite the information on the internet which I found somewhat confusing, it was actually very easy to transfer all the Firefox & Thunderbird user stuff, eg emails, bookmarks etc, from the XP system to the Mint system, but it does require both systems to be available on the machine, or for the user to be able to temporarily download this stuff followed by an upload.

FWIW, I'm using a Toshiba A200 laptop with a Cereron M CPU 520 @ 1.6GHz along with 2Gb of RAM, plus loads of hard disks (yes plural!) It's about 8 or 10 years old and after having the exhaust duct cleaned runs well enough for me.

ten0rman

[kiloran]

I wouldn't delete XP, at least to start with, it gives you the option to swap back until you have got a Linux version that works for you.

Ah, but it could always be reinstalled from backup. I'm sure there is a backup. Isn't there?

--kiloran

[GeoffF100]

With XP, unless it is a real power user machine, you are likely to be better off with Lubuntu than Ubuntu. They are both the same under the bonnet, but Lubuntu has a less resource hungry desktop, which looks rather like the XP desktop. Let us know the processor and memory on your machine. You will find that under Computer in Windows.

[jackdaww]

thanks to all .

its a dell vostro 2.1ghz 2gb ram 250gb hdd ddr2

with intel pentium III 32bit processor , running XP pro sp3 .

no peripherals are used .

presumably its just a download off the linux website ?

[GeoffF100]

We need to know what processor you have, the clock speed tells us very little, but 2 GB of RAM is good. You download Linux from the website for the distribution you want. Ubuntu, Xubuntu and Lubuntu (heavyweight, middle weight and flyweight respectively) are all part of the Ubuntu family, and are downloaded from the Ubuntu site.

[Infrasonic]

thanks to all .

its a dell vostro 2.1ghz 2gb ram 250gb hdd ddr2

with intel pentium III 32bit processor , running XP pro sp3 .

no peripherals are used .

presumably its just a download off the linux website ?

Pentium 111's won't do anything beyond SSE1 instruction set, so a limiting factor that will prevent use of modern browsers like FF, Chrome etc. as I alluded to upthread (they generally require SSE2 or higher).

May still be possible to get a working Linux OS system going and browsing the web, it's just going to be more tricky with hardware that old.

[GeoffF100]

Sorry, I had not noticed that it was a Pentium III. That does not reach the minimum requirement for running Lubuntu. On reflection, Lubuntu has its own site, but is downloaded from the Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) servers nonetheless, unless you want to use bit torrrent.

[Infrasonic]

https://www.slant.co/topics/1462/~linux ... ld-machine
Has a column for supported architectures (i386/486/585/686 etc.), how up to date it is I don't know, but you could use it as a starting point for finding older distro versions that will run on a P111 CPU.
Pentium111 = i6

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubuntu

Lubuntu 13.04 was released on 25 April 2013.

The minimum system requirements for Lubuntu 13.04 are a Pentium II or Celeron CPU with PAE support, 128 MB of RAM and at least 2 GB of hard-drive space. This release also still supports PowerPC architecture, requiring a G4 867 MHz processor and 640 MB of RAM minimum

[GeoffF100]

The minimum recommended hardware requirements for current version of Lubuntu are stated here;

http://lubuntu.net/

Memory (RAM): for advanced internet services like Google+, YouTube, Google Drive, and Facebook, your computer needs at least 1 GB of RAM. For local programs like LibreOffice and simple browsing habits, your computer needs at least 512 MB of RAM.
Processor (CPU): the minimum specification for CPU is Pentium 4 or Pentium M or AMD K8. Older processors are too slow and the AMD K7 has problems with Flash video.

N.B. the current Long Term Support version of Lubuntu is 16.04. As far as I know, the same recommendations apply for this version too.

[GeoffF100]

If the OP just wants to browse the web on a laptop, he could do worse than to get a Chromebook. It is even possible to install Ubuntu on a Chromebook:

https://www.lifewire.com/install-linux- ... ok-4125253

However, if he just wants to browse the web, it is not clear why he would want to do so.

[MDW1954]

thanks to all .

its a dell vostro 2.1ghz 2gb ram 250gb hdd ddr2

with intel pentium III 32bit processor , running XP pro sp3 .

no peripherals are used .

presumably its just a download off the linux website ?

@jackdaww,

I use Ubuntu Linux extensively, and have done for ten years. While most of my work is done in a Windows environment, Linux is amazingly handy (and cheap!) for getting certain things done.

I have two Dell Vostro* machines running Ubuntu -- a Dell Vostro 220, and a Dell Vostro 230. Yours is probably one of those.

My advice is to go for Ubuntu MATE, as this is closest to the XP/ Windows 7 experience. The release I use is 16.04 LTS, although 18.04 LTS will be out in April.

PM me if I can offer further assistance.

MDW1954

* For the techies reading this, there's also a PCSpecialist i5 rig used for numerical analysis and data science, but that's another story...

[jackdaww]

many thanks again for all responses.

have looked at the spec on the laptop -- its

dell vostro 1700

xp pro vers2002 sp3

intel(r) core (tm) 2 duo cpu t8100 2.1ghz 795 mhz 2gb ram .

my wife wants to carry on using it for web browsing only , without the security worries of XP.

it runs XP ok , so i had assumed it would run linux quite comfortably .