Restoring an old laptop with Linux

[colin_b]

Have a guess which distro worked best with old hardware...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJWe5Fqo5d8

[Pierre]

and he does make comments about the need to Not Push Linux onto folks who don't want Linux.
so, to be cautious about who you do help out.

it's no surprise, that he chose MX as the replacement, but he could have use any of several other Linux systems, as well.

[turtlebay777]

A computer guy we know gave me an old broken laptop he took in as a part exchange that was built for Win Vista, using it right now with MX 17.1. Having to use an exterior keyboard and mouse and the battery is knackered - errr,worn out!
Mind, it's faster than my main one and graphics and ram are better. My main one is an Inspiron 1545.

Mx Linux is excellent and my preferred OS after ten or so years of using Mint. Also the help forum is MUCH more helpful here, whilst the experts are human beings not gurus with inflated egos.

Code: Select all

System:    Host: mx1 Kernel: 4.15.0-1-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3 
           Distro: MX-17.1_x64 Horizon December 15  2017 
Machine:   Type: Portable System: Dell product: Studio 1537 v: A03 serial: <root required> 
           Mobo: Dell model: N/A v: A03 serial: <root required> BIOS: Dell v: A03 
           date: 09/22/2008 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 0 Wh condition: N/A 
CPU:       Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core2 Duo P8400 bits: 64 type: MCP 
           L2 cache: 3072 KiB 
           Speed: 798 MHz min/max: 800/2267 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 798 2: 1931 
Graphics:  Device-1: AMD RV620/M82 [Mobility Radeon HD 3450/3470] driver: radeon v: kernel 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.19.2 driver: ati,radeon unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa 
           resolution: 1280x800~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: Gallium 0.4 on AMD RV620 (DRM 2.50.0 / 4.15.0-1-amd64 LLVM 3.9.1) 
           v: 3.3 Mesa 13.0.6 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel 82801I HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel 
           Device-2: AMD RV620 HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 3450/3470/3550/3570] driver: snd_hda_intel 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.15.0-1-amd64 
Network:   Device-1: Intel Ultimate N WiFi Link 5300 driver: iwlwifi 
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: 00:16:ea:60:9c:5e 
           Device-2: Broadcom Limited NetLink BCM5784M Gigabit Ethernet PCIe driver: tg3 
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: 00:21:70:83:60:d8 
           Device-3: Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Mini-card type: USB driver: btusb 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 298.09 GiB used: 50.61 GiB (17.0%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST9320320AS size: 298.09 GiB 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 290.41 GiB used: 50.61 GiB (17.4%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1 
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 2.00 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda2 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 39.0 C mobo: 31.0 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 0 mobo: 7936 fan-2: 0 fan-3: 
Repos:     Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/antix.list 
           1: deb https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/mxlinux/antix/stretch/ stretch main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list 
           1: deb http://mirror.positive-internet.com/debian/ stretch-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list 
           1: deb http://mirror.positive-internet.com/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free
           2: deb http://security.debian.org/ stretch/updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list 
           1: deb https://ftp.nluug.nl/os/Linux/distr/mxlinux/mx/repo/ stretch main non-free
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/various.list 
Info:      Processes: 188 Uptime: 2m Memory: 3.85 GiB used: 418.0 MiB (10.6%) Shell: systemd 
           inxi: 3.0.25 

[KBD]

MX is my go to distro when I want a distro that installs quickly and will work on everything. I still like vanilla Debian, but MX is hard to beat.