Linux Would linux be faster on old laptop versus windows 7?

+1 for Linux Mint with XFCE. Have installed it on multiple old computers around the house and it does the job perfectly.

 

I burned Linux mint DVD... Booted it on the laptop to test it. Was faster than the win 7 home premium install... so I clicked the Install icon. I used the "replace windows 7" option.

Mint installed and running now. Faster and the boot is a lot faster even though it's on SSD anyway.

 

Mint's certainly easy to install isn't it?

Did you use the 64bit version? As has been posted, it'll perform a little better.

Also, you will get better graphics performance with the AMD official drivers. It's under Software Drivers, or some such.

 

Oh god no. I personally love Arch, so don't get me wrong - I think it is really great. But I have only learned to love it after a few years of serious Linux work, and with a familiarity of the command line. Even then, installing it for the first time was a case of looking back to the installation guide on the wiki. Without knowing that I had to use parted or fdisk (or cfdisk for GPT disks) to format and partition my drive, then mount in in the correct location, then install each individual bit to that new drive, I would have become completely stuck.

For someone coming from a Windows background where everything 'just works' (apart from old hardware - Linux is often better at that), trying Linux for the first time, just go with a mainstream easy to use distro, like Ubuntu. Ubuntu is special in a way, since it has the funding of a company behind it that wants more people to use it, so ease of use is a high priority. Ubuntu also comes with practically every application ever developed for Linux in its repositories, so there is no worries on downloading and installing stuff (or compiling stuff)

 

I agree concerning Arch. Manjaro is the closest thing to user-friendly (it's also XFCE-based), but it's not as easy as something like Ubuntu. I run Arch alongside Mint and Ubuntu, and I like it, but it's more of a hobby OS.

Mint has certain advantages over Ubuntu - the main being no Unity, and a traditional style desktop, which is going to appeal to a lot of Windows users. It also comes with the kind of stuff you end up having to install in Ubuntu (e.g. multimedia codecs, Java), and since it's got Ubuntu as its base, you have all the advantages of Ubuntu.

 

I did go for the 64 bit Mint. Amazed how user-friendly the install is. Asking if I want to install it alongside win 7.... In this case I didn't due to SSD space constraints. Given that win 7 is too slow on that laptop... no point in running it alongside.

I might install a linux on my own PC though alongside windows.

 

If you download Chrome you'll get the latest Flash bundled too. The standalone plug-in for Firefox etc is older, Adobe's stopped updating it.

 

Yup, did that. Chrome installed no trouble.

 

How are you/she getting on with it? Sounds like you got it all sorted.

 

This age of laptop will be ATI not AMD, and that means no driver support. And still AMD drivers on linux are just too painful when compared to nvidia, and that is as much fun as root canal

 

There are the legacy catalyst drivers - not sure if this chipset would be supported or not.

The official AMD drivers aren't *that* bad, and they're set to improve massively soon.