Hi all, the private school I work at has a tonne of old windows 7/8 era desktops in a student library. The place really needs upgrades but they never seem to prioritise replacing these machines. Ive installed Linux on some older laptops of mine and was wondering if you all think it would be worth throwing a light Linux distro on...
totally doable. But if you yeet the bloat, windows 10 will be more than fine. My dad runs windows 10 on a i5 2430m all in one. My old school computers had i5 2400s and 4 gb of ram and they ran windows 10 without too much issue.
I’ve been doing some scouring and my search results are coming back confusing. Usually either incomplete information, or some kind of sales spam, so I’m reaching out in the hopes of recommendations for actual linux users and fans. I am looking for a very small, tiny even, security/privacy focused distro. I don’t mind doing...
Maybe try something with openbox? Bunsenlabs linux is a good example of what you can do with a window manager. I run it on a pentium m laptop (1 core) with 2 gb of ram. It’d be doable. (It originally had one 1 gb and I don’t think I even enabled swap).
Basically arch plus mimicking their UI would be a good starting point.
Or just use bunsenlabs 32 bit if your software has 32 bit versions. It will be a bit lighter from a memory standpoint.
My favourite DE has got to be Cinnamon, as much as I like KDE and XFCE, I prefer the simplicity of cinnamon where as in KDE has a bit too much of everything in the customization scene and XFCE I find a little tricky to get tiling working right....
All of them would be fine, also what wireless card and does yours have a gpu. Iirc the 580 had an option for an mx150 so I wouldn’t be surprised if the 480 had one.
Intel wireless cards are well supported, others not so much
I’m thinking of picking up a used ThinkPad on eBay for cheap to serve as my daily driver. I’ll likely run LMDE, and primarily use it for web browsing, office programs, coding, and FreeCAD. Any recommendations on which model would best hit the sweet spot of capability vs price?
My sister has a T580 with the 7th gen i5-7200u. Full tilt it runs at 60C after a repaste. My own pavilion x360 with the same i5 runs close to 90C. Let’s not talk about the 8th gen i7 version of said x360.
The 8th gen i5 and i7 CPUs just run really hot.
As for build quality, it’s fine. It’s no r500, but it’s built pretty well. Her laptop has been dropped a few times and the only issue it has is a fucked USB c power port (my only gripe is hard to replace USB ports).
Might depend on who Lenovo used for the displays. Either the specs are different than listed or it was modded.
My own example is HP, I have 2 identical laptops (same model and seller). One has a 100% sRGB panel and the other has a 60% sRGB panel.
The 100% sRGB panel is LG and the 60% sRGB panel is Innolux.
Also maybe battery capacity over time? Istg batteries have way more degradation now than before.
Edited for clarity.
Edit 2: while some HP laptops might have had different color accuracy display options for the same model, this one is just straight 768p or 1080p and nothing else. The site says 45% NTSC but my own experience shows they had some good panels and it was just luck of the draw. Fwiw the PC is a HP pavilion x360 15-br095ms. It had an i5-7200u, Radeon 530 2GB DDR3, 8 gb of ddr4 and a 128 gb m.2 sata ssd. It’s been motherboard swapped with an 8th gen i7 version, same gpu on the new board and has 24 gb of ram. I’m using a cs900 240 gb 2.5 in ssd for now. I plan on getting a better nvme drive for it eventually but I have none on hand that i could use.
The keyboard doesn’t really flex on my sister’s laptop but good God it’s awful to type on. It’s weirdly mushy. Idk if her laptop is defective or if it’s something else. The keyboard is clean but compared to both of my pavilion laptops, it feels like my old dell multimedia keyboard in terms of mush. And yeah they trackpad is awful. My friend had a w530 and it was about the same honestly. But that was a then 6 year old laptop.
Fwiw the 11th gen i5 is actually garbage. Cpu is strong and the igpu has no business being as good as it is, but it is not power efficient at all at lower tdp. I cannot for the life of me get my old 11th gen i5 laptop to run any lower than like 1.8 GHz or something ridiculous. Just babying a laptop that’s less than a year old gets me maybe 3 hrs of battery life. It’s had really bad degradation, with 80% capacity left on a 40 wh battery but swapping in a Ryzen motherboard got me another hour of battery life. Also weird ass stutters, holy shit it’s bad. If I typed too fast, my computer would lock up entirely. It’s just a thing that it did.
The seller was some dude on Amazon, but both machines were new in box and were purchased in 2018 and 2019. The model is 15-br095ms for what it’s worth. It’s a Microsoft signature edition laptop so “less” bloat than other machines. Basically it didn’t have McAfee or norton.
At least for that line of HP machines, you had a 768p panel and a 1080p panel. Both are 1080p.
Also the 11th gen i5 is weird. Idk if mine was a dud or they all ran like this but mine was super power hungry. 33wh capacity and I got like 3 hours of battery life. When the battery was new (40wh) it was like 4-5 hours if I babied it. When I swapped in a new Ryzen motherboard, it ran cooler and more efficiently. I get 4 hours of battery life if I do normal stuff and it can run fanless. And yes I’ve repasted it when it had an i5.
For context, that old pavilion 15br laptop I was talking about had a motherboard replacement and I put a 15-br158cl motherboard in it so an 8th gen i7 and a Radeon 530. Not a particularly efficient gpu and an old cpu. It gets the same battery life. It’s got 2 drives, an older battery and it still beats the newer one. I could get that old i7 to sip power. I can’t get the new one to do that.
I had a friend who was a compsci minor who did almost the entirety of said minor on a really old chromebook. They did everything on a basic text editor. You would be surprised
Most modern laptops can do 64 gb of ddr4. It’s expensive but doable. Like most U series CPUs are limited at 64 gb. Something with a xeon mobile chip will probably see a lot more.
Linux on old School Machines?
Hi all, the private school I work at has a tonne of old windows 7/8 era desktops in a student library. The place really needs upgrades but they never seem to prioritise replacing these machines. Ive installed Linux on some older laptops of mine and was wondering if you all think it would be worth throwing a light Linux distro on...
Skrillex (mander.xyz)
Smallest Security/Privacy Focused Distro Help?
I’ve been doing some scouring and my search results are coming back confusing. Usually either incomplete information, or some kind of sales spam, so I’m reaching out in the hopes of recommendations for actual linux users and fans. I am looking for a very small, tiny even, security/privacy focused distro. I don’t mind doing...
Favourite DE
My favourite DE has got to be Cinnamon, as much as I like KDE and XFCE, I prefer the simplicity of cinnamon where as in KDE has a bit too much of everything in the customization scene and XFCE I find a little tricky to get tiling working right....
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Can anyone recommend a lightweight, stable distro for a thinkpad?
I’m looking to mainly use it for school and was wondering if there’s any recommended distros out there for thinkpads....
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What is the best model of used ThinkPad to purchase?
I’m thinking of picking up a used ThinkPad on eBay for cheap to serve as my daily driver. I’ll likely run LMDE, and primarily use it for web browsing, office programs, coding, and FreeCAD. Any recommendations on which model would best hit the sweet spot of capability vs price?
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