Kubuntu/Lubuntu/XP?

[Tom_ZeCat]

Our household has inherited a clunky old Lenovo laptop. It's got a Celeron 1.6 GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM, and a 40 GB hard drive. It originally had less RAM, probably 1 GB, but I can't be sure. It may have had as little as 512MB. It has Windows XP Home, which boots up sssssssslllllllloooooooowwwwwwwwwllllllyyyyyy. It took forever to try to find a driver for my external Seagate hard drive, and never did succeed. Even when I simply right clicked on My Computer to find out its specs, it took a really long time. This thing is at least 10 years old. The previous owners probably never once reinstalled the OS or defragged the hard drive.

It's going to be my roommate's computer. He's a novice. He owns a nice Dell touchscreen desktop with Windows 7 that boots up quickly. I think he'll be annoyed with the turtles-in-molasses speed of this laptop. Hence, I'm thinking of slapping Linux on it for him. I could just reinstall XP, but the license key on the bottom has just about rubbed off. It's not readable by me (though I haven't tried younger eyes yet). I know there are ways around this, but they're not legal ways.

My roommate's needs are basic. He's going to run LibreOffice Calc, CherryTree (http://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/), Skype, FreeFileSync, and he'll upload digital camera jpegs, probably with a card reader. That's it. These are all things that can be done easily in Linux.

So, my question: Should I go with Kubuntu or a lighter-weight distro like Lubuntu? I know back when I was using Ubuntu 8.04, Kubuntu was a lighter-weight distro, but I'm not sure if that still holds today. Kubuntu has the advantage of my having used it for several months now, so I know my way around it pretty well. However, if this older machine would perform markedly better with Lubuntu, that may be the best choice. I should be able to run any of that software in either distro.

Or since he's a ground-level novice, should I consider reinstalling XP? Is Linux/Kubuntu/Lubuntu truly over its power-user-only ways so that it's now novice friendly? He won't have to install the OS or any of the software. I'll handle all that. I have found that Linux is definitely still more finicky than Windows about mounting drives. With Windows you can get away with just sticking in a thumb drive when you want and pulling it out whenver. Not so much with Linux. I would have to educate him with that. I do think the fact that he won't have to use any antivirus, schedule scans, updates, etc. is a big plus for Linux.

One final question: Is it very hard to find a web cam that's Linux-supported? Skyping is important to him and the laptop has no cam.

Edit: And he'll be printing with a Kodak photo printer (normally just documents).

[Snowhog]

It's likely that Kubuntu would run on this rig just fine. Burn a LiveCD and give it a try.

[arochester]

The one problem I can see is the Kodak printer. Kodak was notoriously bad with Linux. The specific model is important. One place to find out is here: http://www.openprinting.org/printers

[NickStone]

KDE should run fine on that aging laptop but you might have to disable desktop effects as the graphics card might not be able to handle those effects. On my aging dell desktop with and added 1GB ram to the 256MB it had already a few years ago I installed Kubuntu 11.10 but it couldn't handle the KDE desktop effects so I switched it off and it performed fine. I now have Debian 7 with KDE on the same machine and the desktop effects work fine on here so it must have been a kubuntu thing.

One of the advantages of KDE for a Windows user is that the interface looks like Windows Vista/7.

But you will have better performance with Lubuntu or Xubuntu, give them a try.

[Rod J]

I installed Kubuntu 11.04 on my brother's old Dell D2400 (Celeron 2.4Ghz) and it ran (limped, more like) a dog. Even worse than XP ran on it. Had to turn off all effects and even then it struggled to do anything. Perhaps it needed more fine tuning to improve the performance. Mind you, it only had 756Mb ram and probably that was the main reason it ran so slow, I guess the Celeron CPU too.

Some time earlier I had installed Xubuntu 10.04 on my niece's old Sony Vaio laptop (Pentium4 2.8Ghz, 500Mb ram) and that ran very well, much faster than WinXP did on it. She happily used that for over a year till she got a new laptop with Windows 7 on it.

So, I would say you'd be better off with Xubuntu or Lubuntu.

[whatthefunk]

Im guessing that KDE will struggle on that. Celeron era processors and old laptop graphics cards dont do well with excessive eye candy. Kubuntu would probably boot fine and run alright until you started opening up resource intense programs. If he had Libre Office, a web browser and another couple programs open at the same time, it would probably slow down quite a lot. I would try Lubuntu. It looks decent, gives a traditional desktop that he'll be accustomed to, and has a lot of functionality and customization. For something even lighter, try Crunchbang. Its fairly easy to use, but out-of-the-box it doesnt give a start menu. Add lxpanel to give a more traditional feel to the desktop.

[zeeone]

I find for a single core CPU a lite desktop is a must. If you want to stay in the Ubuntu family, then I recommend;

Lubuntu with Chrome browser.

Xubuntu with FireFox browser.

Both should work ok with that old of machine.

However, my first choice would be AntiX M13 32 bit, because it is full feature disto made for much older machines(and newer ones too).
Here AntiX is loaded on an 1.4 Pentium III with 512 mg RAM machine.

[Tom_ZeCat]

Thanks, everyone. The printer is a Kodak ESP Office 6150 and I did find a Linux driver for it (http://www.openprinting.org/driver/c2esp). I've downloaded ISOs for Kubuntu, Lubuntu, and AntiX and am going to try them out via disk before picking one.

One final issue: the web cam. Since it does not have one, we'll buy one separately. Does anyone know if Logitech, Microsoft, or some other brand is good about supporting Linux with cams? We'll just make sure to buy one that is well supported, even if that means buying online. If you have one that works well, speak up. We may just get the same one. We won't need one ultra fancy, but we probably won't go bottom-of-the-line either.

[Snowhog]

Webcams: Take a look at Webcam | Linux Hardware Guide.com

When you click on any of the products you are provided specific information about its linux compatibility.

[GreyGeek]

What Snowhog said.

My experience is that Logitech webcams work the best on Linux. And of their offerings the C2XX series worked the best.
Here is the C210: http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-960-0...ch+webcam+c210

[Tom_ZeCat]

Thank you all very much for your help. I know what web cam to get now. First, I've got another hurdle to get over. I've gone with Kubuntu, which runes fine except that the wireless networking card isn't working. I'm going to start a new thread about that.

[arochester]

Printer. Look here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1564568

[GreyGeek]

Allow me to recommend the HP 1606 dn duplex laser printer.
http://www.amazon.com/HP-LaserJet-P1...rds=hp+1606+dn
TUrn it on and plug it into a USB port (requires a 2.0 port) or make an 10/100 eth connection and it is configured automatically. I love the duplex feature. Saves tons of paper. Depending on the capacity of the toner cartridge you buy (from $12 to $70) it can print up to 5,000 pages per cartridge. I bought mine 3 years ago and am still on my first cartridge, although I had to give it a shake a couple days ago.

Color inkjets are cheap, but the ink is not, and quality varies widely. I bought a duplex laser to get excellent quality BW printing, and I take jpgs to Walmart or Walgreens to get color photos made cheaply when ever I need to. Best of both worlds, IMO.

[Tom_ZeCat]

Allow me to recommend the HP 1606 dn duplex laser printer.
http://www.amazon.com/HP-LaserJet-P1...rds=hp+1606+dn
TUrn it on and plug it into a USB port (requires a 2.0 port) or make an 10/100 eth connection and it is configured automatically. I love the duplex feature. Saves tons of paper. Depending on the capacity of the toner cartridge you buy (from $12 to $70) it can print up to 5,000 pages per cartridge. I bought mine 3 years ago and am still on my first cartridge, although I had to give it a shake a couple days ago.

Color inkjets are cheap, but the ink is not, and quality varies widely. I bought a duplex laser to get excellent quality BW printing, and I take jpgs to Walmart or Walgreens to get color photos made cheaply when ever I need to. Best of both worlds, IMO.

I agree completely. I own an HP Laserjet 1006 kudos to HP for their Linux support. I installed HPLIP from the respository and the printer has worked perfectly since. I don't have to buy ink every 5 minutes. Ink in injets dries up if you don't use it. If you use it, the ink gets used up quickly. If you don't use it, it dries up. Either way you've got to spend a bunch of money to maintain the [bleepin'] thing.

My rommie bought his Kodak before I lived here. I would have advised him against it.

[jlittle]

Color inkjets are cheap, but the ink is not...

HP Officejets do not follow that pricing model; the printer's not cheap and the ink reasonable, if not cheap.

Regards, John Little