33 replies to this topic

[V.T. Eric Layton]

My niece donated her old, tired laptop to uncle Eric yesterday because she knows her uncle can make this baby sing again with Linux. I'm downloading Zorin to install on the lappy. It's lightweight enough for this 30Gig hdd/760M RAM system. Plus, I'd been wanting to try this "Window/Linux transitional distribution" ever since Réjean or someone else around here mentioned it a couple weeks back. Oh, the old laptop is a Dell Latitude D610.

http://systemepc.com/product_images/dell%20d610.jpg

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Well, scratch the Zorin idea for now. Their servers are ridiculously slow (iBiblio). I'm not going to wait 12+ hours to download 1.1Gig. That's dial-up speed.

Plan B: Vector Linux 7

[crp]

Well, scratch the Zorin idea for now. Their servers are ridiculously slow (iBiblio). I'm not going to wait 12+ hours to download 1.1Gig. That's dial-up speed.

Plan B: Vector Linux 7

1.1G? Are you dl'ing the correct one - should not you be trying  Zorin OS 5.2 Lite is the streamlined version of Zorin OS for old and low-spec computers ?

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Nah... I was downloading the full version. It should run well on this lappy. But maybe another time... I installed Vector 7.0 instead. It's NICE! A plus is that I'm familiar with Vector, so no surprises. I kinda' like their Cairo Dock/Xfce combination default desktop (see image below).

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Vector Linux 7.0 Standard – a Mini-Review

[ichase]

Just love the way that old laptops that might be headed to the dump can be quick usable Linux Machines.  I have an old Toshiba Satelite with 1/2 gig of memory maxed out, 40 GB HDD and running Bodhi Linux.  Boots fast and runs great.

Good Job Eric, you saved another gem.  

[securitybreach]

Another machine saved

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Another machine saved

Yeah... and I had to umm... bypass her Win XP Admin password to do this because she had forgotten it. She had 4+ Gig of family pics on the machine that she absolutely had to have.

[securitybreach]

But of course   

[zlim]

She had 4+ Gig of family pics on the machine that she absolutely had to have.

And I'll bet she never bothered archiving the irreplaceable pictures to an external hd or CDs/DVDs. People expect that the hd will just continue working forever then cry about all the irreplaceable things on the hd that was never backed up off the computer.

[amenditman]

So true, few users do proper backups. Always expect the hard drive to just keep spinning.
Unfortunately, premature hard drive failure is very common in laptops.

@zlim - Those irreplacable photos and memories are not unrecoverable. It's just really expensive to get them recovered from a failed drive. Mechanical hard drives seldom fail in a way that prevents data recovery.

@Eric - That is a great laptop. What processor and speed does it have? RAM? (I might have some ram on hand for that machine). Mine had a high end Pentium M (a mobile P3- one of the best in the entire Pentium line up) and ram upgradeable to 2 GB. This machine screams with Linux on it.

Edited by amenditman, 14 March 2012 - 06:07 PM.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

And I'll bet she never bothered archiving the irreplaceable pictures to an external hd or CDs/DVDs. People expect that the hd will just continue working forever then cry about all the irreplaceable things on the hd that was never backed up off the computer.

You are absolutely CORRECT!

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Processor, 80536, Pentium M Dothan, Pentium M Dothan, 1.6GHZ, 2 MEGB, 533FSB

Dual In-line Memory Module 256, 400, 32X64, 8K, 200, 512

Before I wiped it, Win XP was reporting 760M addressable memory.

[amenditman]

About what I thought.

Mine was a 1.5 with the same memory set up. It ran all the light linuxes well. The big distros/desktops were a bit much for it. Then I found a 1 GB stick of ram and bumped it up to 1.5 GB and it rocked them all.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Vector w/ Xfce is relatively lightweight. I was doing numerous things on it today and it never even came close to using 1/2 my available RAM. CPU was rarely ever above 10% usage. Temps nice and cool.

I hadn't even thought of it till just now, but Vector didn't even ask me to set up a /swap partition when I installed it. Hmm...

[securitybreach]

I hadn't even thought of it till just now, but Vector didn't even ask me to set up a /swap partition when I installed it. Hmm...

That is odd  

Glad you found a distro that works great on the laptop. Sometimes it is hard to do that with older machines.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

I seem to be batting a 1000 with older Dells.

I'd still like to try Zorin, though. It looked pretty neato.

Also, that glx-cairo dock in Vector is pretty darned neat, too. I'm sorely tempted to install and set it up in Slack and Arch on my main systems and your Dell lappy.

[réjean]

Hi Eric!
I have been playing with the 32 -bit version of Zorin in Vbox for a few evenings now.



You are right it took me over 12 hours to download it last week. I figured what the heck I was outside cutting wood that day anyway so it is not that I was waiting impatiently for it to finish downloading.
I cannot burn a .iso DVD these days because my burner is not working well ( K3B tells me that it has done the job successfully while it did not ( talking about other distros and wrong md5sum or sha-1 ) so I cannot really speak about its performance as a fully installed distro.
It does look good, comes with Google Chrome AND Wine and should be easy to use for someone with mostly a Windows background.

Here is another picture;

Edited by réjean, 15 March 2012 - 07:40 PM.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Yes. I was leaning toward Zorin because it's possible that I might pass this machine along to someone who's only computer experience is Windows. I figured the Zorin might get them started in Linux without too much pain. This person is just a web surfer, emailer; not a serious computer user at all. If I decide to give them this lappy, the Vector will suffice.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Also, that glx-cairo dock in Vector is pretty darned neat, too. I'm sorely tempted to install and set it up in Slack and Arch on my main systems and your Dell lappy.

Well, after installing and playing around with cairo-dock on my Arch installation, I've decided that it's really neat eye candy, but I can do everything I need to with plain-jane xfce-panel, so... why bother? I've removed it and put everything back to normal. Yay! I may actually remove it from Vector on that new-acquired lappy, too. Or, at least, stop using it. It's pretty, but redundant... and I'm set in my ways.

Off I go...

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Well, the nluug (The Netherlands) server is hauling buttocks tonight, so I'm attempting to d-load Zorin OS again. If all goes well, I'm going to wipe the Vector Linux off of my niece's lappy and install the Zorin as initially planned.

I'll keep ya' posted...

[securitybreach]

Well, the nluug (The Netherlands) server is hauling buttocks tonight, so I'm attempting to d-load Zorin OS again. If all goes well, I'm going to wipe the Vector Linux off of my niece's lappy and install the Zorin as initially planned.

I'll keep ya' posted...

[amenditman]

And the fun rolls on.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Laissez les bons temps rouler. FAT32Tueday!  

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Well, it's been one of those days...

I installed Zorin without a hitch on this laptop this morning. Unfortunately, I discovered that the "Z" key on the keyboard is shot. I could not fix it. I did find a replacement Dell keyboard on eBay from the same seller that I purchased that other keyboard from my Inspiron last year. Cost = $10.13. That's ten bucks I shouldn't be spending, but it's worth it if I manage to sell this little laptop to someone for $75-100 or so.

I took the laptop apart. It's sitting out on the bench in the workshop. The keyboard will be here Friday. Zorin was pretty cool. They've made up a custom theme that looks a lot like Win 7. I didn't get to play around much with it, though. I'll have a chance to run it around the track a few times once I get the new keyboard installed.

What is it with these Dell keyboards breaking keys all the time?