robjg63: Whatever you do, put an SSD in your laptop. I assume it has an old Hard drive in it currently. The SSDs make a massive difference to any device over the old spinning drives.
Chrome OS is not designed to be installed on a normal PC. While it's possible, I wouldn't recommend the process to a newbie. It takes a bit of tinkering and has hardware requirements.
Give Xubuntu a go, you'll find it much easier. And yes, dual booting is possible (having both windows and linux installed).
Neverware's Cloud Ready Chromium OS is very simple to install. Neverware is now owned by Google.
I managed to get it up and running on the laptop. I then choose Install OS.
It started installing, but after a while it was on the desktop like everything was normal. But the Install OS still appeared, when I clicked on the information button.
When I then removed it and restarted the laptop, it said Boot Device Not Found.
So it looks like although it says it will install the OS, it doesn't actually do it. It only runs from the USB.
I understand that this is a bit OT now (sorry), so will ask the question in the Chrome thread and won't discuss Chrome OS further here.
I managed to get it up and running on the laptop. I then choose Install OS.
It started installing, but after a while it was on the desktop like everything was normal. But the Install OS still appeared, when I clicked on the information button.
When I then removed it and restarted the laptop, it said Boot Device Not Found.
So it looks like although it says it will install the OS, it doesn't actually do it. It only runs from the USB.
I understand that this is a bit OT now (sorry), so will ask the question in the Chrome thread and won't discuss Chrome OS further here.
This sounds like a UEFI issue. Age of the laptop might be a problem here. However; dig into the BIOS and see if there are any UEFI settings that might need enabling. Might find after that you still need to do another install (there are ways to avoid that but TBH a new install is often easier/faster!)
I managed to get it up and running on the laptop. I then choose Install OS.
It started installing, but after a while it was on the desktop like everything was normal. But the Install OS still appeared, when I clicked on the information button.
When I then removed it and restarted the laptop, it said Boot Device Not Found.
So it looks like although it says it will install the OS, it doesn't actually do it. It only runs from the USB.
I understand that this is a bit OT now (sorry), so will ask the question in the Chrome thread and won't discuss Chrome OS further here.
This sounds like a UEFI issue. Age of the laptop might be a problem here. However; dig into the BIOS and see if there are any UEFI settings that might need enabling. Might find after that you still need to do another install (there are ways to avoid that but TBH a new install is often easier/faster!)
Thanks, will look into it. Just giving Ubuntu a go now.
A tried Ubuntu Mate yesterday. Was pretty fast. However, strange issue: When I plugged the AC adaptor in, the screen turned black. As soon as I unplugged it, screen turned on again.
Total guess here... its the brightness settings and for some reason has defaulted to as dark as it can go when plugged in. I assume your laptop has hotkeys for that so try them.
Total guess here... its the brightness settings and for some reason has defaulted to as dark as it can go when plugged in. I assume your laptop has hotkeys for that so try them.
Unsure and I’ve uninstalled it now. Might try again, but trying a few other options first.
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if you are unhappy with the performance of Win7 on this pc - then don't expect to be blown away with the performance of a fully fledged linux distro. They are modern OS's that require modern hardware in most cases.
From experience I can say the above is a good rule of thumb. I run both Linux and (occasionally) Windows 10 on my laptop with an SSD drive and the performance difference between the two is negligible. I've run both Linux and Windows (as well as macOS) on other machines with a HDD and all I can say it was slow no matter the OS. Hence I second the recommendation for an SSD--it'll make more of a difference than changing the OS.
Older machines can struggle with browsing the modern web. I acknowledge the much improved JavaScript engines in modern browsers--however these improvements can only go so far on older hardware. The performance of JavaScript-heavy sites (e.g. Facebook, Google Docs/Sheets/etc, Twitter, etc) can be sluggish on older hardware. If you use the web a lot you may find JavaScript performance to be more of a bottleneck than your OS. The only saving grace Linux has is you can install the latest versions of Firefox/Chrome/etc with recent enhancements to its JavaScript engine--which is not possible on Windows 7.
Keep your expectations realistic--Linux is not a miracle cure.
if you are unhappy with the performance of Win7 on this pc - then don't expect to be blown away with the performance of a fully fledged linux distro. They are modern OS's that require modern hardware in most cases.
From experience I can say the above is a good rule of thumb. I run both Linux and (occasionally) Windows 10 on my laptop with an SSD drive and the performance difference between the two is negligible. I've run both Linux and Windows (as well as macOS) on other machines with a HDD and all I can say it was slow no matter the OS. Hence I second the recommendation for an SSD--it'll make more of a difference than changing the OS.
Older machines can struggle with browsing the modern web. I acknowledge the much improved JavaScript engines in modern browsers--however these improvements can only go so far on older hardware. The performance of JavaScript-heavy sites (e.g. Facebook, Google Docs/Sheets/etc, Twitter, etc) can be sluggish on older hardware. If you use the web a lot you may find JavaScript performance to be more of a bottleneck than your OS. The only saving grace Linux has is you can install the latest versions of Firefox/Chrome/etc with recent enhancements to its JavaScript engine--which is not possible on Windows 7.
Keep your expectations realistic--Linux is not a miracle cure.
While I agree with you that a) raw performance doesn't differ a lot between Windows and Linux and b) Linux is not a miracle cure, I will point out a couple of things which can make the Linux experience on an old machine much more pleasant than on Windows.
First, your choice of desktop environment has a huge impact on user experience. Earlier in this thread someone mentioned that GNOME was lighter and faster than KDE - but in my mind they are both at the heavy and slow end of the spectrum, and not the best choice for the machine the OP has enquired about. I have a similar spec machine which runs well with LXDE, much snappier and more responsive than GNOME or KDE. I wouldn't use anything heavier than Cinnamon, which I would say sits in the middle of the spectrum. Of course, at the extreme "lightweight" end, you have desktops like IceWM (e.g. as available in AntiX), which will use only about 130 MB of RAM on boot, but I wouldn't recommend that for this user as it has a bit of a learning curve.
I also prefer the RH family to the Debian family, so I would feel most comfortable recommending either Fedora LXDE or Fedora Cinnamon for this user and his specific machine. Recent packages, well tested, reliable, lightweight(-ish).
Second, you're right that the modern web is incredibly heavy with JavaScript, but a lot of that is down to the amount of code associated with ads and trackers on certain pages. The installation of a good ad blocker (uBlock Origin) will go a long way to speeding up browsing on an old machine like this. Some websites will see a ten times speed up in render time, others won't improve much but overall it'll be much more pleasant.
Second, you're right that the modern web is incredibly heavy with JavaScript, but a lot of that is down to the amount of code associated with ads and trackers on certain pages. The installation of a good ad blocker (uBlock Origin) will go a long way to speeding up browsing on an old machine like this. Some websites will see a ten times speed up in render time, others won't improve much but overall it'll be much more pleasant.
It depends on the site. Common sites visited by typical end users can be quite JS heavy even if you exclude the code relevant to ads. Facebook is a great example of this. It runs heaps of its own JS that have nothing to do with ads, so blockers have little effect TBH.
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