Hi, I have recently upgraded to a new ultrabook and I was thinking of repurposing my older one to familiarize myself with Linux on a daily basis. The machine is a Asus UX305F: 800 MHz Intel Core M-5Y10c 1,2 GHz Intel HD Graphics 5300. 8 GB 1600 MHz LPDDR3 RAM. 128 GB SanDisk M.2 SSDI envisage a normal use surfing, watching movies, streaming Netflix/Spotify, some basic movie editing, doing document work and email.. I would also intend to use a VM to install my Win 8,1 to run Office 2013 and AmiBroker, a technical analysis software. No gaming. I have very limited previous experience to the Linux world, mainly having played around with some old Ubuntu distro in a VMWare on windows. M;y questions: given the hardware, would you recommend a particular distro? for the VM: VirtualBox, VMWare or KVM? any other suggestions tips or links to learn more are appreciated thanks to all who'll chip in!
1. Hmmm... The hard drive and memory won't be a problem. But because CPU (max speed 2GHz) I would personally suggest slightly lighter version of normal Linux distro so to not waste resources to unneeded eye-candy and get the OS out-of-the way. Here's what I would try in order to see what works best: - Mint 19.1 Xfce 64-bit version https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=265 - Lubuntu 18.10 https://lubuntu.net/downloads/ - Fedora LXDE spin https://spins.fedoraproject.org/en/lxde/ 2. VirtualBox. Has been hassle free for me and they have nice forum https://forums.virtualbox.org/ 3. Only one: Patience. Even tought border between Windows and Linux world is smaller than ever (for example: pretty much same applications for basic stuff like surfing, e-mail, office stuff etc...) there still might sometimes be some slight learning curve of how things are done in Linux world. EDIT: Also, if the above suggested distros won't work for some reason I offer 2 more solid but less well known distro candinates here just in case: PCLinuxOS https://www.pclinuxos.com/get-pclinuxos/mate/ Devuan https://devuan.org/os/debian-fork/ascii-stable-announce-060818
I'd say Ubuntu and VirtualBox. But that CPU only has two cores, and is comparable to an i3. That's a little wimpy for running Windows in a VM. You have enough RAM for it though. Edit: Or better, as Stefan says, Mint or Lubuntu. Even better would be a setup that just uses openbox, rather than a full window manager. But that would take some learning.
Asking for recommendations is always likely to generate a long list as everyone has their favorites and overall there are just too many distros to choose from. Suffice to say some of the lesser known options are likely to give better service than others at the top end of the popularity pole. The good news of course is most can be tried via a live session until you find something you’re happy with before committing to a full install. My own experience suggests most users prefer to use something they like the look of unless a specific need (eg security/Parrot) dictates a particular choice. All of the available Linux DE’s provide their own individual look out of the box but this can be radically changed with just a few minutes work. The best success I have with recommendations is to point folks to this thread and suggest they work backwards from the last post and pick out two or three they like from the images shown. https://www.techsupportalert.com/fr.../514-what-does-your-desktop-look-like-56.html From there it’s possible to narrow down a choice based on system specs and how easy/hard it might be to customize the base distro into what is shown in the screenshots.
Linux Mint Cinnamon is a popular distro, is friendly to Windows ex-pats, and it has a good support community. This is important, because with Linux, you probably will be hitting the forums from time to time, and it's quite important to have a support community that is survivable for newcomers.
Thank you, Stefan Froberg, mirimir, Gringo95 and shmu28 for your contributions. I understand that my old notebook has not the fastest CPU, so I'll take this into account on my choice of distro to try out. Also, even though I wrote about running a Windows VM, this is a plus, if it does not work out is not a problem - after all the basic idea is to get familiar with Linux I also share the point of view that for a newbie looks (a proxy for familiarity ?) are important, and I'll take it into account. I appreciate your taking the time to give me some orientation
Your cpu will run fine every distro/enviroment. If you want to play/expirement with the system go with an xfce enviroment... if you mess-up your desktop you can easily revert to the default settings by simply deleting the folder "~/.config/xfce4". Panagiotis
As has been noted, everybody has his favorites. I would second Linux Mint, although the VM might be an issue. Disregarding the VM, with your specs you should be fine with the Cinnamon version, which is the slickest. The XFCE version is a bit lighter and quite functional but feels a little dated. However, you'd use it if you you really wanted to run that Windows VM and were unsatisfied with the performance under Cinnamon; even then it might be a bit pokey. VirtualBox is probably the default choice for hypervisor. So all I'm doing is mirroring previous comments. But let me be the first to advise you to read Dedoimedo's Ultimate Guide to Linux for Windows Users -- twice.
I prefer Kubuntu but started off with Linux Mint because of this excellent resource, https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com/p/1.html. It helped me to get to know what's involved in being a Linux user and gave me the confidence to try other distros.
Panagiotis, sbwhiteman, langh thanks for the comments and the resources, I appreciate it seems there is a consensus about Linux Mint being a good way to start
i started with Mint as well, then like you will probably do , i distro-hopped, stayed long time with Kubuntu then ended with Linux MX
You are welcome. I would recommend to go to https://www.distrowatch.com/ and try some live isos from the first 10-15 more popular and go for the one that you like the best. Panagiotis
Just recently installed Mint Mate (again) on: Intel Celeron N2840 @ 2.16GHz 8 GB RAM 240 GB SSD Here's my earlier thread with informative links. https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/linux-for-beginners.386874/
I use xenial puppy linux.It is small and can be installed and booted from on any device including an external hard drive or can be run from a bootable cd.Only problem if you like is there is no automated package manager.
I'm loving Mint Mate on that machine. I runs much better than when I first tried Cinnamon and I love not having to chase all over the web to update programs. Admittedly, that machine will only be used for browsing and mainly just a few forums, but that's all I used it for when Windows was installed and just got sick of the continuous BSODs when the OS couldn't boot. Blasted Windows 10! No such issue with Mint. Apparently the bad driver wasn't supplied with Linux. I would have to say that Firefox runs better in Mint on that machine than it did on Windows too. Another major plus, it is actually quite liberating not to have to worry about antivirus , anti-this, anti-that, nor anti-anything else. I've just enabled the firewall and will keep it updated. I have added NoScript + uBlock Origin and a few other favourites into Firefox but that's about it. I may look into Firejail at some point. Being a Windows user, I'm still more comfortable using a GUI than commands, though I believe there is a program for that too. Mint Mate 19.1 even has a built in backup program, so what's not to like?
I always thought Firefox ran better on Ubuntu than Windows. Chrome also runs well. I've never regretted buying a laptop preinstalled with Linux.
A nice way to share one's system's specs is by using inxi which is in the software center: Code: $ inxi -SMCGz System: Host: kububb Kernel: 4.15.0-47-generic x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.12.7 Distro: Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS (Bionic Beaver) Machine: Type: Laptop System: Dell product: Inspiron 15-3567 v: N/A serial: <filter> Mobo: Dell model: 0FGN4M v: A00 serial: <filter> UEFI: Dell v: 01.07.00 date: 04/07/2017 CPU: Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core i3-6006U bits: 64 type: MCP L2 cache: 3072 KiB Speed: 500 MHz min/max: 400/2000 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 500 2: 500 Graphics: Device-1: Intel Skylake GT2 [HD Graphics 520] driver: i915 v: kernel Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.19.6 driver: intel resolution: 1366x768~60Hz OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 520 (Skylake GT2) v: 4.5 Mesa 18.2.8 $ "-z" replaces private information with "<filter>". inxi can provide a lot of other information as well.
