Posted on 03/23/2022 7:17:15 AM PDT by ShadowAce
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_X_series#X201,_X201i_and_X201s
2.53-2.54GHz i5 ought to run any flavor of Ubuntu you want. Ubuntu is stable and you can search for a question on the web and pretty much always find an answer because there are so many people using it.
Have a look here; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu#Variants
Linux Mint is also pretty popular and is based on Ubuntu so it should be on the list above but isn’t for some reason; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint
My favorite is Kubuntu and it runs very fast on my old Lenovo Thinkpad laptop with 2.7GHz i7 processor. Best thing to do is check those official Ubuntu distributions and then loo for youtube videos that show the desktop and go from there.
Linux/Ubuntu can shrink Windows and install itself beside it and then you get a menu during startup to choose to boot to Windows or Linux/Ubuntu. You do need a good amount of free space for that. It’s also best to run disk defragmenter first in windows because that will organize the files onto one section of the hard drive instead of scattered across it.
As far as installation, there are tons of tutorials out there on the web, either as dual boot as above or as single - wipe out windows. Of course back up any files you want to save before doing anything.
Linux and Thinkpads get along pretty well.
Many distros allow you to install the OS on a flash drive and try it to see how it works. Understand that it may run a bit slower off a flash drive that on the hard drive on the computer itself.
To use any of these or others, check their specific websites for instructions. Usually just download the image, burn it to a flash drive and try it. If you like it, then you can install it.
Prior to doing that, make sure that you copy whatever you want to keep from the old computer so that if anything goes wrong, you still have copies.
For example, I just installed that latest Ubuntu on an old 2007 Gateway 17” laptop that ran windows 7. I backed up all my pics, music and documents onto a 64GB flash drive I had laying around.
I downloaded the latest version of Ubuntu from ubuntu.com. It was around 1.2GB. I installed it using Etcher onto a 8GB flash drive I had laying around. (you can get etcher at etcher.io or rufus at rufus.ie to burn the .iso file)
After creating the image on the flash drive, I Inserted the flash drive into the Gateway, booted and immediately hit f12 to get into the boot menu and clicked the option that allowed the Gateway to boot from flash drive (that varies from machine to machine — my dell uses f2 to get into that menu).
Ubuntu booted and I played with it a while to make sure the screen displayed correctly, the touchpad worked, etc. Once I was sure it was okay I clicked install on the screen and let it work.
There are a lot of tutorials online for making the flash drive from the .iso image file, and using etcher or rufus to burn them.
There are also a lot of tutorials online for installing the distro you choose. Spend some time reading up and you will be good to go.
Bookmarked
Thanks!
Nothing. Just install Linux from a disk, and it will,format the drive during the install process I beleive. Watch some YouTube bideos on it to familiarize yourself with it
You could format the windows drive first, the install, which is why I would do
I forgot to mention... most distros give you the option of wiping the drive and installing linux alone, installing along side windows, or resizing the drive however you want and shrinking the windows partition.
If you don’t want or need the windows any longer, choose to wipe the drive and install it. If you think you may still want to boot into windows later, choose to install linux along side windows.
Have fun
Forgot to mention though, get a disk of Linux made (it’s pretty easy to do, again watch YouTube videos,onmit) and try it out first to see if you will like,it and that it Will run ok on your machine
Good point. I woild dual boot till I was sure I liked Linux, then wipe the partition clean if I chose to go back to windows, or wipe windows partition clean and expand the Linux partition if I wanted Linux. It’s all pretty easy to do with granted.
How long would it take me to save the image to cassette for my TRS80 (TRaSh80)?
Kubuntu seems to run good on anything, even this little Acer AspireOne with 1GHz processor and 4gb ram. None of the supposed lightweight distros did any better. Just tried LXLE today and had tried all the rest recently. KDE apps are tightly integrated with the Plasma desktop and Plasma was made with mobile in mind. You can buy a phone that runs Plasma-mobile. Several years ago, Plasma was buggy but they seem to have it straight now. I’m running Kubuntu 18.04 on the Acer.
Scott Adams' Adventure series would take 21 minutes to load.
And those were all text-based.
So which one is the simplest, most practical version for an ancient Windows 7 machine?
So which one is the simplest, most practical version for an ancient Windows 7 machine?
You can burn it to a USB stick, and boot it off of that to test drive it before you commit to a HDD install.
If you end up not liking it, you can choose one of the others and do the same thing--put it on a USB stick and test drive it.
Cool, thanks.
1. Puppy Linux. Even https://www.dedoimedo.com (which I find to provide the most frank assessment commends it much. One aspect I like in particular, “I also noticed BionicPup comes with a tremendously rich context menu. Just right-click on a file, and you’ll see an endless list of options..”
You would like https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/windows-moving-away-sw-checklist.html Related: https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/windows-11-six-months-review.html
But you know my opinion, while I hope that the legal aspect regarding certain multimedia codecs becomes a non-issue due to not needing them.
[So which one is the simplest, most practical version for an ancient Windows 7 machine?]
https://www.amazon.com/Acronis-True-Image-2021-Computer/dp/B08KFRY61F
And purchase an SSD roughly the size of your existing hard drive. Do yourself a favor and keep the original drive as a backup.
Thank you.
I highly recommend Zorin. It is very much like Windows 7.
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