Replacing Vista with Linux OS on Toshiba A00

[Oldgeekguy]

I have an old laptop running Vista Home Basic. It has 2 gig of ram,and a 60 gig hard drive, Intel Celeron(R) M CPU 430 @ 1.73GHz 1.73GHz 32 bit Operating System. I was thinking of replacing the Vista OS with a Linux OS of some kind. What is recommended for this old machine? The Vista OS is super slow,and I hate it. I am not that computer literate,so if someone could point me to a website that could help me,I would be grateful!

[JerryF]

I was trying to look up your Toshiba A00 on the web, but can't find it. Is there another number for the model somewhere?

[chrisuk]

I don't think your CPU supports 64 bit instructions, so you'll need a 32 bit Operating System... check the specs of the CPU at the Intel website, or just type the CPU model into Google. You'll then need to download ISOs and burn/write to DVD or USB Stick. I'd start with MX Linux. Just boot your Computer from the DVD or USB Stick and check it supports all of your hardware... and how responsive it is. If everything is to your satisfaction (be sure... play with the OS for a while) install it.

Instructions on burning the ISO can be found by searching the MX Forum (or this forum).

Keep checking this thread, as others will advise different Linux Distros, although if you need 32 bit it will limit your choice.

[TooMuchTime]

Is this your laptop? If so, Mint Xfce should run fine on it. Check the system requirements.

Code: Select all

Intel Celeron M 430 (1.73 GHz)
512 MB Memory 80 GB HDD
ATI Radeon Xpress 200M IGP
1280 x 800
Windows Vista Home Basic

Remember, that's a 32-bit processor so make sure to download the 32-bit version of Mint Xfce. Backup any data before you begin. With a 60GiB HD you will need to be somewhat judicious in your partitioning. A 1GiB boot partition and a 1.5GiB swap area with the remainder as your root partition should be fine. You should also backup your home folder regularly.

[Tomgin5]

I have 2 latops of a similar vintage with 60 GIG HD one a SSD. One a M430 processor in a 32 bit. The other a single core atom. I run one on LM18.1 cinnamon 32 and the other LM 17.0 ver2 cinnamon 32. They are both decidedly slower than the faster dual to quad core CPU's but they are both much faster than the XP they did have. WIFI and all!

[jimallyn]

I have run Mint 17/18 on similar spec computers. You will definitely want the XFCE desktop as it uses the least resources (RAM and CPU). I suspect that will give you better performance on that machine that Vista ever did. But, if that seems a little weak to run Mint, MX is another good choice, and for machines that are weaker still, antiX is quite good.

[Pierre]

so I've got a collection of X-Vista laptops, like this one, that I'm using right now.

they are all basically 32bit PCs, but can indeed run a 32bit PAE kernel,
which is great as a few of them have 4Gbs ram, rather than 3Gb ram.

otherwise, they all have similar spec's to what was mentioned.
- they all are running the LM17x Mate version of LinuxMint.
but they will eventually all get upgraded to LM18x Mate .. ..

[Petermint]

Here is a way to test your options. Download a live version of Linux onto a USB stick and boot from there. You can then test the Linux distribution on your machine.

When you have the machine booted into Linux, you can use the Linux Mint administration applications or the ancient command line commands like:
http://www.binarytides.com/linux-comman ... ware-info/

The loading of code from the USB stick will be slow. After a program is loaded, the speed will depend on your computer. If you have a graphics chip in the machine, you can run something like Cinnamon and the slightly skinnier cousin MATE. When there is no graphics chip, you need the lighter weight XFCE or LXDE.

At an extreme, you could use the anorexic command line but after using something as modern as Vista, I am sure you do not want to revert to 1935.

For machines dating from the early days of Vista, your disk is about to go clunk. A disk upgrade will be the main hardware upgrade. Be sure to vacuum the junk out of the fan when you have the case open to replace the disk.