Chris, You got that right. My old Acer laptop had become so slow that it was almost unusable for about 15 minutes after it was powered on. I decided to install MX Linux 18 on it and was amazed at the difference in speed. I does take a little over a minute to boot up, but this is because of the old technology. Once it has all initialized, all of the programs start and run quickly and it runs as fast as it did when it was new. Linux really saved this machine from the Recycler.

I own a 12-year-old Sony laptop on which Linux Mint 32-bit is installed and I use it for my classes. It works like a charm!

"So with that, let's jump over to the desktop. We're gonna do a fresh build of Peppermint. *Proceeds to install into Lubuntu*

I just love how much faster Linux is compared to Windows

This is the video I wanted in this channel for months. Finally my wish came true.Thank You Chris 🙇🙇🙇

I can remember when Windows 7 was brand new, only seems like several days ago, now it's called "pretty old".

I set newbies up with peppermint a lot of the time. I use the ice to lock in things like gmail! etc.. Windows users are usually pretty amazed that it never slows down. About a month later they will say when is it going to get slow? Answer its not! Great video as always!

Chris well done my friend. I really like Lubuntu on my ancient machines. I installed it on a Lenovo Thinkpad R61 laptop and it flies like an eagle. I am going to do a video soon of it. Thank you for making these videos. I just subbed to your channel as I find your video quality very high. Keep up the great work. : = )

light weight linux on a second hand laptop that had been trashed was my start in linux

I'm running Linux Mint on an old Samsung N150 netbook with 2Gb of memory and a small SSD. It runs really well. I'm using it primarily for listening to music from Spotify and audiobooks as it's dead silent so it doesn't distract me during late evening, listening sessions and works with my external, hi-fi DAC and tube headphone amp. It is almost perfect, low budget Audio Hi-Fi solution. I'm super happy :)

I really appreciate your videos and your support for Linux. My wife has one of the original Samsung NC-10 netbooks. For sentimental reasons, she won't get rid of it. So I've kept it looking and running like new for 12 years now. Now it runs 32-bit Tiny Linux on 2gb of Ram and a small ssd. I've been a Unix and Linux admin since even before Linux existed. I got my first pre-zero kernel distro from my local BBS back when dinosaurs walked the earth. It took 20 floppy disks, would run about a week, then eat it's own filesystem! I'm thrilled to see how far it's come since. Thanks again for the great videos. 😁

👍🏻 Just what I needed!! Keep going Chris! Greetings from Netherland

Thanks for your video. Recently I have recovered an old Netbook and I installed MX Linux on it, 250 Mb of Ram Used, tons of soft to install, and a 32 bit support assured, contrary to Lubuntu, which apparently will be dropping 32 bits. MX Linux is based on stable Debian. Recommend, give it a try.

When my refurbished HP 8530P Elitebook started running *slowly* on Win 10 (bootup game me enough time to grab a cup of coffee), I knew it was time for Linux. (Years ago, I installed Ubuntu on a Panasonic Toughbook CF-29). Ended up installing Linux Mint XFCE after several other distros on the HP laptop, and MX Linux on the Toughbook. Both not only work, but I spend *less* time fixing errors. So thanks for this video - with hardware prices so high, Linux is a great way to extend operational life

HOLY SHIT!! i have same netbook i was thinking to install Linux on it ....Thank you!!

Hi Chris, Richard from England,great channel. Linux Mint does it for me,but i have saved some old D series Dell laptops with Lubuntu.

First Upgrade old laptop HDD to SSD and then install Linux....

Nice to see something about Lubuntu. Always had a soft spot for that one. I run it on my Thinkpad X200s from 2008. With 8GB and an SSD, lets say it doesn´t feel aged at all.

This is how I transitioned into full time Linux use. My old laptop ran like garbage with windows, got to like using linux on it so much I made the transition to my main PC.

Lol I want a Linux toaster 🙃. Nice video Chris. I’d like to see what is next past the installation this is the place people tend to struggle when switching. Maybe do a trouble shooting series with real world problems people come across when switching. You’re definitely getting me inspired to boot up an old laptop and give it a go.

Exactly. My office had the original Lenovo Carbon X1 from 2012 just sitting in storage. I asked about buying it and they just gave it to me. I wiped Windows and installed UbuntuDDE. I now use it more than my 11th gen Dell XPS 13. It's a great experience.

This is exactly how I discovered and came to love Linux!! I found an old Windows 7 laptop in a drawer and tried to log in, Windows was loading for about 10 minutes before it even told me I had the wrong password so I decided the machine was done for. I decided to do a clean install of Linux Mint 19 and holy cow!! This ancient machine from 2009 was nearly as fast as my < 6 month old Windows 10 computer! Since then I've learned the command line and came to adore Linux and it is my primary OS for my personal use. Resurrecting old computers with Linux is an amazing option!

My 10 years old laptop use Debian9 with XFCE and run really fine. But I have installed a small SSD drive. This help a lot !

Thanks for the video Chris. I think you could get some more out of this video by showing some installs, or driver updates. The process is very important and new users need a bit of guidance when entering the Linux world. Some may have no issues but others may have things like track pad issues or wireless adapter issues and need a “step by step” on where to go and how to remedy the issue. Also, seeing you do something with the system once Linux is installed like loading some basic software (something any user would use like Libre writer) and demonstrations on performance to use as a guide would also be nice. Thanks again, Yung Lyun & Friends.

Lubuntu is amazing, I use it as my daily driver at home on a core duo HP Elite Desk with 4 gig of ram. It's super speedy. I can do so much with it. I use the 32 but version on my old netbooks like the one you showed. Single core processor and 1 or two gig of ram. I have an Asus T91 mini flip touch screen mini netbook that was made for XP that I have lubuntu on and I use it to run my X32 digital mixer works perfectly. I can watch KZfaq on it at 480. Took those old machines and made them completely useful again. I keep a live boot lubuntu stick in my pocket just for system testing. If I can boot to Linux the machine works and I can look to the hard drive for the failure. Very useful tool.

Linux mint is the way to go

i installed lubuntu 19.04 on my 10 year old laptop and it changed it completely. It is a ton faster than windows 10. yes i had windows 10 on it very wrong decision :(

Watched all your videos Chris, except the gaming related ones - not particularly into games :-) Keep up the great work. Many of my clients are retirees who only use their PC for web browsing, email, typing the odd letter and printing. I have many of them now using their 'obsolete' Windows XP and Windows 7 machines with Ubuntu Linux or Lubuntu for those particularly old machines. No issues. All I do is check them over every 6 months and bring them up to date. They are generally using the same applications that they were using in Microsoft Windows so the learning curve was minimal (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Skype, LibreOffice). Obviously, if someone is adamant that they have a requirement of Apple iTunes, Photoshop, Microsoft Office etc. then I skip offering Linux in their particular case.

Lubuntu is fantastic for old systems - Lubuntu 10.10 will work with VIA based graphics and chipsets. The only lacking for me is Composition which may cause issues with screen tearing, just ins tall compton and it works. One of my main go to's for system recovery, old pc's and testing.

Great video! I'm going to try running Lubuntu on my old Toshiba laptop that I use in my basement shop. Thanks!!!

Why does it says it is an Intel core i5? Wasn't it an atom?

You should try AntiX , I got it installed on an old xp workstation that used to be in an office. It had 1Gb of ram and a single core 2.66 GHz processor and it took only 150Mb of ram on boot and the CPU usage was at ~2%

I have a 9 month old ThinkPad with Win 10. 3.3 Gigs used on the desktop with nothing else running. 8 gigs ram and an SSD. I have a 7 year old ThinkPad e530 with 8 gigs Ram and a cheap SSD. Installed Mint Cinnamon. When I am using Chrome with multiple tabs open and running 480p KZfaq video, 2.2 gigs of Ram is being used. Wow.

Dude I'm thinking about using Linux.. Always was curious. Now I will learn. I just have to sort some old files nice vid man.

I have access to a few Lenovo netbooks (2009 vintage, 1gb ram) which I’ve run multiple versions of Xubuntu on. I tried out Lubuntu on one to try out and now use it as my “music library jukebox” to play music at school carnivals when I’m doing announcing duties. I also use one to play videos on loop in the staffroom window. Brilliant!

eBay--I got a several-year-old Dell Latitude with Mint installed for a little over $100 (no battery). The hard drive has crapped out, but will replace it soon. Those old Latitudes are built like tanks! It's more solid than either of my newer computers. Sometimes they do have old netbooks, probably for less than 100.

Im late to this video but man! I did this to an Old 2013 laptop and BOOM Im rocking it again :) Thanks for the video

One of my daughters uses my old Aspire One with the AMD C60 APU. It's a great Linux laptop for a child to use for education about Linux.

I run MX Linux (32bit) on an old Samsung NC10 netbook with 1GB ram and use it mainly on travels. I can run Vivaldi & Thunderbird together... I don't even have the need to replace the HD with an SSD...

I've successfully installed Bodhi Linux (another light weight disro) on my old 2005 computer with Celeron D 320 at 24GHz, 1 GB of DDR ram. It worked pretty good.

great video i have friends with old laptops and they ask all the time what am i going to do when windows 7 has no more security updates coming i stir them towards Linux and so far they love it the main reason that i find is they don't have to worry about their anti virus updates in Linux they can enjoy their computer and what they are doing on it.

Excellent as usual. Thanx Chris.

You know what ? I loved it when you showed acer aspire one 722 , that's actually my old laptop, its almost 10 years old ;)

I have an Acer Aspire from 2012. It has a 1.6 gHz, dual core processor. Came with Windows 7 and did fine, but with 4GB of RAM, it needed something a bit more lightweight for everyday. I created and installed my own OS! Runs great and it’s awesome!

Linux rocks for reviving old laptops. I've got a Thinkpad T60 with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo and 2GBs DDR2. It runs Manjaro XFCE on a 240GB SSD and it's blazing fast. With Windows 7 the poor thing could barely open Firefox without locking up sporadically. I just love the keyboard on this laptop and Linux essentially saved this machine from being thrown out. It's amazing what you can do with old hardware when your OS isn't filled with bloat.

I've been using Lubuntu and after switching to Debian LXDE I must say that Debian IMVHO works more smootly and takes less resouces. Intel C2Duo + 2GB RAM ;-) But for a newbie Ubuntu may be better idea ;-)))

Lubuntu truly is one of the lightest and good performers of light weight distros. It's mentioned here and there but it surprises me that it's not mentioned enough, cos it's amazing.

i took your advice and tried to install it by cd on my toaster, l now have to remodel my kitchen, plus buy the wife a new toaster, will you be doing any toaster reviews

How did Linux upgrade your CPU from ATOM to i5?

Peppermint OS is amazing, have to use it again, Mint has been my go to.

I brought a Dell Inspiron 14 and a Lenovo Thinkpad 140e that were collecting dust in the storage back to life. The Inspiron is running Debian 10 LXDE, and the Thinkpad has Arch installed with XFCE on top of it. They both run very smooth. The vanilla Debian itself is also a very light distro. If you are a new linux user, just make sure you get the ISO of the nonfree-drivers version.

With the most recent Windows updates beating down my general purpose laptop with 32 gig SSD I decided it was time to move away so I put Lubuntu on it around a week and a half ago. I've used a ton of distros over the years and this one + Xubuntu has definitely given me the least issues when it comes to revivals..... although I'm weighing upgrading to Linux Mint with Mate or at least switching LXDE to Mate..... only time will tell. Today I put Mint with Cinnamon on my desktop (keeping windows to the side) to get myself back to using Linux full time.

Hi Chris. Good advice. Enjoying every one of your excellent videos. Keep up the good work at your own pace.

Except that 32-bit versions of any Ubuntu flavor are going to be dropped in a year or two and pose security risks to users.

peppermint is blazing fast indeed on a lenovo T4xx. My refurbished laptop runs since january 2019 with not a single crash, just some shutdowns and reboots to verify that it would boot in case. Daily email, web browsing, video rendering (at night), audio recording, frequently backup tasks. I love peppermint. Lubuntu: Amazing, how well some of the weak baytrail netbook run on lubuntu which otherwise would stuck with windows installed.

That's what I did with my old Asus N55SF laptop that I got in 2010 I believe. It was a great, fairly powerful laptop for that time and had Windows 7 as an operating system, but after using it for about 5 years I bought a newer laptop. I lent the old laptop, that was still a decent computer, to my sister (she had a Mac and needed Windows for something), and she held it somewhere on the shelf for a couple of years, never turning it on. A couple of months ago, my newer laptop broke down and I asked to get my old laptop back... It was a shock. I could not boot Windows 7, even hard reset didn't work. It looked like a disaster graphically too, the feeling was like it was something from the 90s. For a second there, I thought that it's all over, although the pc still had OK hardware in my opinion (i5 processor, 6GB ram - nothing special in todays standards, but not the worst either). I installed kubuntu (which works amazing, although the initial boot could be faster - there is no SSD disk) and somehow I find myself using the old laptop more often than my newer one (which is already fixed), that runs Windows 10... Actually, I'm writing this comment on it right now. Linux is a miracle.

Great video Chris. I have a 2006 Dell Dimension 8400 and am trying to figure out if I should use 32 or 64-bit? The machine has 3 Gb of RAM but I am wonder which would run faster?

AntiX is also a great option, my netbook which came with win xp starter for the factory, runs great especially after i swapped the hdd for a 250gb ssd i had lying around.

Linux mint for the win.

It would be nice to actually see the performance (eg. when viewing youtube or working with documents), especially if you were able to do a before and after.

I installed Linux Mint XFCE on my old laptop a few weeks ago. I thought XFCE as DE is lightweight enough, but it still feels heavy on my laptop for some reason. Pretty long loading times and so on. Im pretty new to the Linux world in general, just two month ago i migrated from windows to linux (pop os with kde as DE) on my main pc and even though linux can't replace my windows machine completely, i really don't want to go back fulltime windows. For my laptop i guess i will try Lubuntu. Thank you Chris!

thats what i did in my ancient core2duo laptop i swapped HDD to 128GB SSD installed peppermint now after using it for almost 3 months i can say its very impressive and extremely fast 🙌🙌

HP streams are prime candidates for lightweight linux

How about this as a weekly schedule. Just some ideas. Day 1: Videos like this (teaching basics) Day 2: More useful things to do (Nextcloud) Day 3: Windows tips Day 4: Linux for enterprise (Things like email, webservers and OpenStack) Day 5: Linux weekly News (easy to produce) Day 6: Review free/paid software/product (may gain you more income. Plus easy) Day 7: Whatever you want to cover Not sure if you already have a plan like this.Just thought I would give you some categories that you could do on a weekly basis. This way you get beginners, and gradually work them off Windows whilst catering to all other levels of Linux proficiency. Capturing a larger weekly audience.

Thanks for making these videos, they just keep me updated and I like trying new things. Making things interesting is your gift.

Nice video!! Just one question if want to attach a projector it doesnt need an specific driver?

My laptop exactly! (I do have an SSD). Lubuntu is great.

giving life to an old unused laptop with the right Linux distro feels so good ^^ 👌🏻

thanks have it also on old dell pc and its fantastic thanks for video

Great video, I have some Intel Atom Acer laptop home, and I will use it for dual boot win 7 and lubuntu =)

Could you tell me what matrix screensaver in particular are you using? Looks awesome!

Lubuntu is pretty good, but personally I like ZorinOS Lite a lot better. I found the interface to be nicer and the out-of-box customization options please my tastes more than Lubuntu's. And it runs great on the AMD C-50 laptop I have!

Pepermint and lubuntu is for me the way to go for saving a old laptops... and trust me I saved allot of laptops and made allot of parents happy for giving an old laptop to their kids in Indonesia. And somehow I introduced all of them to linux.

thank you now i can watch your videos on my 400usd toaster! Just perfect

hi, chris i run into a problem maybe you can help me after install lubuntu into my 320 dell desktop i can not boot lubuntu my pc is stuck on black screen with the blink dot on the upper left corner and not respond,any help thanks

Linux Lite is great. I would personally go for Manjaro XFCE because I'm a manjaro kinda gal

Hi thanks for the video. I am trying to revive a Windows 7 laptop. When I go thru your steps, and try to open and run the iso, my machine only gives me the option to burn the file to disc. Does not install or any other option. Can you tell me what I am doing wrong? Thank you.

I thought you're going to install linux on Acer One, since you showed it. I know it will run fast on i5, but how it will run on Atom processor?

"Old" means different things to different people. I have a Dell Inspiron 9300 and a Dell XPS M170 running Windows ME along with a Dell Precision M6600 and M6700 dual booting Windows XP and PeppermintOS 10 Respin. I have to say that I found PeppermintOS 10 Respin easiest to poke around in, but it has opened my eyes to the Linux community. For starters, I learned that Linux is evolving just as Windows is and you can easily find that Linux has moved on from supporting the old hardware that you have, just like in Windows. A good example of that is how the R9 270's or HD 7850's with the newer distros. Sure, it will run with the open drivers with little effort, but if you want to actually utilize the gpu, you have to do some driver back tracking. This is especially true for trying to get the Vulkan drivers loaded for that card. Don't get me started on the Geforce 8800M GTS that is in my Gateway P6860FX. There still seems to be issues with that where you get the black screen with the drivers that are available for that. I have come across quite a few other issues that I had to take time and tinker with and hopefully get it working the way I want. So much that I have found myself starting my own forums now that PeppermintOS has evolved once again after the original creator died. The new team has moved from Ubuntu based to Debian and no longer supporting 32 bit. In doing so, the also removed all LXDE references... And now we are faced with new interface, new features, and new problems all over again. That means you spent all that time getting your Linux customized to the way you want it and you find yourself either waiting until the service for your specific version ends or you have to start over trying to customize a new Linux install knowing that you won't be able to customize it the same way because so many base changes have been made to the distro. Bottom line is you had better have lots of time on your hands if you want to try to move from Windows or Mac to Linux.

Chris thanks for all the great content, I also have an Aspire One but the AMD variant, upgraded RAM to 4gb and HD to SSD. Installing #Linux has brought the ol' netbook back to useful life. To confess that first used #SparkyLinux 4 and it ran fine but couldn't get #Retroarch to work so went with #Lubuntu 18.04 and that fixed the issue. Installed Lubuntu the day before the release of Sparky 5 and if I'da known would have waited but still no complaints. Have successfully installed #Xfce next to #Lxde and all seems well although have not done extensive testing. I also run Windows 10 on my main driver and since I'm the go-to-tech-guy in my family it behooves me to keep current in it's use. Best regards and keep posting!

I installed Ubuntu 18.04 on my laptop and then installed RetroPie on it. It's now my retro-gaming machine. By the way, you should try RetroPie Chris, it's very good.

I have an AMD E1-1200 APU laptop with 4gb ram , which ubuntu based distro is the most appropriate in your opinion?

i5-4590s is old? Common!! I have quadriple boot windows10,7,8.1 and manjaro on my pentium from 2013

Hi Chris. Great video! I have once question with regard to old Thinkpad T430s. I just purchased a refurbished T430s from Amazon and it has Windows 10 Pro pre-installed. I have not turned it on yet. Is it safe for me to install Linux Mint Cinnamon even before fist boot to Windows 10 Pro? I don't plan on using Windows 10 at all. Thanks!

Hallo! Thank you for ALL your great content. You make installing Lubuntu look so easy. I need help please.😯 I have an old Toshiba Satellite P30 running XP. Trying to install a liteweight distro. No matter what I do always get an 8254 IO APIC error. Have tried a few. Read I need to utilise F6 on boot up. Does not give me that option. Also, it does not want to boot from USB mem stick; even though I have BIOS set correctly. Any suggestions pls? Thnx.

I began to like the upgrade from Zorin 6 ---> 12.04 for 32 bit and older machines. Downloading Lubuntu 18.04/32 and 19.04/64 for some test drives later on.

Lubuntu is the best OS. The end. You can run it on pretty much anything, and if you have a good system, you're only going to get an even quicker experience. The fact that its quick on a potato PC Is seriously impressive. I also like how basic and minimalistic it is, makes it easy to navigate.

Ubuntu runs great on my laptop! My specs are: CPU: AMD A-6 7310 with Radeon R4 Graphics Ram: 4 gb Storage type:HDD

Even Lightweight versions of Linux have only 64 bit version. Only solution is MS-DOS.

I have an old netbook that ran xp 32 bit. It had 1 gb that I enhanced to 2gb and put Lubuntu on it and I now use it when I need to carry a computer with me. Works perfectly!

I installed Linux on an old laptop of my daughter. Works great and it just works.

I recently had to replace an HP laptop - quite a new one. The build quality was shocking, so I decided to go for an old Toshiba. I picked an A120 Pro up for £48 on Ebay. Fitted my 2TB HDD, from my dead HP, installed more RAM, and loaded it with Zorin OS 15.2 Lite. Next job is to replace the thermal paste. But it's running just fine.

good video chris. was wondering if you could do a video on getting touch screen. been trying to get it working on a tablet running manjaro. havent found much info on how to enable it if its not enabled out of the box. linux can detect my touch screen hardware. im just lost as to how to get linux to use this hardware.

Great video. I just loaded Peppermint on my old HP Stream netbook. I had a heck of a problem figuring out the UEFI boot, but finally got it working. Now I have a great little netbook for the grandchildren.

I have an original Acer Aspire One that runs Backbox Linux & has been showing the state of collectivity in our server room, for years. XFCE rocks!

As a hobby I fix laptops and build PCs/Servers. My oldest practical Laptop is a Thinkpad Z61M which runs Linux Lite. Considering it's 32bit with just 3GB of ram maximum, it also runs Windows Server 2000 in Virtualbox, which has SQL Server 2000 and Visual Studio 6 installed on it too. All runs surprisingly well! Bought off eBay for $3. As a tip, watching KZfaq videos on old machines in a browser is painful, so don't do it. Use VLC or MPV to watch them instead. You just need the URL from your browser. If you've got a slow internet connection MPV is better because it buffers on the fly.

After a recent Win 10 "Update" {yeah right} screwed up my laptop and required 3 hours to fix, I decided to take my last laptop which had Win 7 on it until the HD crashed and replace the HD with and SSD and run Linux Mint. What a huge difference. The install went super easy even finding and automatically installing my WiFi printer {which Win 10 struggled with}. Super fast, 90% of what I need to do I can do in Linux. Even Libre Office BASE which constantly crashed in Win 7 & 10, runs very well. However, I have some applications written in VB, {connected to an Access DB} which barely installed in Win 10. These programs took me years to create and perfect for my own use and I still need them. Think I will replace the HD with an SSD in my Win 10 machine and use my old Win 7 license to use which played with VB 6.0 Enterprise and Access very well. I also have a very expensive Virtual Pipe Organ software which needs Windows. So for everyday use, it will be Linux for me and Windows for those applications which do not have a Linux substitute.

What icon pack is that? I love it!

Love the lightweight installs! had to a full reinstall my Win10 disk a few days ago.. (lost the ability to boot win10 after installing pop-os for some reason!) and that was half a day wasted!! Waiting for the fresh ISO install then all the updates to run!! compared to about half an hour for the average clean bare-metal install of an *buntu/GnuLinux version! Us Linux users are soo spoiled! :D

That's what I did with mine. Dual booting Windows 7 for the games (most of which are old) and Q4OS for everything else