Replacing Vista with Linux on a laptop?

[RustyKnight]

We have an Acer laptop which is a few years old and came with Vista (spit) pre-installed. The laptop is so slow its hardly worth bothering to use it. I was thinking of putting Linux, possibly Ubuntu, on it instead of doing the factory restore with Vista.

 

Is Ubuntu likely to find and work with the wifi, and other hardware?

 

If I download a Live CD will that show if everything works properly and allow me to install Ubuntu if it does?

[Plastic Nev]

Hi,

Having only experimented with both Ubuntu and Mint on an older XP laptop myself, I can only suggest trying the live CD. My laptop didn't have wifi, however it did find the ordinary LAN connection and worked OK with that, plus the external hard drive.

I also bought a spare hard drive, fitted it and installed Linux Mint on it. That way I kept the Windows XP on the original drive so it could go back in if needed.

 

However, why not try and see why it is so slow now?

A bit more RAM fitted could help as well as a good clean up of temporary files, unwanted programs, a full defrag etc.

 

Also if not bothered about keeping the data, you could try a fresh install of Windows 7. Dealers are still selling legal copies, though beware of buying via E Bay as those copies might not be original or legal.

 

Just idea's for you to consider.

 

Nev.

[RustyKnight]

I searched online and found a live DVD of Zorin which is supposed to have options to make it more "Windows-like", as one of the users of the laptop has only ever used Windows I thought I'd give it a go.

 

I'll have a play at the weekend and see how I get on and then report back. Like you said if the worst happens I can get a cheap copy of Windows 7.

[RustyKnight]

I'm a bit annoyed, I had the disc with Linux on ready to put on the laptop. But my partner decided to give the laptop to her daughter, no one asked me, and I paid for half of it! Any way, she did a factory restore using the discs we created when we got the laptop. It still seemed very slow.

Apparently it wouldn't connect to the wifi, although it did find a BT FON connection, it wouldn't connect to the daughters wifi - she was told it was because the wifi adaptor (which was built in) was too old. I've never had any problems connecting anything to wifi no matter how old.

They were buying a new USB wifi adaptor, but I haven't heard if it works or not!

I'm guessing a quick check of the wifi router settings would have fixed the problem without spending any money!

[KenB]

I'm guessing a quick check of the wifi router settings would have fixed the problem

The only setting on a router that may block another user accessing the network would be MAC Address filtering.

I think you would know if this was enabled.

 

Vista didn't come with too many drivers embedded so the likelihood is it is a driver issue.

A quick look on the manufacturers website would confirm this.

You would need the make and model number of the machine.

 

You could look in Device Manager to see what is listed there under Network Adapters.

Start > type in ....devmgmt.msc .....hit ENTER