YMMV, but for old system installations I try for one of three approaches: - For your usual distro, choose a GUI environment that starts with L or X instead of G or K (ie Lubuntu or Xubuntu) - Try one of the small distros designed explicitly for use on old hardware (such as Puppy) - Screw the GUI completely and install Ubuntu Server
All of them should be OK with the SSD. Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56 On Tue, Feb 15, 2022 at 5:25 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <[email protected]> wrote: > I've been shamed / intrigued into doing a bit more hacking on this > Acer Aspire 9300 notebook. > > Spoiler: this was a waste of time. > > A little over 5 years ago I had replaced the HDD with an SSD and put a > then-current Fedora (24?) on it (no Windows). It was unreliable (for > reasons I have previously explained). > > Now I've dragged out the old HDD and copied the Vista and Ubuntu 12.04 > installation from it to the SSD. (Byte-for-byte, so the partition > alignments are highly questionable.) > > MS Vista boots. It doesn't know how to update itself (End of Life). > > Ubuntu 12.04 boots. It doesn't know how to update itself either since it > is no longer supported. I fix that (somewhat) by hacking on > /etc/apt/sources.list, replacing ca.archive.ubuntu.com with > old-releases.ubuntu.com. The newest update there was probably two years > ago, but that's better than more than 5 years ago. > > While doing Ubuntu updates, the machine crashed a couple of times. > Probably because it is using the nouveau video driver. I wonder if I > can enable the ancient no-longer supported proprietary driver at this late > date? Even if I can, apparently that path dies after Ubuntu 14.04 so it > isn't really a solution. > > Back on Windows Vista, I tried updating Firefox. A very slow process, but > it seemed to complete (but not to the current version; possibly because > Vista is no longer supported). I ran Firefox's update again and got a > blue screen (OS crash, not Firefox crash). > > At this point, I saw very little upside and had wasted a lot of time > getting this far. I cannot run current Windows 10 or current Linux. So > I've given up. I've stripped the SSD, the RAM, the WiFi card, and the DVD > drive. > > ================ > > Now I'm wasting time updating the three OSes on my Acer Aspire One 522, a > netbook from 2011 (Fedora, Ubuntu, Win10). > <https://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-Aspire-One-522.46975.0.html> > This is a very meagre machine: slow even in its day. But it does run > current systems. > > When I got it, I upgraded the RAM from 1G to 4G. Win 7 Starter was > crippled to use at most 2G (silly Microsoft market segregation games). > The screen had too little resolution to install Win 8, but full Win 10 > Home is happy (a free upgrade; it will use all 4G). > > The netbook still has its original HDD. Win 10 and Gnome both crawl > unless they live on SSDs. I intend to replace the HDD with the SSD from > the scrapped notebook. > > Just a few years separate the Acer Aspire 9300 and the Acer Aspire One > 522. Yet the newer one is more usable now. Still, the newer one is > missing some modern conveniences: UEFI firmware and USB 3.x. > > There is a significant difference between a 17" notebook and a 10.6" > netbook. > --- > Post to this mailing list [email protected] > Unsubscribe from this mailing list > https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk >
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