A friend of someone related doesn’t have a laptop nowadays, but needs one. Now we have 2 old laptops at home, and we want to give her one so she can do some things on it. Since she isn’t used to laptops and the old laptops wouldn’t run a Windows 11 (I don’t want to install a Win10 because of end of support and lacking security features), I guess installing a simple Linux is fine. Now comes the big question: Which Linux distro should I install? (see requirements below)

Laptops:

  • Acer Aspire ES 15, AMD dual-core E1-7010 @1.5 GHz, 4GB RAM, 1000 GB HDD
  • HP Pavilion 17-e030ez, Intel Pentium @2.4 GHz, 4GB RAM, 10000 GB HDD (I’d choose this)

Tasks:

  • Office Stuff (I thought about OnlyOffice)
  • Internet surfing
  • Banking via Web

Requirements:

  • needs to have full German support
  • needs an easy software installation center
  • should be easy to learn
  • optionally, her friends (which probably use Windows/ Mac) should be able to help her (since she never had a laptop before)
  • eventually German forum/ German Guides

I’m using Linux/ Manjaro for myself but don’t have any experience with beginner-friendly distros. I used a KDE neon for some time and also have used Ubuntu, and to be honest, they seem beginner-friendly too.

Please let me know your opinions, thanks!

  • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
    7·
    2 months ago

    Anything will be fine. I’d try a xfce/lxqt desktop, but even on old dual cores the newest kde is good.

    Everyone says mint, but suse has a huge German community because it’s from Germany.

    Another person said you should upgrade to ssd and maybe add more ram, and I agree with them. Usually I spend $40 to do that to laptops and it makes real dogs run great.

    Post the model numbers on the bottom of the laptops and I can give some pre-gifting upgrade advice with actionable links. Both seem to take 2.5” sata ssds so that’s good and cheap, but there’s different models of the aspire es-15 which take different memory sizes.

    If you do take the cheap ssd replacement route, give them one of those usb hdd enclosures with the old big rotational hdd in there. They’re like seven bucks and it means they have a place to hold a backup of their data if the gift laptop dies.

  • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
    5·
    2 months ago

    That’s a pretty weak machine. Linux Mint is my #1 recommendation for new Linux users, especially former Windows users. It’s what I moved my parents to on their very old computer and it works great.

    Try the default Linux Mint Cinnamon desktop first, but if it seems really slow, go with the XFCE version.

    You really need to use an SSD in that laptop if possible, it will speed things up to a usable level. Also, if the RAM is upgradable, you should put 8GB minimum in it. DDR3 laptop sticks are dirt cheap, you can get them online for $20-$30 for 8GB sticks.

    Same with SSDs, get a 1000GB brand new SSD for $50-$60, it will make everything much more responsive.

    • chraebsli@programming.devOP
      5·
      2 months ago

      Yeah, it’s an old laptop. She doesn’t have much money for a new laptop and since she won’t use it often, it’s enough to check mail, e-banking, … And we have some old laptops at home nobody uses, so we thought we could give it to her as a gift.

      Eventually, she’ll buy a new ~400$ laptop later with some good specs but that’s not in the next few months. But thanks for the tips.

  • notagoblin@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 months ago

    I put antiX on a 2 Gb HP 1 x core Atom a little while ago. It’s used for notetaking at meetings with LibreOffice, internet browsing through wifi. Not particularly heavy usage but it runs suprisingly well. As your hardware is a bit restricted, perhaps try that. Edit: spelling

  • woelkchen@lemmy.world
    210·
    2 months ago

    Internet surfing

    Forget web browsing with 4GB RAM. You can completely disregard the comments recommending a “lite DE” when merely opening a modern web site will put the whole PC into crawling. The 150 MB more or less for different desktops are completely irrelevant then.

    The best “newbie friendly” distribution is just plain Fedora Workstation but with only 4GB RAM it will be a pain to use no matter what.

    Edit: If you’re a KDE user yourself, you’re best equipped to answer KDE-related questions.

    • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
      7·
      2 months ago

      I think 4GB is plenty for web browsing if there are not many tabs opened. Though the laptop will still be slow because of the specs.

    • 0x0@programming.dev
      5·
      2 months ago

      Forget web browsing with 4GB RAM.

      …if you don’t install an ad-blocker and open many tabs at the same time…

    • Ziglin@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 months ago

      I have a laptop with 4GB of RAM and it works fine, my fedora i3 installation. It’s nothing compared to a proper computer but it’s not like I ever run out of RAM either. (Generally I open two Firefox windows, discord and vscode)

    • toastal@lemmy.ml
      1·
      2 months ago

      There are several browsers that can operate with low memory requirements, but you have to be willing to live without JavScript & the front-end needs to have been built with accessibility & progressive enhancement in mind. …Which most front-end developers don’t do & the industry doesn’t normally pay them enough to care or get better results (& following YouTube tutorials always tells you to use the latest bloated framework which is overkill for your project).

      Also Fedora doesn’t ship with LTS kernels which makes me question their package management strategy.