Hello! My old laptops hard drive packed it in, so I got a new one and now need to flash drive an operating system on it. I think this is my time to give Linux a proper go. I tried it before for my gaming PC but switched for a cracked Windows key because I was young and not bothered to learn.
Well, now is my chance to give it another go. I'm looking for a Linux optimised for performance on an HP 255 G7. Threadbare, but not so bare that it'll require me to do a load of complicated stuff to do the basics. I'll just be using it for YouTube and Google docs really. Any help/advice/orders are appreciated.
Thanks!
But surely one for lower end/older machines will be as barebones as possible?
No gaming, hopefully. Perhaps hearthstone if I succumb to it.
"Barebones" usually just refers to a machine that is not complete, missing CPU, memory, storage, for customization. I assume you mean it's a basic/low-end configuration. Still, it seems to be a fairly recent generation of hardware. If you have a spinning disk, you'll see a huge performance increase by upgrading to an SSD. You can get a 512GB SSD for $25-35.
If you look at minimum/suggested requirements for almost any distro, I think you'll be comfortably above that. I looked up the laptop and it seems to have an AMD APU (similar to what's in a Steam Deck), optional NVMe drive, 8-16GB DDR4, WiFi 5... I'm running Ubuntu 23.04 on a 2015 laptop and it's fine, no difference at all from a current gen in Google Workspace.
Ah, yeah. I don't know the terminology. I'll change it to threadbare My level of tech awareness is like... my friends think I know stuff but actually I'm just great at taking a punt and watching tutorials.
Anyway, yeah, I changed the old one to a nifty NVME and now it runs like a dream.
Currently I'm using Zorin OS Alite - do you really think I should go to mint or Ubuntu before I start settling in? My initial reaction to Zorin is that I'm satisfied with it, but if it's not as reliable as mint then maybe I should just start again?
Most tech people are just better than average at looking stuff up :)
I have never used Zorin, but it looks good - it's based on Ubuntu but tweaked to be more friendly to Windows/macOS users. If it's working for you, that's what counts. There's a lot of documentation around Ubuntu which should apply to your system.