Thanks Les, for your comprehensive reply. I think the take away will be to get the window manager to be as lean as poss.
Kind regards On Mon, 26 Feb 2024, 5:43 pm Les Kitchen via luv-main, <luv-main@luv.asn.au> wrote: > [I'm replying to the original post, but I have seen the > subsequent traffic.] > > On Mon, Feb 26, 2024, at 13:20, Andrew Greig via luv-main wrote: > > I am intending to lend a friend this device for his travels in Europe > > mainly to get photos off his camera SD card and into a suitably sized > > ext, HDD, > > > > When I turned it on I found it had a Mageia OS (RPM) I have the BIOS set > > for boot from USB stick. > > > > Any tips for a functional and speedy OS to load, please? > > Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by "modern". > > I've got a few old machines with similar specs to yours. I run > Debian on them (current stable or testing), and find that works > fine, considering the machines' capabilities. But as Nic Baxter > pointed out, probably choice of things like desktop environment > (and window manager and filesystem) matters more than the > underlying distro (and configuration, like say switching off GUI > animations). Myself, I mainly use Xmonad (and sway under > Wayland) as tiling window managers, as being lighter weight, and > LXDE for family members who expect a more conventional GUI > interface. (AFAIK, LXDE mainly uses OpenBox as its window > manager.) > > In particular, I have an Asus Eeepc 1000HE, with very similar > specs (Atom N280 instead of N270). For simple things, like > copying files about, it's fine — though it struggles with > Javascript-heavy websites and multiple tabs in a web-browsers, > and with image processing (like for photo editing). I expect > your experience would be similar. > > In general, and especially if you're travelling, having an > encrypted filesystem is a good idea, as Debian and other distros > provide, but not all. > > And as Andrew McGlashan mentioned, upgrading RAM can help — but > I doubt that's possible as the RAM is likely soldered on. It's > a matter of money, but replacing the hard-drive with an SSD > could help quite a lot. (And it's a somewhat orthogonal issue, > but getting a good third-party replacement battery can extend > the machine's useful life.) > > I hope these comments are of some use. > > > — Smiles, Les. > _______________________________________________ > luv-main mailing list -- luv-main@luv.asn.au > To unsubscribe send an email to luv-main-le...@luv.asn.au >
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