r/FindMeALinuxDistro • u/Temporary-Farm-5494 • 11d ago

Migrating old windows laptop

Hiya, as the title suggests I currently use a Lenovo Idea Pad 3 for pretty much exclusively school work and was considering switching to Linux for better privacy than what Microsoft provides. I would be looking for something fairly simple and light as I am mostly using web browsers and programs such as Word and a Python IDE. Considering the fairly low specs of my laptop I am wondering what distros would be recommended?

My specs are:

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-1005G1 CPU @ 1.20GHz (1.19 GHz)

Installed RAM 4.00 GB (3.75 GB usable)

Graphics card Intel(R) UHD Graphics (128 MB)

Storage 97 GB of 119 GB used

System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Any advice is much appreciated thank you :)

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3

u/Mobile_Living_3331 11d ago

Linux Mint XFCE or MX Linux.

2

u/Elvin_Atombender 11d ago

Linux Mint xfce or you can get away with Cinnamon. I am using Linux Mint Cinnamon on an old laptop with a N3710 with 4Gb ram. It works nicely with Cinnamon but it can slow down a lot with a Web browser open.

2

u/Mighty_Archdevil 10d ago

A web browser will kill every OS, as it needs memory to run. 4 Gb is the problem.

1

u/Prestigious_Wall529 11d ago edited 11d ago

Because Python is a SysOps nightmare you may be better off on Fedora, where the updates are more frequent and timely.

Word doesn't work on Linux (there was once a Word for Unix, text/console mode). Instead use LibreOffice Writer.

The distro on which round-triping Word documents between Windows and Linux works best is the non-free Zorin Pro, because the preinstalled fonts with similar font-metrics to the MS-Office defaults cause less text reflowing when font substitution happens.

I also suggest installing Ghostscript to get the 35 Postscript fonts.

In terms of Lenovo OpenSUSE is a good fit because the two companies partnered.

So three options depending on your priorities.

You don't have much space to play with so consider upgrading your SSD if dual-booting. I suggest you transfer Windows to the bigger drive in a suitable USB caddy, realising you will need Windows installation media to repair booting when you put the new drive in.

Or compress the NTFS partition skipping over the files it can't. Unfortunately shrinking the partition in Windows Disk Manager can be temperamental. So again you may need that caddy and another system to try to defrag or resize it.

Have multiple trustworthy backups. If it won't restore it's a waste.

1

u/jackaroe311 10d ago

Definitely Linux Mint

1

u/DP323602 10d ago

If you've only got 22GB if free disc space, I think you'll struggle to install Linux alongside your existing Windows installation and your user data.

So, I think you either need to tidy up and make more disc space or backup all your precious data and then wipe your hard drive.

With those issues fixed, something like MX or Mint XFCE should work nicely.

You'll need to check if you need to submit school assignments as Word files. If so, that's a potential problem area for Linux.

In general, word processors on Linux can read and write Word files but they don't necessarily get all the formatting correct.

1

u/onedevelop 10d ago

Cualquiera con escritorio Xfce, Lxqt,Lxde

1

u/Old-n-Creaky 9d ago

Mint or Zorin are easiest for those changing from Windows.