I use windows 11 on a daily basis but have unsuccessfully tried to instal Linux on some of my older equipment for the last 12 years without success, just hoping I can move away from Microsoft. Managed to install Mint Cinnamon and Mint Xfce on a Dell Inspiron N5010 but found both flavours sluggish so I thought I would try Zorin. However, a number of problems eg, graphics on certain apps like chrome, buffering on DHCP upon startup (a problem with the ethernet connection. As retired Airforce Aerospace Engineer I would not advise anyone to take up Linux until the developers of the various Linux flavours get their installations sorted out, just stay with Windows as it has a very seamless installation and upgrade process, even though Microsoft sucks. If you enjoy fiddling and have the time to sort out Linux issues, by all means have fun.
You could try it with Zorin lite, but it is from the ressources similar to Mint XFCE. Did you test the latest Mint versions 22.2 or older ones? As you have older hardware, Mint XFCE 21 could be worth a try - or Zorin 17 lite.
I'm a retired gravedigger and installing and using Linux is a breeze compared to Windows. Last month I tried Windows 11, what a nightmare of an OS - I can't recommend it to anyone.
Can you provide some specs (CPU, RAM, GPU, hard drive) for the N5010?
I just installed Zorin 18 Core on a N5010 last week and it worked fine. I have refurbished over 100 old (back to 2008) computers in the past 5 years and have found Linux installs just fine.
During installation I follow the prompts and choose to the erase the disk; no special partitioning or other tweaks. When I have encountered problems during install it boils down to a couple of issues:
- A corruption of the ISO on the USB drive. If this happens repeatedly, I have found that burning a DVD and installing from there works 99% of the time.
- Bad RAM or RAM that is not within the speed range of the laptop specs.
One thing I do is to replace any hard drives with a 128GB or larger SSD; they are quite cheap and the speed improvement is dramatic. It runs OK with just 2GB or RAM but I prefer 4GB or more to minimize using the swap partition.
VERY occasionally I have found that Zorin or Mint won't install, in which case I use either MX Linux or Q4OS. I prefer Q4OS as it uses the KDE desktop that allows for more customization.
Hope this helps.
Thanks Forpli. Notice in my post that I have tried Mint Xfce and it worked but had a fairly sluggish reponse
Well done. Similarly, I have been using windows for so long I'm very comfortable with it. I'd like to install Linux seamlessly so I can play with it and get an understanding.
Thanks Bollycanuk, I'll give Zorin Lite a go first and see if that works. Mint did install very well but with the older hardware it was very slow
I think we need to have some specifications. I've been slow at getting rid of an old tower that had an Intel 1.7 GHz GERGL Motherboard which I recycled. None of the 64-bit Linux variants would install because it was i-686 machine. So I installed Q4OS 32-bit TDE (Trinity Desktop Environment). It was a bit sluggish but it only had 1 Gb RAM. If you have underpowered old kit then you should take a look at 32-bit OS's like this one, or MX-Linux, Antix, or Devuan 32-bit offerings.
If the soundtrack is not to your liking then mute and observe.
The video is of a VM install with CPU and Memory allocation set very low, hence the 45 minutes before getting to the desktop. The only downside to TDE is pointer size but I found a workaround to get a bigger one here:
The problem with Chrome is something well-known:
forum.zorin.com/t/chrome-based-browsers-causing-zorin-os-to-crash/50814
and solutions exist.