Hi all, Would really like some help on an old laptop that I'm working on. I have a very good friend with an aunt that has a very old laptop that is painfully slow. I've been working on it for quite some time to get it to work faster but I'm unfortunately unable to do so. It is an old Toshiba laptop that has an AMD E-240 CPU with 2GB of ram and does have some damage on the top left corner side of the laptop.
Awhile ago I went ahead to try and clean as much of the bloatware that was inside the laptop as much as possible in the hopes that it would improve in speed. At first there was a slight improvement but it seems its not enough. The laptop is painfully slow, it almost feels like nearly every action that I do takes forever. The CPU hovers at nearly 100% every single time and I wasn't sure whether or not this had anything to do with Windows Updates or some other bloatware that was causing the spikes (It could even been both). I didn't know what else to do until I decided that it might be best to wipe the drive and start with a clean slate but this time install in a clean Linux distro instead of using Windows 7.
Before I installed Linux I told them that there are going to be compatibility issues and that all data would be wiped cleaned from their HDD. They said they didn't have anything important on the laptop. I also stressed to them that once I installed in Ubuntu that they wouldn't be able to go back to Windows, at least not the one that was installed on the laptop. So after discussing the situation with my friend and his aunt they agreed for me to install Ubuntu onto their laptop. I preceded to first show them what Ubuntu looked like by booting into the USB and they seemed to like it. The only major thing is that my friend seems to be a fan of the default chess game that came with Windows. I told them they wouldn't have that on Ubuntu, but that there are other solutions where he can play chess on a website. They agreed to do the installation anyway and then that was when I installed Ubuntu.
The installation went smooth and dandy, the wifi worked fine and all seemed well. However I noticed even after a full wipe and installing a lighter weight OS compared to what the laptop had it was still very slow. Granted it does seem a bit faster than before when the laptop had Windows installed, but its still slow to the point where day to day usage would be very frustrating. I checked the CPU usage monitor that came with Ubuntu and to my surprise the CPU usage was still almost 100%. I kept my eye on it for quite some time and noticed the CPU usage started to drop to around 20% (this was when the updates icon appeared on the left launch bar) but would jump to 60 to maybe 75% then back down to 20 something percent. The CPU usage seems to be all over the place. Browsing the internet is still painful depending on which websites you go to and youtube is almost out of the question because of the lag even at SD quality (tho I haven't tried lower qualities yet such as 240p or lower). However I did notice that the CPU only had a single core on it clocked at 1.5GHZ. I really thought at the time it had at least 2 cores on it but I guess I was wrong.
My question is can anyone recommend a Linux distro or other OS that is VERY light on resources but at the same time leave enough room for basic internet usage, music and chess? Maybe even youtube?
Awhile ago I went ahead to try and clean as much of the bloatware that was inside the laptop as much as possible in the hopes that it would improve in speed. At first there was a slight improvement but it seems its not enough. The laptop is painfully slow, it almost feels like nearly every action that I do takes forever. The CPU hovers at nearly 100% every single time and I wasn't sure whether or not this had anything to do with Windows Updates or some other bloatware that was causing the spikes (It could even been both). I didn't know what else to do until I decided that it might be best to wipe the drive and start with a clean slate but this time install in a clean Linux distro instead of using Windows 7.
Before I installed Linux I told them that there are going to be compatibility issues and that all data would be wiped cleaned from their HDD. They said they didn't have anything important on the laptop. I also stressed to them that once I installed in Ubuntu that they wouldn't be able to go back to Windows, at least not the one that was installed on the laptop. So after discussing the situation with my friend and his aunt they agreed for me to install Ubuntu onto their laptop. I preceded to first show them what Ubuntu looked like by booting into the USB and they seemed to like it. The only major thing is that my friend seems to be a fan of the default chess game that came with Windows. I told them they wouldn't have that on Ubuntu, but that there are other solutions where he can play chess on a website. They agreed to do the installation anyway and then that was when I installed Ubuntu.
The installation went smooth and dandy, the wifi worked fine and all seemed well. However I noticed even after a full wipe and installing a lighter weight OS compared to what the laptop had it was still very slow. Granted it does seem a bit faster than before when the laptop had Windows installed, but its still slow to the point where day to day usage would be very frustrating. I checked the CPU usage monitor that came with Ubuntu and to my surprise the CPU usage was still almost 100%. I kept my eye on it for quite some time and noticed the CPU usage started to drop to around 20% (this was when the updates icon appeared on the left launch bar) but would jump to 60 to maybe 75% then back down to 20 something percent. The CPU usage seems to be all over the place. Browsing the internet is still painful depending on which websites you go to and youtube is almost out of the question because of the lag even at SD quality (tho I haven't tried lower qualities yet such as 240p or lower). However I did notice that the CPU only had a single core on it clocked at 1.5GHZ. I really thought at the time it had at least 2 cores on it but I guess I was wrong.
My question is can anyone recommend a Linux distro or other OS that is VERY light on resources but at the same time leave enough room for basic internet usage, music and chess? Maybe even youtube?
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