Hello!
I don't frequent the LL forums much anymore. Life's happened and all that. That's just how it is...
Anyways, A few days ago, I helped my grandparents setup their new cable Internet and a "new" computer. I say "new" because it really was just an unused desktop with not much use since new in 2010. The machine is an eMachines EL-1600 desktop with an Intel Atom 1.6, weak Intel Graphics, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD. Average basic sub-$400 USD computer from 2010. It came with Windows XP on it, and as you all know by now, it's been out of support for a while now. Up until a few days ago, they were using an even older HP Desktop from 2006 also running XP to get on the internet. Terribly insecure by now, for sure.
Now here's where the fun started with the "new" computer. It had really no data on it because it was unused for the better part of the decade so I didn't care about losing anything.
So first, I tried to install Windows 10 Home on it. HA! HA!. Really bad idea. So yes, it ran and booted, but barely. The 1GB of RAM was really the limiting factor here. From a cold boot, it was idling at about 750MB from a cold boot. Granted, some of the blame was my fault because the Windows 10 was 64-Bit, which I didn't know until after it installed. I booted and installed Windows 10 from a flash drive I made years back. That didn't stay on for long to say the least, running and gobbling up resources like that. So, something light, but something relatively easy to use OS was in need of calling here. I tried Linux Mint for the hell of it with the Cinnamon desktop, knowing that was somewhat Windows-like. It ran poorly on the little eMachines as well and consumed too much RAM to do too little much else on. So I had to pull out my beast of a laptop (ASUS ROG G752VT gaming laptop, a far cry from the little eMachines) to create a new USB bootable stick of Linux Lite 3.4 32-Bit, which luckily I had a copy of. Took 3 minutes to do that via DD in my laptop using Manjaro KDE (the only distro that works really well on this ROG). Took 15 minutes to get the OS on to the little eMachines. Idling from a cold boot with LL 32-Bit, RAM was about 350MB, which is a far cry from Windows. My grandparents like it better than Windows XP. Looks more modern to them. The floppy disk drive also did not work in Windows 10, since MS removed support for that, but works in Linux. I got their HP printer setup, their cable internet via Ethernet, their email on Thunderbird and a couple other little things. They are now secure and good to go. Never have to worry about viruses ever again. I did tell them this though: "Turn on the computer once a week to run the updates and input in the password I gave you. You can go for 2 weeks without turning it on, but there will be some data to download when that amount of time passes between updates, so I'd say once a week."
So story time is over!
Thanks for reading,
Theo.
