How has LMDE5 been running for you?
Beginner seeking hardware and distro advice
- Thread starter DTopper
- Start date
Brickwizard
Well-Known Member
I have 2 installations, this one as my daily drive, on an oldish HP pro-desk instal was quick, smooth and everything worked, as I said it's a little faster than M22, and a little less resource hungry [CPU temp is consistently 5-10 deg lower than running M22 [which it also has on the second drive] along with MX & Debian stable, the 2010 dell lappy has LMDE,& Parrotsec, as main OS's and as always a couple of quick swap drives for testing distros, [the newest has W7 on it which I needed for one job only, that will also end up as a Linux test disc in time., again a 13-year-old machine, LMDE loaded first time everything worked as one would expect. I may at some point go back to Debian stable as my main drive, as I prefer APT package management [well I have been using it for so long, it's like a comfortable old overcoat]
Very good details, thanks.
With that information, I'll hand it over to a friend that has asking me to install it on his desktop.
Brickwizard
Well-Known Member
he can always join the forums if he has problems
Purchased a refurbished Dell Latitude E7270. Intel i5-6300U. 8GB RAM. 256 GB SSD. It has Windows 10 Pro (if that means anything.) Found it on Amazon for $139. I found a web page with instructions for installing Ubuntu on this machine. So, I assume if Ubuntu works, other versions of Linux should work. I looked for refurbished Think Pads. The Dell was the best price. Was this a wise purchase? Thanks!
wendy-lebaron
Active Member
Sadly this is not as clear cut as it looks like.
Each Linux distribution is potentially run by a different group of developers. Ubuntu is different from Arch which is different from Gentoo which is different from Slackware, RHEL, PeropesisOS etc.
I'm not saying this to scare you or to bewilder you. It also doesn't mean Linux is "many" operating systems. But there are many different implementations or interpretations of the same common theme.
It's difficult to get it right with the permutations of hardware out there. There's an expectation of at least 90%, maybe higher, that a given distribution will work on your computer. When it doesn't, just choose something else that does and don't become discouraged easily.
It looks like you hope to keep Windows which is another thing that will affect how willing you are to go into Linux for any reason. Some distros are unfriendly with users who want to "dual-boot", one of those distros seeks to replace Windows or another Linux OS completely. Which is bad.
The computer you bought seems to have enough memory to support a virtual machine. You install something like Oracle Virtual Box, and then check out Linux OS's from Windows without having to worry about doing anything to Windows. However it might not work at all, and the results could be a mixed blessing.
I'm unable to tell you how it is because my computer is incapable of virtual technology, or so that Virtual Box claims it so. I have to install stuff to have a different experience from live session straight from ISO.
There is a limited selection of Linux distributions that could be installed onto a pluggable USB disk and could be booted from there. But some people take strange offense to "dongles" and that sort of thing. I do this all the time and not bothered, and the disks I use are faster than the internal HDD of my 11-year-old PC in most cases. You should consider trying one of these Linux OS's if you are afraid of losing your Windows.
Brickwizard
Well-Known Member
it's a Dell take your pick almost any distribution will run on it, if you want to do away and just have Linux follow my how to install guide
