Windows replacement for my non-techy mother on a netbook

[Raptor_Fawr]

I used to have a netbook with intel atom processor, one of those things that never worked properly as a laptop replacement. 

I handed it over to my mother

 

She use it mainly for netflix and web browsing and she says that it's too slow at boot and loading apps, so I'm wondering if a linux distro would be a proper solution to revive this failure. 

 

I was thinking about Lubuntu, but I'm open to suggestions as long as system requirements are low and the user interface is similar enough to windows to let her use it without any hassle. 

I am also interested on what to install to make it work without having to call her and give her tech support by phone if something doesn't work properly, any third party solution is welcome and any propietary software is not an issue since it will just be a web surfing machine with an office suite to occasionaly read mail attachment such as word excel and pdf documents

[Tarry Hesticle]

Yeah Lubuntu would work great for that. You could try Linux Lite, just cause it's XFCE skin is modeled more after windows.  For remote desktop you could try messing around with VNC, but that could be a bit of a pain.

[Sauron]

Realistically no Linux distribution will magically cause junk to be fast. Lubuntu would be a good enough choice but manage your expectations

8 minutes ago, Raptor_Fawr said:

what to install to make it work without having to call her and give her tech support by phone if something doesn't work properly

TeamViewer is an option. Chrome/chromium remote desktop works well enough too.

11 minutes ago, Raptor_Fawr said:

occasionaly read mail attachment such as word excel

The only way to do that reliably on Linux is through the online version of Office 365. Opening Word and especially Excel files with other tools is a crapshoot.

 

PDF is no problem though, just install a decent viewer like Okular.

[Raptor_Fawr]

I know that an intel atom from 7 years ago will not be as good as an i7 from 2019 but I just want something that takes less than 2 minutes to boot the full OS and 1 full minute to open chrome or chromium, I hope that switching to lubuntu will be enough. 

 

I was also considering puppy linux because it is amazingly fast even from an usb drive but I doubt my mom would be happy if her computer will look like windows 95 after my "upgrade"

[vlads_]

28 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Realistically no Linux distribution will magically cause junk to be fast.

You'd be surprised. Sure it still won't make it fast and snappy, you'll click a button and you'll still have to wait for stuff to happen. But, even if speed doesn't go up by that much, stability, reliability and responsiveness do go up dramatically.

 

28 minutes ago, Sauron said:

 

42 minutes ago, Raptor_Fawr said:

occasionaly read mail attachment such as word excel

The only way to do that reliably on Linux is through the online version of Office 365. Opening Word and especially Excel files with other tools is a crapshoot.

That depends. LibreOffice works pretty well with files not using new Office 2013+ features, advanced Excel features or fancy Microsoft fonts. For most office stuff it's perfectly adequate.

 

But yeah, +1 for Lubuntu. The distro is one of the most user-friendly out there (although Mint may be better?), requiring little maintenance and the DE is very fast while still looking nice and being familiar for Windows users.

 

One thing to keep in mind when setting up a Linux system, especially for a non-techie, is to make sure everything works as expected before declaring the installation done and handing them the device. Do all programs work without issues? Are you getting weird DBus errors when you open up a terminal? Are there any firmware warnings at boot up? etc.

[Sauron]

12 minutes ago, vlads_ said:

That depends. LibreOffice works pretty well with files not using new Office 2013+ features, advanced Excel features or fancy Microsoft fonts. For most office stuff it's perfectly adequate.

Depends on the documents as you said. Don't get me wrong, Libreoffice is fine for office work - it's just at reading MS Office documents that it underperforms. The last thing you want is for her to call saying "the computer doesn't work" and it just being an incompatible excel document.

14 minutes ago, vlads_ said:

You'd be surprised. Sure it still won't make it fast and snappy, you'll click a button and you'll still have to wait for stuff to happen. But, even if speed doesn't go up by that much, stability, reliability and responsiveness do go up dramatically.

I've done this exact thing in the past, junk is junk unfortunately. The system does behave better but ultimately web pages will still load slowly and boot times will still be biblical. I would honestly recommend a raspberry pi over a 2010 netbook - the pi 4 especially is really snappy for what it is and it doesn't struggle playing any kind of video, even from Netflix with software decoding.

[Raptor_Fawr]

2 hours ago, vlads_ said:

But yeah, +1 for Lubuntu. The distro is one of the most user-friendly 

One thing to keep in mind when setting up a Linux system, especially for a non-techie, is to make sure everything works as expected before declaring the installation done and handing them the device. Do all programs work without issues? Are you getting weird DBus errors when you open up a terminal? Are there any firmware warnings at boot up? etc.

Do you think that a couple of reboots will suffice? My mother will not really touch the terminal and all that stuff without asking, she knows a little how computer works but mostly she relies on me just because I'm the tech guy of the family. 

The netbook doesn't even have a dvd drive bay and only usb ports will be used to transfer files to usb drives, so hardware compatibility should not be too much an issue once the system works fine. 

 

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Depends on the documents as you said. Don't get me wrong, Libreoffice is fine for office work - it's just at reading MS Office documents that it underperforms. The last thing you want is for her to call saying "the computer doesn't work" and it just being an incompatible excel document.

I've done this exact thing in the past, junk is junk unfortunately. The system does behave better but ultimately web pages will still load slowly and boot times will still be biblical. I would honestly recommend a raspberry pi over a 2010 netbook - the pi 4 especially is really snappy for what it is and it doesn't struggle playing any kind of video, even from Netflix with software decoding.

 

Coincidentally I've just bought a raspberry pi 4, so I will test it myself when it arrives, and I'm really relieved that you say it's good for netflix because I was worried about it. People online complained that raspberry was not good for streaming because you had to install additional software to make it work. 

 

Anyway a Pi is not really the best solution for my mother because it is too different from what she is used to, I'd rather spare some money and buy her a cheap-to-mid priced laptop 

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, Raptor_Fawr said:

Coincidentally I've just bought a raspberry pi 4, so I will test it myself when it arrives, and I'm really relieved that you say it's good for netflix because I was worried about it. People online complained that raspberry was not good for streaming because you had to install additional software to make it work. 

I use Kodi to watch Netflix on Pi 2s, I have a guide for that in my signature if you're interested - it's for Arch but it works about the same on Raspbian, you just need to install the inputstream addon with apt. And you can ignore the part about permissions, that only matters on Arch.

 

I honestly don't know how well it works via browser because I've never tried - in theory it should work fine though.

1 hour ago, Raptor_Fawr said:

Anyway a Pi is not really the best solution for my mother because it is too different from what she is used to, I'd rather spare some money and buy her a cheap-to-mid priced laptop 

I mean... does it really matter to her what the keyboard, mouse and screen are attached to? Does she even need to see it? Just strap it to the monitor and tell her it's an all in one

[Raptor_Fawr]

Thank you, today the raspberry arrived and I've tried unsuccesfully to watch netflix with raspbian. 

 

I'm having fun trying to make everything work, I'm using a ps2 case and I need to learn how to code the two buttons in the front to make both a power button and a dvd tray eject button, but so far so good! 

 

As for the netbook, that arrived today too, my mom handed it over to me. I'm doing a backup of all the files and then I'll test how much lubuntu works better than windows 7 starter

[Raptor_Fawr]

Lubuntu works like a charm, the computer takes 1 minute circa to boot and it's very fast with applications, but I think that the Intel Atom N450 is the major performance bottleneck therefore it won't work flawlessy. I'm planning to download 1 more GB of ram and I hope this will be enough to make this last for a couple of years more

 

Thank you all for your support! 

[lal12]

I got a RPi 4 with 4GB of RAM for my grandpa, and it works without any issues, though watching soccer games live seem to be a bit too much for it on some websites.

 

Yeah linux can really help getting more performance out of your old hardware. However the more mainstream distros of linux are not as lightweight as they used to be, and even Lubuntu will need RAM in the multi GB range. So for something like an old netbook I would have went for a very tiny linux like "Puppy Linux" or "Damn Small Linux", for which less than 512 MB RAM will be more than sufficient.

 

But the question is if it is worth the hassle it all. If you install a modern web browser it will basically need more or less the same amount of RAM and the same CPU power as it will on a Gaming PC. Linux might help a bit compared to Windows but not much. Also older hardware will often lack support for modern codecs and resolutions, so often higher resolution Videos or with a more modern codec like H265 won't play lag free.

 

Also a more general advice: Unfortunately bringing back to life your old hardware with Linux won't work for any hardware due to the lack of drivers. I had multiple cases of older devices where good driver support for the GPU was lacking, so even moving a window was laggy. Even on a relatively modern Notebook with an AMD FX processor lacked GPU driver support just like 4 years afterwards.