Linux Distributions have improved from when I last attempted to install Ubuntu in 2009. Lubuntu 14.10 was effortless in terms of installation and nearly everything is laid-out in a very intuitive manner. I was literally up and running within minutes and in maybe two (2) hours completely running Linux on the Toshiba Netbook NB505.
Specs
The Toshiba is a very weak machine and spec-wise nothing amazing. It has a puny Intel Atom N455 1.67ghz Processor, 1gb Ram and 250gb HDD. That's about it. Running it on Windows 7 Starter was a painful experience and while I got it tweaked where it was reasonably functional, there were certain things you just could not do such as watch a full movie or surf the internet. Otherwise, some basic typing was all the Netbook could offer. With Linux however, it has given the Netbook a new lease on life and while marginally faster on boot times and most other tasks, it did make watching a movie or surfing the internet more reasonable. There is still some lag, but much less than it was on Win7.
To be honest...I think a simple Ram upgrade to 2gb would have resolved my performance issues on Win7 and likely would make Linux work even better. Either way, Linux is free to try and an opportunity to learn something new. So here are the basic steps to convert over to Linux from a Window's Machine.
Closing
I ended up doing two (2) installations.
(1) Dual Boot - first tried keeping Win7 partition. But for some reason it became corrupted and wasn't able to access it.
(2) Linux Only. I wiped the whole machine and installed only Lubuntu 14.10 and didn't see the need to try and recover Win7 or start over by installing it then Linux.
Problems:
There were some immediate problems encountered, mainly in configuring the misc keys. I had thought I could figure them out later, but after searching the internet...nothing seemed to help. The problems were:
1) Volume Up/Down and Mute didn't work.
2) Display Brightness didn't work
3) Wifi remained off (rfkill list all kept saying it was a hard block, there's no physical switch, only a function key, which didn't work).
Otherwise, everything else worked. I could have lived with most of this, but the Wifi not turning on was very frustrating and after many attempts and installing/changing code I think I made it worse. In the end after a few days with Lubuntu, I decided to try another distribution and see if that might help, and Elementary Luna did indeed solve the problem (in another post).
Specs
The Toshiba is a very weak machine and spec-wise nothing amazing. It has a puny Intel Atom N455 1.67ghz Processor, 1gb Ram and 250gb HDD. That's about it. Running it on Windows 7 Starter was a painful experience and while I got it tweaked where it was reasonably functional, there were certain things you just could not do such as watch a full movie or surf the internet. Otherwise, some basic typing was all the Netbook could offer. With Linux however, it has given the Netbook a new lease on life and while marginally faster on boot times and most other tasks, it did make watching a movie or surfing the internet more reasonable. There is still some lag, but much less than it was on Win7.
To be honest...I think a simple Ram upgrade to 2gb would have resolved my performance issues on Win7 and likely would make Linux work even better. Either way, Linux is free to try and an opportunity to learn something new. So here are the basic steps to convert over to Linux from a Window's Machine.
Step 1
Download Lubuntu 14.10 and unetbootin (I did this on a faster machine, the HP running Win 8.1).
Step 2
Create USB boot disk from ISO using unetbootin.
Step 3
Boot from USB. Try Lubuntu first to see if it works okay.
Step 4
If everything seems okay then you can try installing it. Some things to check are all the misc function keys (volume control, wifi, display brightness, etc).
Dual Boot OS
For now, I'm going to keep Win7. If Linux proves better suited then I'll decide and format to a single partition.
Closing
I ended up doing two (2) installations.
(1) Dual Boot - first tried keeping Win7 partition. But for some reason it became corrupted and wasn't able to access it.
(2) Linux Only. I wiped the whole machine and installed only Lubuntu 14.10 and didn't see the need to try and recover Win7 or start over by installing it then Linux.
Problems:
There were some immediate problems encountered, mainly in configuring the misc keys. I had thought I could figure them out later, but after searching the internet...nothing seemed to help. The problems were:
1) Volume Up/Down and Mute didn't work.
2) Display Brightness didn't work
3) Wifi remained off (rfkill list all kept saying it was a hard block, there's no physical switch, only a function key, which didn't work).
Otherwise, everything else worked. I could have lived with most of this, but the Wifi not turning on was very frustrating and after many attempts and installing/changing code I think I made it worse. In the end after a few days with Lubuntu, I decided to try another distribution and see if that might help, and Elementary Luna did indeed solve the problem (in another post).
Update 3/3/15 - back to Lubuntu, sorta
For whatever reason Elementary runs really slow. While it fixed the misc keys, it was worse than Window 7 at times. I noticed it was constantly at 100% CPU usage. Decided to try and test with Lubuntu 14.10 and now all the keys work. So I did a dual boot install and will have both versions on the Netbook. Hey, as long as it works.
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