need enlightenment
 

i am trying to find the best os for my 9 year olds c500 vista upgraded to 7 but its not stable and tends to freeze and on occation make strange sound while browsing, was looking into a clean install for the 7 but after reading some information on linux am thinking it maybe a more stable os for her. she doesnt do alot of "work" on it but does watch alot of youtube, diy projects, netflix and pandora, i am not a pro but have some experience with computers. Can someone enlighten me a little more about which linux would be best for her c500? would linux wipe her to a "clean install" it is fairly old (11 years) and has had 4 owners. when it was given to her it barely ran the vista it came with and in attempt to make it usable for the child i upgraded it to 7 it functions but slow and unpredictably, and is full of hp stuff that will never get used, and who knows what im not finding from the other 3 owners. i have never used a linux and am curious. any knowledge or advise you may have will be greatly appreaciated.
thanx msfixitplz

The fact that it is an older machine (but not too old! :)) increases the likelihood that the hardware will be supported, so that's good.

Have a search on the web for "best Linux distro for beginners". Distro signifies "distribution". One of the good things about Linux is that many distros allow you to run them live from a USB stick, so you can try various distros out on your daughter's computer and see which one you and she like.

If you have any specific problems in setting it up, and can't easily find the solution on the web, then please do feel free to let us know.

A clean install of Linux does sound like a wise choice.

Have fun!

Need enlightenment? Try Bodhi Linux, it actually comes with desktop environment call, Enlightenment.

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=bodhi

http://www.bodhilinux.com/

if your "need enlightenment" actually means need help seeking a "Linux" that would run on your 9yr old PC. Just use what that other two dudes said above me in their posts and use this link distrowatch to seek out something that will match yours and your pc specs.

To better assist you post your 9 year olds computer specifications (make and model) so we could recommend a distribution.

If that machine is old you'll most likely need to install a more 'lightweight distribution' that the CPU can handle.

Hi msfixitplz...

Welcome to the forum :)

Yes, the C500 is definitely an older system and the distribution of Linux you choose will affect how well (or fast) it runs. How much memory does your system have? If 512 MB's, then your range of choices is sharply limited.

As hydrurga mentioned above, hardware support (in terms of drivers) should be ok, but your wireless adapter may require more work, depending on the manufacturer of the chip and model number.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Linux does not have as good multimedia support as Windows does, so sites like Hulu and possibly others will be an issue. You should be able view Netflix by installing and using the newest version Of Google Chrome. YouTube runs fine in Linux.

If you have any further questions or need help during the installation process, please let us know. :)

Regards...

it is a compaq presario c500 (2005) celeron M 1gb ram 32-bit i have activated the unallocated space on the drive so it now has 2 drives on "disc0" c:/ 89000 mb d:/ 5600 mb i did a little browsing and picked up ubuntu and linux mint last night i am unzipping them now. i know were here for linux discusons but as some are running dual systems if this was a registered vista and the vista was attemted to upgrade to 7 without a key and vistas os wiped completely from drive is it possible to get vista os image to clean install to give it a dual? in unzipping i have had a minor issue wiht linuxmint extraction error filesystem.squahfs ...archive broken or damaged. is this my end issue or the download itself..i got it from linuxmints distro page. well i dont guess i can play with both at same time anyway so ill fiddle with ubuntu for a bit..thanx for ya'lls support im sure ill be back before long with a new Question

thanx guys ended up having to take the long way around getting the ubuntu and linuxmint..to try, the c500 dvd rw refuses to read blank discs(not sure what set that off) in process of booting ubuntu now, no issues as yet seems its taking a while to boot but i guess thats normal everything takes time(patients is not my vurtue) but imgburn could not complete linuxmint messages about logical address out of range not sure what it means but i can come back to that later anyway, cant really use both at same exact time..did notice something strange the c500 downloads came as zipped and on the cq57 they were not zipped (the long way around) had to download and burn from the cq57 ..any reason dvd rw would not recognize blank disc could the drive not like the brand im using or something like that they are dvd-r..the one blank dvd+r i have it recognized but wouldnt when i9 set up the burn.

Hi...

No, it's because Ubuntu is a heavier distribution that requires more than what 512 MB's of memory can give it, if that's what you have. ;)

EDIT I missed where you said you have 1GB of memory but that's still the bare minimum and I still think that's why it's booting up slowly.

Regards...

In a couple of posts above, he says he has 1GB. But he should still be looking at a lighter distro.

You might be able to find reasons and/or solutions for that here.

Whoops, I missed that in the OP's post. Thank you for pointing that out. :)

Regards...

thanx guys gonna see if i can get dobhi to run

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