Hi everybody

This looks like the site I've wished for.
I have an old SP3 laptop and would like to use it to just web browse and excel work.
Please could I get advise which Linux to install on USB and how to go about this. I am particularly concerned about Xtra-PC

I'm brand new to Linux so would appreciate basic instruction please till I get up to speed..

If there any general advise items re this site that I should take account of please put me right

Thank you in anticipation of any replies

Ramonford

Welcome.

At the top of the "Linux - Newbie" subsection there is a pinned link:

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ro-4175623119/

That goes into quite good detail about what to look for.

tldr; give one of the Linux Mint variants a try

2 members found this post helpful.

Or if you want an easy and pleasant ride, try Mageia:
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installation_Media
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installing_Mageia

[b]https://wiki.mageia.org/en/First_ste...nux_and_Mageia[b]

A very friendly distribution to new users and advanced users alike, with a very nice default interface, very stable, great hardware support, nice management GUI's, fine package manager and more. In my book way more user friendly than *buntu. I liked Mint quite before, but then they dropped KDE. I think the only other recommendation than Mageia that I can really make to new users is Manjaro which is also stable and nice and friendly, but in my book not nearly as good as Mageia.

Mageia will give you the freedom to just set it up easy and spend the time on what you want to spend the time with, but if you want a steeper learning curve and to learn more and faster, I'd recommend Slackware as an alternative.

1 members found this post helpful.

As you have old hardware, maybe AntiX, which specialises in this field. I use Slackware myself but I would not recommend it as a first distro.

1 members found this post helpful.

I'd also strongly suggest you read the sticky thread linked in post #2. You probably want to look at one of the "lightweight" distributions for old hardware - there's at least a few of them around. While you should try at least a few running them as "live systems" before deciding on any particular one; the developer for AntiX is a member of this forum if you get stuck with AntiX.

1 members found this post helpful.

Installing to USB is not much different from installing to a disk, unless you choose to drop the distro directly on a USB to run it directly. A USB is just basically a different disk you can install too.

Regarding lightweight, even KDE is lightweight these days, relative to hardware. There are special distroes for lightweight as mentioned AntiX, Puppy, Bodhi etc, but any normal distro can also be lightweight. Myself I like Enlightenment for that purpose. Take a distro like Mageia, you can easily install Enlightenment and voila, you have a light distro, but not focused on that. But on the other hand you have a very good distro.

So, unless you have less than 2gb of ram, no need to go specifically lightweight. If you have between 1-2gb, you can also use a normal distro and lightweight it yourself.

Slackware is also lightweight in it's own right. Runlevel 3 by default. My installation is running very little by default and I have to scale that up myself, so it's very lightweight.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thank you to every one for your prompt and very informative replies.
I am totally overwhelmed by the expertise and the vast amount of knowledge forthcoming.

It is going to take some time to go though all of this advise and I will hold off replying in this thread again with follow up questions/ requests for help in the appropriate thread..

As a side note the only other forum I ever came across coming close to this one was " World Start" which unfortunately has closed down, and I have never been able to find anything similar

Thank you all again

ramonford

I had never heard of XTRA-PC before so looked it up. Most links that show up in Duck Duck Do are questioning whether it is a scam. It is possible to buy usbs of major distros if you are not comfortable with downloading and installing your own, sounds like a better idea to me. Example: https://www.shoplinuxonline.com/linux-usb.html has a wide variety. Please note this is only an example and I have no knowledge of this vendor!

It might help to know the specs of this computer, especially the amount of RAM.

The problem is that "just" browsing the web of 2019 is one of the most demanding tasks for a computer.
An old Win XP laptop - what, 15 years old?
We need the specs.
In any case, you'll want to go lightweight to very lightweight.

Surely you exaggerate!