Someone Gave me a Laptop! Your opinions, please.

[72-Jay]

Right place/right time .. what a great score on that laptop!

 

[GamerBear]

Damn sounds like the Goodwill in the rich part of California, great things just thrown away.

 

[Daximus]

Is it all scratched up? Does it boot at all? There may be a reason someone tossed it into a phone recycling bin.

I hope it works for you cause that's a decent laptop. And yeah format that thing immediately if it works.

 

[rareboy]

It is a dell inspiron. It probably crapped out and needs a new hard drive.

Or it is loaded with child porn.

Or state secrets.

 

[HunterM]

Serendipity indeed! I rarely get free stuff. I wish someone would give me a lapdance for free.

 

[PreTTy PeTe]

use dban to wipe the hard drive of any weirdness the previous owner was up to.

then reinstall windows and if you don't have that ubuntu is good.

or throw the damn thing away because if it's a good computer there is a reason it was in the garbage.

 

[Ruggerfucker]

load it up and check the history. You could be in with some serious blackmail potential

 

[andysayshi]

With my own experiences with Dell hardware, I'll be surprised if it boots at all. Best of luck, however!

 

[T-Rexx]

If this is the computer I think it is, it has plenty of power to run any OS you might want.

4 GB RAM, 2 GHz dual-core Pentium, 500 GB hard drive, DVDRW.

Fedora is good, but take a look also at Fuduntu and Linux Mint.

I hope it works out well for you, Johann, but I am skeptical that this thing will boot. I don't think someone would have thrown out such a nice computer if it was in perfect working order. If it won't boot, I would scrap it for parts. Take out the hard drive and put it in an external drive enclosure. Also, pull the RAM (if someone hasn't already done that) for use in another laptop.

 

[PreTTy PeTe]

you guys are confusing me xubuntu, lubuntu, and now Fubuntu.

whats the difference..........damn I want to be a geek too.

 

[OPHELIA_HARDIN]

Best of luck!

 

[T-Rexx]

A computer expert here on JUB once told me that ArchLinux might work best with a laptop. Do you agree?

ArchLinux will run on anything. It is extremely powerful, extremely fast, and very scalable to your hardware and your needs. But, it is designed for accomplished Linux users. It demands a certain level of knowledge about Linux in exchange for its power and versatility. If you are new to Linux, you may want to consider a distro that's a little less geeky.

...my OH wants something a little bit quicker. I have had some concerns with Fedora because they have decided not to support mp3 playing, deeming it to be a proprietary format. (There does exist a weak work-around.)

Red Hat has always annoyed me with their obsession with copyrights. Of course it is correct that mp3 is a proprietary format, but the Fraunhofer Institute does not demand a license for individuals, just commercial use (at least, that's my understanding).

Red Hat does that with all of the proprietary media formats. DVD, mp3, etc. It is not that difficult to get the usual media codecs installed, but it's not as easy as it should be.

I suggested Fuduntu because it is a Fedora fork that does not (I believe) suffer from the media playback annoyance. Also, Fuduntu is supposed to be a light weight version of Fedora that runs better on minimal hardware (which your laptop is NOT, BTW). It uses RPM packages but the desktop looks a little more like Ubuntu than Fedora (hence the name, Fuduntu).

Any Linux distro should run well on this laptop. It is more a matter of finding what you want in terms of functionality. Ubuntu has that tablet interface (i.e., "Unity") while Fedora has gone with Gnome 3 (which is itself trying to morph into a tablet interface). Fuduntu is determined to stick with Gnome 2.x (IMHO, the best desktop computer interface ever written). Linux Mint is trying to modify Gnome 3 to look like Gnome 2 ("Cinnamon"). Cinnamon is probably an acceptable desktop, but I thought it had an "unfinished" feel to it when I last used it (about a year ago). The drop-down and pop-up menus were not aesthetically consistent and the desktop would even occasionally crash on me. But, they should have made progress in fixing some of that by now.

 

[trawler69]

I'd say prepare yourself a bootable linux distro of some description on a cd, possibly have an external cd drive handy incase the internal one is knackered. I have known so many people who think their computer is dead just because the hard drive dies. Good luck with it, I hope it turns out well.

 

[72-Jay]

Some people would rather try to recycle than simply trash it...just because it is "the right thing to do"

 

[T-Rexx]

TRex, there's no reason you'd know this, but in real life I am known as a gifted teacher.

In real life, I am known as an incompetent student.

If the hard drive were friend, wouldn't the owner simply throw it away, rather than putting it in a recycle bin?

Don't know. If my hard drive were fried, I would just replace the hard drive.

Puppy Linux doesn't serve very well as a Workhorse, but for browsing the Internet, reading email, etc, I see it as fine little distro—lean, mean, green, and faster than a speeding bullet. (It runs entirely in RAM.)

I agree with all of that.

 

[T-Rexx]

WOW! Cool!

 

[72-Jay]

It works cool! .. makes that laptop an awesome score!

 

[Corny]

That's the first time I hear someone liking unity

 

[roadtripboy]

I have heard of power adapter problems with Dells when you don't use a Dell made adapter. You might have to get one from Dell.

 

[Daximus]

Glad to hear it works. Nice score.

As for the power adapter, yeah, Dells aren't the best. My boyfriends laptop has the same issue. The power jack (on the motherboard, not the cable) is iffy so it always has to be plugged in and preferrably not moved around. Otherwise it loses the connection and the screen dims and the processor slows down. Uggg. But it works.