Acer Netbook Aspire 1

[jgp12000]

I have an old netbook-Acer Aspire 1, with Windows Xp on it.CPU N270 @ 1.6Ghz,1GB RAM.Surprisingly it's pretty fast surfing as is.I was thinking about loading Linux on it,I dabbled with Ubuntu live CDs in the past & liked it.Just curious, what is the latest & greatest USB version that anyone can recommend that they have actually used? It would save me the research time,I have fish to catch  

[boon]

It will be brutally slow and struggle with things like rendering video. If you only consume the most basic functions of the internet, some sort of Linux distro would likely be sufficient, albeit incredibly slow.

[MarkT]

Any Linux/Unix distro will be way more efficient in terms of hardware than Windows. OTOH, surfing the web isn't an intensive load... if web apps is all you care about then the OS doesn't really. We used to run our apps on SCO Unix (do they still exist?) on hardware that Windows wouldn't even boot up on! We ran on 386 SX (don't ask!) machines back in the 80's that were pathetic when we went live and they worked fine for years. The 250g hard drives were way too small for what we were running and were the limiting factor.

[happyhooker]

Not familiar with the specs of your machine.  Is it 32 or 64 bit?  Only 1 Gb of RAM will limit your options.  What kind of graphics on it (nVidia?)

I used Linux Mint 18.3 happily for several years, so when it went into non-support, I went with Mint 22.  Bad choice,  Lots of lockups.  Evidently, my old machine with nVidia graphics doesn't play well with most of the newer distros, which struggle with old nVidia graphics.  I'm trying Fedora now, and it is much better than the Mint 22, but still have lockups, especially if use any browser other than the Firefox that comes with the newest Fedora.

Another trouble spot for me was getting my Brother printer/scanner to work with these newer Linux distros.  Never got the scanner going with Mint 22; a lot of work, but they both sorta work with Fedora.

I have an old 32-bit desktop that has low specs, and thought I would try Q4OS on it.  Installed, but have not been able to get wireless Internet going.  Q4OS also has a regular 64-bit version as well as a version that you can install like a program within Windows.  I have installed the latter, but it too does not work as it should.

I like Linux, and might try to get an Acer/ATI video card that I could install & run Fedora with.

Linux is not for the faint of heart.  Be prepared for a lot of fiddling.

Frank

[DougK]

my desktop is dual-boot with Windows 10 and Ubuntu.

big problem with any Linux distro is getting the hardware to work.. I had to go searching for drivers for several of my bits of hardware. As Frank says it usually takes a fair bit of twiddling. I'm a software engineer, don't know how any normal person could do this..

definitely want the Ubuntu LTS version, that is long-term-support, means it will be supported for 5 years from release.

or Puppy Linux, may be friendlier for older hardware. Haven't tried it yet myself but it's well reviewed.
https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/

[jgp12000]

I guess I was lucky my laptop booted to the Ubuntu live CD,all drivers were there, no crashes or lockups.

[mike1010]

Most anything that will boot is likely to run Linux well enough to browse the web, but you won't know for sure until you try.  I am not a Windows fan, but there is one thing that keeps me off of Linux, now that I no longer depend on it for my living:  If you update any piece of Linux software in place, rather than sticking with what came on the distro, it is easy to end up chasing new dependencies to infinity and beyond.  As one wag put it, administering Linux is like living in a house you are constantly rebuilding.

--Mike