Switching to Linux?

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buck91

buck91

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I have a now bit older laptop as my primary, an Asus K53TA. Since the introduction of Win10 I have been wholly disappointed with the performance... My choices are either revert to Win7 or switch to a linux distro. I would prefer the Linux option and hav ebeen experimenting with Linux Mint Cinnamon 64bit.

How has others' experiences in similar situations been?

The stem of my question revolves around some boot issues possibly related to radeon graphics... Lots of info on the net, but no real answers. Would love to hear from some people "in the know!"
 
How much ram you running? So its a boot issue only or other performance issues that are bothering you?
I noticed zero performance difference between 7 and 10...
 
INSTALL POS2009 basically a slim up to date XP, evaluations can be downloaded from Microst site.
 
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I had Ubuntu on an older machine, seemed ok. Too lazy to put onto a new machine though, and I've been disappointed in Win10 also. My work Win7 machine works great--but it's maintained by an IT department so one expects that.

How hard is it to swap harddrives? I'm wondering if you could put Linux onto an SSD and try out.
 
Linux is awesome and you'll really like it.

If you have an older laptop I suggest using Arch Linux.

1. Harder to set up but there's tons of help on the internet
2. Extremely light weight for your old computer
3. Rolling releases
 
I got a great deal on a desktop with Windows 8, like $150 rebates LOL because everyone knew it was a turkey. Cheaper than building my own without OS. Immediately put a dual boot into Ubuntu on it.

I only use my windows partition for tax software of all things.

Your linux setup will be able to split the disc partition and coexist peacefully. If you hate it windows can grab that disc space back.
 
Thats around 1700-2000 cpumark. or "fast celeron" type performance.

Should work great with windows or linux for basics.

I would try a fresh install of windows 10 that should speed it up.

Also you dont mention if you have it setup with Antivirus, antimalware type programs those can cause a considerable slowdown.


If going linux start with linux mint or your preferred option on a fast usb stick for a week or so to see if you like it.

This samsung 32GB for 11$ is pretty decent
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-METAL-Flash-MUF-32BA-AM/dp/B013CCTM2E


You could always upgrade they have i5 and i7 business refurbs well under 300$

or new i3-6100u based consumer grade at bestbuy for <$300
 
Windows 10 is extremely optimized to run on low rent hardware. The Linux experience may improve if stripped down enough however Win 7 would be worst.....
 
Originally Posted By: madRiver
Windows 10 is extremely optimized to run on low rent hardware. The Linux experience may improve if stripped down enough however Win 7 would be worst.....


+1

I have a tablet with a really slow quad core atom processor and 1gb ram and it runs w10 ok.

I have found upgrades to w10 can be clunky. I reinstalled w10 on my [email protected] because of lag after upgrade and that is 4x faster than the OP's computer.
 
Well, I found Win10 to be absolutely terrible. I tried tweaking it but nothing helped. Very long boot times, slow to load any programs or windows and frequent freezes for multiple minutes at a time just doing simple things like plugging in the power adapter.

Unfortunately, it looks like there is little to no hardware support for my radeon card in the linux environment right now. Loading a couple games I like at the moment to test them out on the open source drivers.... but its looking like a reversion to Win7 might be the new plan.
 
Originally Posted By: buck91
Well, I found Win10 to be absolutely terrible. I tried tweaking it but nothing helped. Very long boot times, slow to load any programs or windows and frequent freezes for multiple minutes at a time just doing simple things like plugging in the power adapter.

Unfortunately, it looks like there is little to no hardware support for my radeon card in the linux environment right now. Loading a couple games I like at the moment to test them out on the open source drivers.... but its looking like a reversion to Win7 might be the new plan.


Have you tried a distro that doesn't lock you into using only the (open source) Radeon driver? There are distros out there that make it pretty easy to install the proprietary driver.
 
uc50ic4more, I got a long way to go learning about linux. Played with redhat years ago, but not much. As of now, I'm seeing better success with older version of Mint, 17.3. What distro do you know of that might work better?
 
Originally Posted By: buck91
uc50ic4more, I got a long way to go learning about linux. Played with redhat years ago, but not much. As of now, I'm seeing better success with older version of Mint, 17.3. What distro do you know of that might work better?


I always suggest Ubuntu and its derivatives (this includes Mint) for people new to Linux and/ or those who care not to tinker and learn about it but would rather just get stuff done securely and stably. Ubuntu, though, has made it a little bit more difficult to get the fglrx (AMD proprietary driver) lately; and that is why I suggested that maybe you try another distro so you could get that driver easily, which seemed to me from your post to be your main (only) prohibitive factor.

As far as I am concerned, I think the best thing for you to do is to use Ubuntu and see this page for instructions on how to install the proprietary AMD driver: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/AMD

Mint 17.x, based on the Ubuntu 14.04 Long Term Support (LTS) release (the current one being 16.04 - they're versioned as year-month and the LTS releases come in April on even-numbered years. This is what Mint 18.x bases from.) still gets you the fglrx driver easily enough and *if* that supports your card well then stick with it! That Mint 17.x OS will be supported until 2019.

If this is not your main production machine and you feel like tinkering, try Arch or one of its derivatives that is much, much more user-friendly, Manjaro. Using Ubuntu or Mint is like buying a new car, ready to roll with a bunch of shiny features. Arch is like having all of the parts dumped in your driveway with a well-written assembly manual.

Other distros *might* make it easier to get that fglrx driver cooking (I think Manjaro offers it in their repositories, for example) but since it is proprietary it is not usually something Linux OS's tend to redistribute lightly. You might want to take a look at OpenSUSE or Fedora: They tend to be the most stable and well-supported OS's that are both user-friendly and not Ubuntu-based.

You can check out distrowatch.com (scroll down a bit and look on the right side of the page for a unscientific popularity listing of some of the hundreds of Linux OS's out there) to get more information on the various distros.
 
Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more
Originally Posted By: buck91
uc50ic4more, I got a long way to go learning about linux. Played with redhat years ago, but not much. As of now, I'm seeing better success with older version of Mint, 17.3. What distro do you know of that might work better?


I always suggest Ubuntu and its derivatives (this includes Mint) for people new to Linux and/ or those who care not to tinker and learn about it but would rather just get stuff done securely and stably. Ubuntu, though, has made it a little bit more difficult to get the fglrx (AMD proprietary driver) lately; and that is why I suggested that maybe you try another distro so you could get that driver easily, which seemed to me from your post to be your main (only) prohibitive factor.

As far as I am concerned, I think the best thing for you to do is to use Ubuntu and see this page for instructions on how to install the proprietary AMD driver: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/AMD

Mint 17.x, based on the Ubuntu 14.04 Long Term Support (LTS) release (the current one being 16.04 - they're versioned as year-month and the LTS releases come in April on even-numbered years. This is what Mint 18.x bases from.) still gets you the fglrx driver easily enough and *if* that supports your card well then stick with it! That Mint 17.x OS will be supported until 2019.

If this is not your main production machine and you feel like tinkering, try Arch or one of its derivatives that is much, much more user-friendly, Manjaro. Using Ubuntu or Mint is like buying a new car, ready to roll with a bunch of shiny features. Arch is like having all of the parts dumped in your driveway with a well-written assembly manual.

Other distros *might* make it easier to get that fglrx driver cooking (I think Manjaro offers it in their repositories, for example) but since it is proprietary it is not usually something Linux OS's tend to redistribute lightly. You might want to take a look at OpenSUSE or Fedora: They tend to be the most stable and well-supported OS's that are both user-friendly and not Ubuntu-based.

You can check out distrowatch.com (scroll down a bit and look on the right side of the page for a unscientific popularity listing of some of the hundreds of Linux OS's out there) to get more information on the various distros.


Could not have worded it any better.

Manjaro supports AMD Catalyst (FGLRX)

Get Manjaro and roll with Arch. If you need any help there are tons of communities that are there to help and there are likely tons of questions you may come up on that have already been answered.
 
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