Linux version for elderly slow laptop

[Clay Weber]

On Friday, November 07, 2014 07:14:07 PM Uriah Heep wrote:
> The laptop is an Acer aspire 4730z with am Intel Pentium dual CPU T3400
> @2.16 GHz. It came with 2 gigs ram which I upgraded to 4 though info only
> shows 3.8 Gib I also replaced the hard drive with a cheap 112 gig ssd
> several years ago.
> 
> So far it seems Xubuntu and Lubuntu are the most widely suggested.  When
> you say "Just install the packages Ubuntu-desktop and xubuntu-desktop. Then
> you can select the
> desktop at the login screen. " I am assuming I can use package manager to
> install the desktops as I am really effectively a noob.
> 
> Thanks for the suggestions gentle folk.
> 
> Uriah

Heck, my 2008-ish Dell D830 runs a T7250 @2.00 Ghz, which is a similar cpu to 
yours. I upgraded to 4gb ram and a small ssd some time back myself. I have 
little problems  running Kubuntu, or Unity, or Gnome so far, though I wish I 
could afford to try and see if 8gb ram will work in this thing - it is 
unofficial, but many seem to say it can. Browsers seem to be the ram-eaters 
these days for me. 

One thing I have seen that slows me down is the system hitting the swap 
partition way too soon.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq#What_is_swappiness_and_how_do_I_change_it.3F
This small tweak can help. Just substitute "kdesudo kate" for the "gksudo 
gedit". It might help while you decide what different desktops to check out ;)

If your system is like mine, the ram discrepancy you see is due to the memory 
used/reserved by the gpu.

-- 
Clay Weber
https://kubuntuforums.net
http://kubuntu.org
http://claydoh.com