Low-End Laptop Likes L... ... Kubuntu ?!?!

[Tommy Trussell]

TL;DR

For various reasons I've kept Ubuntu blinders on and I haven't run KDE much
in several years. I was surprised at how well Kubuntu 16.10 "Yakkety-Yak"
runs on a low-end laptop I own.

Is Kubuntu considered a great choice for low-end laptops nowadays?

What bugaboos should I be watching for in KDE on a low-spec laptop?

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

I have an Acer Aspire One D260 netbook purchased at Wal-Mart a few years
back. (I saw a recent posting on the Kubuntu list regarding a similar
laptop, so I know there's at least one other out there.) We originally
bought this one because it's very small and spouse and I thought it would
be good for travel. Sadly its 2-core Atom N260 1.66Ghz processor and its
maxxed-out 2Gb RAM are huge limitations. (That and its disappointingly
low-spec battery, and smaller-than-most screen, but we'll ignore those for
now.) I've never used Windows on it, though I left it installed for
warranty reasons. I haven't run anything on it but Ubuntu flavors in years.

Because I wasn't the primary user of the netbook, I merely kept it updated
on versions of "straight" Ubuntu, following the upgrades through the
development of Unity etc. I also have been installing the Mate and LXDE
environments as alternatives for testing, and I sometimes switch among
those.

In years past my experience was that LXDE has sometimes been more usable
for low-end systems. I also assumed MATE might presumably look like the
older Ubuntu releases spouse has been used to. Unfortunately (in my
opinion) Lubuntu has some quirks that make it a bit harder to support, and
neither it nor MATE have seemed as "polished" OR as RAM efficient as I
hoped for.

SO I am again looking at KDE...!

WHAT I DID TODAY

I keep LTS releases on most of my systems, but I try them all on the
netbook. I saw the Yakkety releases had come out, so I downloaded ISOs of
Ubuntu, Lubuntu, and Kubuntu. (I haven't yet downloaded any other Ubuntu
"spins," nor have I tried Mint lately.)

This morning, I tried all three (booting from a USB stick). The clear
winner (based on my limited testing) was Kubuntu! Wow! I was surprised...

This is based on a short (15 minute) test of each environment...

My test procedure:
1) burn iso to USB stick (using my primary Ubuntu LTS system)
2) boot netbook from stick
3) click "Try _buntu" button (doesn't exist in Lubuntu)
4) connect to network
5) open system monitor
6) open Firefox
7) connect to a couple of resource-intensive web sites
8) watch processor and RAM figures as I connect (yes the CPU stays maxxed
out)
9) open a LibreOffice writer document and type a few words
10) watch RAM figures as I close everything (to see how much RAM gets
released)
...
11) pick another ISO and start over at step 1

WHAT DID I MISS?

It occurs to me that maybe I am missing something --

For instance, I am watching the RAM figures in the system monitor because
that seems to be the big bugaboo on this system -- in "straight" Ubuntu, by
the time you open LibreOffice and a few web sites, the RAM usage is higher,
and once it gets maxxed-out, presumably things start going to swap. Ubuntu
does noticeably poorly with low RAM -- presumably Unity uses a lot of RAM
compared to other environments.

HOWEVER it occurs to me that maybe the KDE System monitor MIGHT be
measuring RAM differently from the other system monitors. For instance,
does the RAM total include system RAM? I presume it does, because it
doesn't drop to zero, but it surprised me that it starts out noticeably
lower, its maximum is lower, and it releases pretty much everything when I
close documents.

Also it's likely Ubuntu starts up more stuff as you login, and maybe KDE
will start some things later. Do I need to turn something off as I use it
more?

I just found a Reddit thread saying KDE works great on low-spec systems as
long as you avoid akonadi. Maybe that's outdated info, but I'll watch for
it.

In the past we have seen a few weird random crashes on the netbook when
spouse is working hard on something, which may be due to hardware issues
when everything has been churning away for minutes at a time. SO ultimately
it may be time to retire the old laptop... but I hate to give up too soon.

NEXT STEP

I haven't installed it yet.... I'll be doing a "clean" install (overwriting
the OS but preserving/restoring the user accounts, which takes awhile). I
have never done this with Kubuntu but I presume the procedure is the same
as regular Ubuntu.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kubuntu-users/attachments/20161024/aacbfdf9/attachment.html>