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

[Valorie Zimmerman]

Hi Tommy, I had a little travel netbook I didn't need anymore, so I
gave it to my nephew who reallly wanted it. I put the 16.04 LTS on it,
and set aside time to help him use it. When I stopped by their house,
he said, Hi Auntie Val, no I don't need any help. Everything is great!

That poor little atom-processor computer is 6 years old!

Vaorie

On Mon, Oct 24, 2016 at 10:10 AM, Tommy Trussell
<tommy.trussell at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
>
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-- 
http://about.me/valoriez