dslreports logo
 
    All Forums Hot Topics Gallery
spc
Search similar:


uniqs
3293
me1212
join:2008-11-20
Lees Summit, MO
·Google Fiber

me1212

Member

Good distro for a 60 year old man?

And how big of an ssd/hdd would it need? 60GB or so?

My dad's laptops's hard drive may be failing, its about 3 or 4 years old has sata 2. Its not the best laptop but its still plenty more than enough for him and it would cost about $400 to get a new laptop that is as good as his current one.

All he does is brows the web and occasionally youtube on it. I'm thinking mint 14 but want to get some input on that and the new drive size for him. I'd do windows but eh it costs money and all he needs is a web browser which linux can do fine.

mattrixx
join:2004-02-18
Orland Park, IL

mattrixx

Member

MINT 14 "MATE" for his older laptop should be just the thing!
me1212
join:2008-11-20
Lees Summit, MO

me1212

Member

Thanks man. Just out of curiosity why mate over cinnamon?
dave
Premium Member
join:2000-05-04
not in ohio

1 recommendation

dave to me1212

Premium Member

to me1212
<grumpy>

What's this '60-year-old man' nonsense, implying some sort of automatic age-related issue in handling computers?

While I'm not quite up there myself, you might reflect on the fact that Ken Thompson will be 70 this year.

</grumpy>
me1212
join:2008-11-20
Lees Summit, MO

me1212

Member

Fine... 60 year old former pro baseball player not 60 year old computer geek. Hows that :P

ImpldConsent
Scouts Out
Premium Member
join:2001-03-04
North Port, FL
·Comcast XFINITY

1 edit

ImpldConsent to me1212

Premium Member

to me1212
said by me1212:

All he does is brows the web and occasionally youtube on it. I'm thinking mint 14 but want to get some input on that and the new drive size for him. I'd do windows but eh it costs money and all he needs is a web browser which linux can do fine.

Agreed, Mint 14 (CINNAMON for higher'ish hardware, MATE - medium, XFCE - lighter). Regardless, your selection of Mint is very good for what he wants to do.

*EDIT* - for the SSD - why not a 120GB and call it. If he does get a new laptop later, you can always recycle this drive SAMSUNG 840 Series MZ-7TD120BW 2.5" 120GB SATA III
pablo
MVM
join:2003-06-23

pablo to me1212

MVM

to me1212
said by me1212:

Fine... 60 year old former pro baseball player not 60 year old computer geek. Hows that :P

Marginally better ... not to bust you over it but again, age has nothing to do with it ... perhaps you mean to say "non-technical savvy user, what's the best distro?"

Cheers,
-pablo

mattrixx
join:2004-02-18
Orland Park, IL

mattrixx to me1212

Member

to me1212
I suggested MINT(14) "MATE" for his older laptop cause it requires LESS resources or current hardware requirements
than Cinnamon ideally demands.

misiek
Premium Member
join:2000-12-25
Round Lake, IL

misiek to me1212

Premium Member

to me1212
I'd add another vote for Mint 14 + MATE. It runs quite happily on my 7+ year old Dell laptop. Has a 2 GHz Centrino CPU, 60 GB hd and 2 GB of RAM installed.
pablo
MVM
join:2003-06-23

pablo to me1212

MVM

to me1212
Hi,

A three to four year old laptop is no slouch. Do you have any specifications on it? How much RAM is on this laptop? 60 GiB of storage is way more than enough for the modest requests made on the laptop. I'd expect even 20 GiB is sufficient. Do you have any information on the processor?

I'm going to go out on the limb and say that I believe /any/ distro will be sufficient. Given Ubuntu is very user friendly, I'd go with an LTS release.

Cheers,
-pablo

jimkyle
Btrieve Guy
Premium Member
join:2002-10-20
Oklahoma City, OK

jimkyle to pablo

Premium Member

to pablo
I get quite a chuckle out of such exchanges.

A few years ago, when I was in my 50s, I was amazed that the forum I ran on CompuServe (very techie; sponsored by Software Development magazine) had a couple of active members in their mid-70s.

Now that I'll be 82 in just six more weeks, the "incompetent geezer" stereotype just amuses me. I'm still doing a bit of custom software development and database recovery, and have no plan to stop any time soon...
intok (banned)
join:2012-03-15

intok (banned) to me1212

Member

to me1212
Agreed, Mint w/ Mate, great combo.

As for HDD vs SDD I'd go with HDD for cost/reliability SSDs are still pretty flaky and don't last long at all. For this reason I'd go with a standard HDD, not one of the hybrid SSD/HDD deals.

Also if the laptop has a miniPCIe card slot look at getting a Broadcom CrystalHD BCM70015
me1212
join:2008-11-20
Lees Summit, MO

me1212 to jimkyle

Member

to jimkyle
82 and still developing software? I want to be like you someday.
pablo
MVM
join:2003-06-23

pablo to jimkyle

MVM

to jimkyle
Hi Jim,

82? Very good! An inspiration!

I'm 49 and my idea of retiring is to join OSS projects and contribute my acquired knowledge.

Cheers,
-pablo
pablo

pablo to intok

MVM

to intok
said by intok:

As for HDD vs SDD I'd go with HDD for cost/reliability SSDs are still pretty flaky and don't last long at all.

Oh I'm not sure about the above anymore ... my desktop has been running fine with its SSD for 13 months and my laptop a couple of months. I suppose time will tell.

I'll say this though, my main disk will never be HDD. SSD just kicks the snot out of HDD.

Cheers,
-pablo

El Quintron
Cancel Culture Ambassador
Premium Member
join:2008-04-28
Tronna

El Quintron

Premium Member

said by pablo:

I'll say this though, my main disk will never be HDD. SSD just kicks the snot out of HDD.

Cheers,
-pablo

I really does, both me and my wife got a pair of 520s and we're using them to boot Win/Ubuntu the only word I can think of is "awesome"

rexbinary
MOD King
Premium Member
join:2005-01-26
Plano, TX
·Frontier FiberOp..

rexbinary

Premium Member

said by El Quintron:

said by pablo:

I'll say this though, my main disk will never be HDD. SSD just kicks the snot out of HDD.

Cheers,
-pablo

I really does, both me and my wife got a pair of 520s and we're using them to boot Win/Ubuntu the only word I can think of is "awesome"

Yeah I'll have to agree. I built a new rig last summer and used a OCZ Vertex 4. I'll never build without a SSD again.

Brano
I hate Vogons
MVM
join:2002-06-25
Burlington, ON

Brano to me1212

MVM

to me1212
Mint or openSUSE are both mature, stable, easy to manage and easy to use.
As for GUI, test for yourself (you can have multiple installed at the same time).
I'm personally using KDE (on Mint) and can highly recommend it.

ImpldConsent
Scouts Out
Premium Member
join:2001-03-04
North Port, FL
·Comcast XFINITY

1 recommendation

ImpldConsent to intok

Premium Member

to intok
said by intok:

Agreed, Mint w/ Mate, great combo.

As for HDD vs SDD I'd go with HDD for cost/reliability SSDs are still pretty flaky and don't last long at all. For this reason I'd go with a standard HDD, not one of the hybrid SSD/HDD deals.

LOL, between the OP getting slammed for the "60" yr old thing and this comment - the post suddenly became hilarious. Todays SSDs will probably outlive your current MHDD. Better do some research before a statement like this. As for the hybrids, the Seagate XT offerings are a fantastic alternative to SSDs for those who do not want to build with pairing an SSD/HDD (ISRT).

BTW - Gordon Moore - co-founder of Intel - is 84yrs old. Steve Jobs - co-founder of Apple - was 56 when he died in 2011.

jimkyle
Btrieve Guy
Premium Member
join:2002-10-20
Oklahoma City, OK

jimkyle to me1212

Premium Member

to me1212
Gotta stay active. FWIW, I'm using Xubuntu on both my machines in my home office. This one is on 10.04 LTS and the other on 12.04 LTS. I've been essentially totally Linux based since Xubuntu 7.04...

It's much easier to work with than were CP/M and before that, 8080 assembly language!
pablo
MVM
join:2003-06-23

pablo

MVM

said by jimkyle:

Gotta stay active.

... that's right ... and for my "mental bubblegum", that's why I was thinking of doing technical OSS work.

For the physical side, I'll continue to run/x-c ski/swim ... perhaps if I can outlive my competitors, I might actually place.

Cheers,
-pablo

JohnInSJ
Premium Member
join:2003-09-22
Aptos, CA

JohnInSJ to jimkyle

Premium Member

to jimkyle
said by jimkyle:

Btrieve Guy

Dude! I am pretty sure I read your Btrieve book in the mid 90s.

Of course I was just a kid back then

to the OP - Ubuntu is nice on a Laptop, although I am less of a fan of the new desktop (being old myself, and partial to older Gome...)

SSD size? bigger. 120GB+
me1212
join:2008-11-20
Lees Summit, MO

me1212

Member

Ended up putting mint 14(cinnamon) on his laptop for him to try out. He loves it so far, he keep saying how much faster it is than windows for him. Gonna get him an ssd sooner or later, and yeah probably 120GB.
intok (banned)
join:2012-03-15

intok (banned) to ImpldConsent

Member

to ImpldConsent
Modern as in brand spanking new Vertex bought last summer that died after 3 months from the controller failing rendering the drive completely unreadable? The replacement drive lasting only 6 weeks?

Nah, while they make a great boot volume, you'd better backup every 15 mins and have deep pockets to keep replacing them.

ImpldConsent
Scouts Out
Premium Member
join:2001-03-04
North Port, FL
·Comcast XFINITY

1 recommendation

ImpldConsent

Premium Member

Click for full size
Vertex2
Click for full size
Momentus XT 500
said by intok:

Modern as in brand spanking new Vertex bought last summer that died after 3 months from the controller failing rendering the drive completely unreadable? The replacement drive lasting only 6 weeks?

Nah, while they make a great boot volume, you'd better backup every 15 mins and have deep pockets to keep replacing them.

I'll respectfully disagree. IMO, your experience is not indicative of the experience of millions of SSD users (please do not insult me by pointing me to OCZs 'support' forums). I will agree that coders make mistakes, but they make mistakes on all storage devices, not just SSD.

Bottom line - do what you want but don't bash technology that didn't work for you for 1 reason or another.

The screenshots are on (almost) 3yr old Vertex2 and Momentus XT on 7yr old workstation.
dave
Premium Member
join:2000-05-04
not in ohio

1 recommendation

dave

Premium Member

Two builds each with Crucial M4 SSD main disk and WD Black rotating-rust for data disk... SSD problems 0, rotating disk problems 2.

Clearly, my anecdotal evidence (which is just as valid as someone else's anecdotal evidence) says that SSDs never fail and rotating disks always fail.

kingdome74
Let's Go Orange
Premium Member
join:2002-03-27
Syracuse, NY

kingdome74 to me1212

Premium Member

to me1212
I'll 57 in 6 days and I use Mint Mate. I can use any of them but I've been trying to find some form of linux to replace Windows on my wife's laptop. If your Dad can run Windows without any problems he should be able to run Mint without any too.

mattrixx
join:2004-02-18
Orland Park, IL

mattrixx to dave

Member

to dave
Depending upon just how old your Laptop might be in the decision to add an SSD,consider the fact that in the case
of my older Toshiba Satellite A-105 1.7GHz Dual Core, it simply does not know about things such as AHCI or SATA II or SATAIII which makes it problematic to say the least to substitute an SSD for it`s original SATA HDD.

J E F F4
Whatta Ya Think About Dat?
Premium Member
join:2004-04-01
Kitchener, ON

J E F F4 to me1212

Premium Member

to me1212
said by me1212:

60 year old former pro baseball player

Dammit, now you got me wondering. Was this "pro" as MLB or minors? I know, I know, not computer related at all!
dave
Premium Member
join:2000-05-04
not in ohio

dave to mattrixx

Premium Member

to mattrixx
You probably meant to reply to the OP, not to me. I'm not planning to do anything to a laptop; I was merely refuting the notion that all SSDs are unreliable.

Your point is a good one, though.