Ok, background is, Mum gave me her old laptop, Toshiba, Pent Dualcore 1.46ghz, 2gb memory, 120gb HDD, MS Vista, it’s approx 7 years old. For whatever reason it had ground to a halt.
I’d like to put a linux OS on it for beginners, I tried to start off with a fresh install of Vista to work from, fell at the first hurdle, the restore disc was corrupt (on inspection it had some deepish scratches), I’m left with a shell, BIOS still working, too old for any Toshiba support. I’ve tried the recommended recovery stuff, but it seems that everything is lost incl the recovery partition, as whatever I try, it just keeps returning to the same screen

Moving on, I’ve ordered a Boxset Starter Pack from linuxshop.co.uk (yes I know), which of these would you recommend for a beginner?, which is the most likely to just work out of the box?. Anything else that you think would be better suited to an idiot?.
2nd Q, assuming I’ve wiped the Hard drive, what, if any, drivers might I need to reinstall? sound, graphics and?…..
Am I right in assuming, despite having wiped everything, very basic drivers will still be there and get me going?
cheers Paul

I’d go with Mint, the most accessible and less fussy.

All drivers will be lost and wouldn’t work for linux anyway, however linux comes with a batch of generic historic drivers which will almost certianly be able to use all the hardware on the lap top.

The best way to learn is to fiddle, if you make a horrible mess of it, wipe it all, reinstall, go again.

It’s all just part of the fun. 🙂

Any of those should work fine, but I’d probably go for Ubuntu as a first choice. The live DVD option allows you to try them without installing (they just run off the DVD). That will be a bit slow but does give you the option of having a look at them before you install.

You’ll probably find everything will just work straight off! 🙂 Fingers crossed.

Why do you need a fresh install of Vista? Just flatten it and go to Linux.

I was thinking you needed vista to be able to get a download of linux. But then you’re posting here, so I presume you have some access to a computer?

Download the distribution for free and install without bothing with trying to install Windows.

Mint seems to be very popular and has a nice desktop. Ubuntu has loads of information online. You will need web access as there will be plenty of tinkering and learning and googling required.

Cougar – Moderator
Why do you need a fresh install of Vista? Just flatten it and go to Linux.

My original intention was to download a Linux OS from a website, rather than buy it. The laptop had ground to a halt, I know I didn’t need to do it, but starting with a fresh install of Vista seemed like a good idea at the time 😳 , if only just to speed it up to install a Linux OS.

All drivers will be lost and wouldn’t work for linux anyway, however linux comes with a batch of generic historic drivers which will almost certianly be able to use all the hardware on the lap top.

Cheers John, sounds like it might not be a traumatic as I thought

You’ll probably find everything will just work straight off! Fingers crossed.

Yay 🙂

You may find that a full blow morder windows manager will be too much for the old laptop. It might be worht looking at xubuntu. This has less wizz band UI but better on old hardware. OR you can install a simple windows manger on what ever you mange to get going. Say you have installed mint. Then google mint xfce install and you should find soem instructions. (xfce is a light weight windows manger, there are other options)

I looked at Elementary, Lubuntu, LinuxLite and Mint MATE, but that 5 pack deal looked worth trying, it’s only small amounts of money afterall. Also, I thought that my laptop spec, altho low by today’s standard, would be sufficient enough to run more than just the Linux OS’s designed specifically for old laptops?.
I’m unsure whether I should be looking to install a 32bit OS or 64bit OS? The processor is 64bit, but the original installed windows vista was 32bit.

64, I’ve last my rag in computer shops before (PC World) when being told the machine is twice as powerful because of the 64bit processor, when they only provider it with 32 bit windows. And it wouldn’t be twice as powerful anyway, that’s not how it works… all cross just thinking about it now. But yes, slap 64 bit on it. Linux is much less resource heavy than windows, you’ll find Mate & cinnamon both run fine on old machines that struggle with Win7/vista

Aren’t you a Bradford local?

Email in profile.

If you want to pop around to mine with a USB stick I can make you a bootable one in 5minutes and if you would like I am sure I can spare an hour or so to try and get it all set up.

You might be able to get your money back on the box set if you decide not to bother using it.

I would also suggest Mint XFCE, I have it on 3 machines here.

Cheers for the offer gofasterstripes, I’m in Bingley. The pack was only £15, so no big loss. I’ll see what happens when I try it, I can still boot a disc from BIOS. If it goes pear shaped, I’ll give you a shout, cheers very much.

Great. Feel free.

Good luck.

Just thought I’d give an update

All the Linux OS discs in the Starter Pack (Ubuntu 15.04, Linux Mint 17.2 Cinnamon, Fedora 22 etc) run fine on it. I decided to fully install Linux Mint 17.2 Cinnamon, which I think is considered one of the more heavyweight Linux OS??, runs fine, takes less than 2 mins to start up. I’ll probably use it for a few weeks and then install each of the others to try out (may as well)

Installing Linux Mint was a doddle and worked straight away, there was no head scratching at all, the only additional bit I did was to download all the updates in ‘Update Manager’. I think I’d watched a video telling you to do this.
Cheers everyone for advice and offers of help.