Old acer laptop, linux noob, have questions

Wixen

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Probably overthinking this, but here goes....
I have an 11 year old acer aspire 5332, currently running win7 very slowly. I'm thinking of changing the os to linux lite (also open to suggestions).
First stumbling block for burning a bootable usb is bios. Bios on my machine is apparently V3.04 Intel V1800. I have absolutely no idea what that means, but I do need to know if its bios, legacy or (doubtful) uefi.
Hopefully someone more knowledgable can steer me in the right direction.
 


Linux Lite is a great choice for your first Linux. No need to worry about your BIOS... Linux Lite will install in both Legacy and UEFI. Backup anything important from Win7 that you want to keep, and just install Lite on the entire disk. It should run nicely if you have a fair amount of RAM (2GB+). Enjoy!
 
Cheers! I knew I was overthinking it! PC is all backed up and ready to go, hoping to do an install this weekend.
 
when you download your chosen distro and burn it as a bootable image, Make sure the check sums match, then do a test run live from the installation media, to make sure all works ok [wireless/blue tooth sound etc] shut it down [i say this because on some aspires the auto shutdown dosn't work proply ] If your then happy re-boot the machine and install.
Linux is not windows no matter which distro you choose it will take a little time getting use to it and finding your way round
Enjoy
Bwiz

[ burn iso usb in windows ] www.diskpart.com/articles/how-to-burn-iso-file-to-usb-7201.html
 
Lol! Yeah, I was planning to try it first, just in case something didn't work. What do you think of Rufus for making bootable usbs? There were a lot of negative comments for balena etcher.

Edit to save space: I'm used to android more than windows these days, so linux shouldn't be too scary. Win10 is horrible, need to get it off my main machine, but that will be difficult as I have unsupported realtek drivers to contend with.
 
Win10 is horrible, need to get it off my main machine, but that will be difficult as I have unsupported realtek drivers to contend with.
would that be the . RTL8192CU 802.11n wireless ..I have a dongle with that chipset for about 5 yrs, never managed to get it going.. the lazy way would be get a dongle with the RTL8188CUS 802.11n chipset they are quite cheap and disable the onboard wireless card
 
Can't remember the exact one, but I also came to the conclusion that a WiFi dongle was the way to go
The pc is a hp pavillion 15.
 
What do you think of Rufus for making bootable usbs? There were a lot of negative comments for balena etcher.
I'm quite a fan of Etcher as long as you don't need "persistence" on your flash drive. Etcher is about the easiest one for a newbie to use... Pick ISO, Pick USB, Burn it! I've heard folks have problems with both, so there may be a number of factors at play, including bad checksums, as Bwiz mentioned.
 
I have an old Asus W90 laptop, quad core processor. It is 11 years old too, bought it in 2010. It is running Mint Cinnamon 20 and dual booting with Win 7. No problems at all. Of course the Linux distro boots about 10 times faster than Win 7, but the Linux is on an SSD and the Windows is on a HDD.
 
I have an old Asus W90 laptop, quad core processor. It is 11 years old too, bought it in 2010
thats a bit younger than my Acer ZG5 [2008] with 16gb Zif drive and 1.5mb ram it runs a full blown version of Peppermint 10 re-spin, it may be a bit slow, but the battery last 6 hrs and being small it has traveled thousands of miles with me around Europe and beyond
 
Hey Wixen - give us an update, if you will including what burning method you chose? :)

Maybe too late now but for The Viewers -

a good idea is to check the website of the distro for recommended burning methods. In the case of LL

https://www.linuxliteos.com/manual/install.html#installuefimode

has this, in part

Writing the Linux Lite ISO to USB in Linux and OSX

Using a GUI application


You can use Etcher as mentioned above to write the Linux Lite ISO image to a USB. You will need a 4Gb or larger USB drive. Etcher works on - Windows, Mac & Linux. Download it from here.

Stan and I made the acquaintance of Etcher about 3 years ago, before Balena bought it, and I have not ever had a problem with it.

Cheers

Wizard
 
I initially downloaded Rufus, but decided it was too complicated, so I downloaded balena etcher (as recommended here and on the linux lite website. I downloaded the iso from the main website (rather than using a mirror) via Ethernet cable and burned it on to a brand new 32GB usb.

Hope that helps someone.
 
and burned it on to a brand new 32GB usb.
did you make sure the check sums matched.?
Have you tried running it live yet?
Del is usually F12 for the short boot menu

Bwiz
 
i have manjaro installed on my 2006 acer 5580 with 2.5 gigs of ram, and it does not slow comparing to win 7 on this laptop before.

sorry for my bad english, it is not my language
 
Hey Wixen - give us an update, if you will including what burning method you chose? :)

Maybe too late now but for The Viewers -

a good idea is to check the website of the distro for recommended burning methods. In the case of LL

https://www.linuxliteos.com/manual/install.html#installuefimode

has this, in part



Stan and I made the acquaintance of Etcher about 3 years ago, before Balena bought it, and I have not ever had a problem with it.

Cheers

Wizard
I will vouch for the goodness of Etcher. It is easy and user friendly - and gets the job done.
I have used it many times without any problem whatsoever.
Might as well have another beer with our friend @wizardfromoz .
Old Geezer TC
 
I'm quite a fan of Etcher as long as you don't need "persistence" on your flash drive. Etcher is about the easiest one for a newbie to use... Pick ISO, Pick USB, Burn it! I've heard folks have problems with both, so there may be a number of factors at play, including bad checksums, as Bwiz mentioned.
I will vouch for the goodness of Etcher. It is easy and user friendly - and gets the job done.
I'll vouch for dd, it gets the job done as well and it even works for creating a bootable usb flash drive for Windows 10.
 
I'll vouch for dd, it gets the job done as well and it even works for creating a bootable usb flash drive for Windows 10.
I will have to try that... thanks! :)

I have never found any Linux-based solutions that actually work for burning Win 10 ISO's, but I have tried several that claim to. One common problem may be using USB's formatted as FAT32, and there's a file inside the Windows ISO (install.wim) that exceeds the 4GB file size limit. The USB should begin with a GUID Partition Table (GPT) and formatted as NTFS to even have a chance of success, but there may still be other problems. I haven't tried this in quite awhile.
 
I'll vouch for dd, it gets the job done as well and it even works for creating a bootable usb flash drive for Windows 10.
Well, hmm... sort of, maybe. I downloaded the latest May 2021 Win 10, and dd worked without errors. But the USB did not boot the first 2 computers I tried, even after resetting BIOS/UEFI to defaults first on one of them (that came with Win 10 originally). My wife has a Microsoft Surface Book laptop, and it did boot the USB. The others recognized the USB in the BIOS Boot Menu... they just failed to boot it.

I began with the USB set to GPT and formatted as NTFS, but burning with dd changed it to a UDF filesystem instead of NTFS (and partition table shows 'none' as you would also see with ISO9660 Linux boot USB's). Maybe Gparted is as confused as I am. I installed udftools, but I still see the same result. Gparted does not show the Boot Flag as set, but as I said, it did boot the Surface laptop.

At the moment, to me, it still seems the only reliable way to burn the Win 10 USB is with the Media Creation Tool. At least it has never failed in my experiences with it, which are few and far between.
 
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