[SOLVED] Lubuntu vs Ubuntu for old laptop

[AlphaCloud_X]

So I've got this old dell laptop which is the dell Inspiron 15R 5521 and it has the i5-337U cpu @1.8GHz which is a dual core cpu, with 6 gb of ram, and a 500gb hdd.
Pretty much I want to use the laptop for some small tasks and to bring to school once in a while to take notes however it's quite slow atm running windows 10 and I'm wondering what distro of linux I should get.
I heard from a friend to get Ubuntu because it has lots of features but I was looking at Lubuntu because it's more lightweight and might help with battery life and to speed things up and also I might not need all the features offered in Ubuntu.
Which dsitro of linux would you recommend?

 

[USAFRet]

Which dsitro of linux would you recommend?

Either. Or one of the many other distros.

Really, whichever one you are most comfortable with.
Costs $0 to try.

 

[AlphaCloud_X]

Either. Or one of the many other distros.

Really, whichever one you are most comfortable with.
Costs $0 to try.

Ok thx, I'm probably gonna settle for Lubuntu because it has much lower system requirements than ubuntu

 

[USAFRet]

Ok thx, I'm probably gonna settle for Lubuntu because it has much lower system requirements than ubuntu

Given an i5<anything> and 6GB RAM, 'lower sys requirements' isn't rally a major consideration.
For the OS anyway.

 

[AlphaCloud_X]

Given an i5<anything> and 6GB RAM, 'lower sys requirements' isn't rally a major consideration.
For the OS anyway.

Oh ok, so if it doesn't make a big difference I'll give Ubuntu a try first since it looks nicer imo

 

[Grobe]

Any major desktop distros out there comes with an iso image file you can flash into a usb drive, and then boot into a live desktop without installing it. That mean you can download a whole bouch of distros and just flash the iso images to usb stick and do some testing.

Note that Ubuntu comes with a Gnome desktop environment, that is quite different from windows (it's efficient when you got the hang of it tho).

I'll personally recommend something like Linux Mint, or Linux Lite for newcomers too. The developers have made a pretty good job making the UI look good.
Also if going Ubuntu, I personally prefer Ubuntu Mate over both traditional Ubuntu and the Lubuntu.

Pop OS have getting some really good reviews lately, but I haven't tested it myself yet.

 

[AlphaCloud_X]

Any major desktop distros out there comes with an iso image file you can flash into a usb drive, and then boot into a live desktop without installing it. That mean you can download a whole bouch of distros and just flash the iso images to usb stick and do some testing.

Note that Ubuntu comes with a Gnome desktop environment, that is quite different from windows (it's efficient when you got the hang of it tho).

I'll personally recommend something like Linux Mint, or Linux Lite for newcomers too. The developers have made a pretty good job making the UI look good.
Also if going Ubuntu, I personally prefer Ubuntu Mate over both traditional Ubuntu and the Lubuntu.

Pop OS have getting some really good reviews lately, but I haven't tested it myself yet.

Thank you for your recommendations, I was also thinking about Linux mint as well however my laptop doesn't want to boot off of a usb or cd drive so I'm trying to figure that out

 

[Grobe]

Thank you for your recommendations, I was also thinking about Linux mint as well however my laptop doesn't want to boot off of a usb or cd drive so I'm trying to figure that out

Try this (spamming the F2 key) to bring up the boot menu:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4xF5STOzQA

 

[AlphaCloud_X]

Try this (spamming the F2 key) to bring up the boot menu:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4xF5STOzQA

Luckily I was able to get the laptop to boot from a usb today and it made some progress installing Ubuntu however there was an error installing it and in a terminal like think on screen it said that it went into emergency mode and that there were some errors so I'm trying to figure that out. I don't have the error code on hand but I was gonna try to re-install again and see how it goes.

 

[Grobe]

Since you already have the Ubuntu boot medium, you could use the opportunity to test the ram integrity.

 

[AlphaCloud_X]

Since you already have the Ubuntu boot medium, you could use the opportunity to test the ram integrity.

So I figured out that both of my usb's are causing different issues. The first one I used was a 64gb one and the dell loading screen would freeze and would never load even trying to open the boot menu wouldn't work, and the other usb is 8gb and would allow me to start disk checking part of the installation process but gives errors in some areas. After running one of the options I got an error with the image below. The ubuntu version is 20.10. Image below showing error:

 

[Grobe]

Ok, so it looks like the computer have some sort of malfunction - hard to pinpoint anything based on a kernel panic error, can be a power issue or it can be some chip on mainboard that have somehow get loose (on some laptops the big chip's like cpu/gpu may be soldered onto the mainboard, and when the soldering points get loose after some years, all hope of repair is practically lost #baddesign).

Not because I'm convinced it will help - but why not - you can always try:

• Remove internal HDD.
• If two RAM sticks, remove one.
• Then try using the other ram stick.
• In bios menu - disable all possible hardware (modem, ethernet, WiFi, bluetooth, etc).

 

[King_V]

Pop OS have getting some really good reviews lately, but I haven't tested it myself yet.

One or two quirks, but I've been happy with it. I'm running it on The Micro Machine (Athlon 200GE, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD)