[bj96]

I've this unused Intel Compute Stick. Currently has win 10 on it but, very slow and unstable. I was thinking to install Chromium OS or a lightweight Linux, mostly for youtube and browsing. What are my options? Any tips or tutorial will be highly appreciated.

tia,
-BJ

[koyomi_araragi]

Originally Posted by bj96

I've this unused Intel Compute Stick. Currently has win 10 on it but, very slow and unstable. I was thinking to install Chromium OS or a lightweight Linux, mostly for Youtube and browsing. What are my options? Any tips or tutorial will be highly appreciated.

tia,
-BJ

Seems like the CPU is 64-bit so that opens up a lot of options. The clock speed and RAM are the limiting factors, and with my experience with ChromeOS, anything with >4 GB of RAM is going to struggle, ChromiumOS might do better, but just marginally. (This is based on my experience with HP Chromebook that my cousin has used regularly)

I would recommend Zorin OS Lite because it's the most polished and stable distribution you can get for the hardware because of the following reasons -

1. It's ubuntu based, so support for software or guides on the internet aren't an issue.

2. ZorinOS is built with the perspective of being very user-friendly for people from a non-technical background, so helpful if the stick is for the family. The default layout just resembles Windows.

3. It's based on the LTS version, so long term support as it's clear you want an install and forget about it OS.

Now the recommended system requirements for ZorinOS Lite I can find are -
CPU 1 GHz Single Core – Intel/AMD 64-bit or 32-bit processor
RAM 1 GB
Storage 10 GB

So we can safely say that your intel stick has the requirements to run it. Here's the link to the page, make sure you get the Lite version, the normal version has a lot of bloat -
https://zorin.com/os/download/

I'll list down some other alternatives too - Lubuntu, Peppermint OS, antiX.

Hope this was helpful!

[Risky4327]

My ordeal with my old dying desktop:
This machine was assembled in 2014 with selected components for a price of 50K. It was lying around in the house, rarely being used. Sometimes I used to play counter strike condition zero whenever I felt nostalgic about college days.
It survived two house shiftings but one day it failed to boot. After thorough process of troubleshooting using articles from the web, I declared that the chipset is dead. Apparently I hooked up one of the molex connectors in wrong way. Anyhow, a local vendor replaced my Asus H91 board with Consistent H81 board and there goes the PCI slot which used to handle my wi fi card.
But it was working fine with Windows 7. Three weeks ago windows gave the dreaded blue screen of death. After three attempts of re-installing windows, I gave up.

A couple of days later, I erased everything using a live USB of Ubuntu Linux. On its first reboot, it showed error mesi of thousands of lines. I don't remember or understand those, but keywords were ata cable error, DRDY, FPDMA read failed, bulk update, emask, inodes, etc. At few occasions, it was able to enter the OS after running an fsck test on root partition. But most of the times it kept struggling on the dark screen full of errors

After going through several articles, following remedial actions were taken:
1. Modified the kernel parameters in grub CMDline by adding words related to acpi, NCQ, AHCP, etc.
2. Replaced ata cables with new ones.
3. Replaced motherboard's CMOS battery.

Meanwhile I kept trying with various distros of linux. Manjaro, POP OS, Elementary OS, Mint and again back to Ubuntu, but errors reappeared every time I boot after installing the OS. SMART tools showed no errors on the drive, but all the error messages during booting were related to disk only.
As a last attempt to revive my old PC, I changed the SMPS with a new one from Corsair and Voila! It worked.
Now I am on Endeavour OS which is based on Arch. Apart from lack of any GUI based package installer, it is almost as simple to use as windows and Ubuntu. After installing various apps, I feel it's very sturdy /stable. It even detected my 15 years old USB webcam. After installing Zoom meeting, I made my daughter attend her classes from the desktop instead of a mobile.
One surprise I got after installing Endeavour OS was that i was able to use by Epson L380 printer without much tinkering. It was almost impossible in Ubuntu.

Next weekend I'll be trying to make it dual boot and install windows too for occasional light gaming.

Online community forums, changing the power supply and trusting the linux helped me revive my old PC which was on its deathbed.
Best thing about using linux is that we are able to see what is going wrong, in the logs. Windows just gave a blue screen while Linux provided me with clues to solve the problem.

[mayukh42]

Originally Posted by Risky4327

As a last attempt to revive my old PC, I changed the SMPS with a new one from Corsair and Voila! It worked.

Interesting. It looks like the 24 pin cable of PSU was the culprit, assuming the HDD was fine.

If you want to try Windows, I'd suggest Windows 7 or one of the custom light versions of Windows 10, to go easy on the hardware.

[Risky4327]

Originally Posted by mayukh42

Interesting. It looks like the 24 pin cable of PSU was the culprit, assuming the HDD was fine.

If you want to try Windows, I'd suggest Windows 7 or one of the custom light versions of Windows 10, to go easy on the hardware.

The cable was fine I guess, because motherboard was turning on, it was able to boot using live USB, after installing an OS also it was working fine unless it was restarted.

I assume the SMPS wasn't giving proper voltage to HDD, hence it was throwing errors related to inodes. I had no idea about these things as I am no power user. But linux forums were very helpful.

[rahi]

Hi all,

I have been a windows user all my life but now want to learn/use linux.
Which linux distro do you recommend?. I shall be dual booting it with windows 11 on my laptop.

Regards

[BaCkSeAtDrIVeR]

For just using, Ubuntu is good.

For "learning" the nitty gritty and mixing and matching of OS equivalents of chassis, engines, suspensions, etc and the sub assemblies, go for Debian.

CentOS is the community equivalent of Red Hat. If you intend to go for enterprise level system administration, learning CentOS is a good idea.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by rahi

I have been a windows user all my life but now want to learn/use linux.
Which linux distro do you recommend?. I shall be dual booting it with windows 11 on my laptop.

Dual booting is so old fashioned. That was the only option until a decade ago. Here is me triple booting on an iMac in 2010.

These days you can just use WSL or Hyper-V on Windows. I have CentOS, K3OS and Debian on Hyper-V and Debian and Alpine on WSL on my Windows 11 desktop. I wouldn't bother with dual boot anymore.

[cryptarchy]

Originally Posted by rahi

Hi all,

I have been a windows user all my life but now want to learn/use linux.
Which linux distro do you recommend?. I shall be dual booting it with windows 11 on my laptop.

Regards

I use Linux Mint because it is straight forward to use and comes with everything installed out of the box. You don’t have to configure anything and start using it right away. Although I am a technical person my job is specialised and I need my computer to just work. So I prefer Linux mint.

[adityaprasoon]

Originally Posted by rahi

Hi all,

I have been a windows user all my life but now want to learn/use linux.
Which linux distro do you recommend?. I shall be dual booting it with windows 11 on my laptop.

Regards

I second Linux Mint. Try Cinnamon edition.
LM is really good and stable with access to huge package list, detailed documentaions and tons of help articles/blogs online. Being based on Ubuntu works in it's favour as you can find help regarding almost anything online.
Not only it is good for beginners, it has enough customization options for you to keep digging dipper.