Hey everyone - got a old Acer Aspire One 725 netbook - help

Community
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Hey everyone.

So I bought an Acer aspire one 725 netbook last week which I got on the cheap as I actually happen to like the overall look and what not especially more than chromebooks and wanted a smaller laptop to use for portability.

Very briefly here’s its specs:

Amd 1ghz dual core c60
4 gigs ram ddr3
128gb ssd
Currently running windows 10

My question is more or less what would you recommend? Everything more or less I’m ok with but my issue is the processor. Generally I’m an amd fan but in this case even for the time it was released seems like amd cheaped out with this one. Wanted to see if I could even upgrade the processor but no dice. Since the ram and the ssd are decent enough for what i want which is general web browsing, office stuff etc. Just to help speed it up a bit for multi tasking, videos etc would you guys recommend overclocking a bit or installing a different os?

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I overclocked my 17 inch amd turion laptop. I was only able to increase it by about 300mhz before it died on me.

Would not recommend over locking the laptop.

If you want fast performance, you could try using a ram based os like antix or mix Linux.

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Ok cool. In your experience would you say that linux would make a significant ish difference to overall performance given the specs? Never tried linux - in your opinion what would you say is the most user friendly/beginner linux os that’s similar to windows? Thanks again!

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Wine or Ubuntu.

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Perfect- will look them over and move forward much obliged.

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Oh wait sorry so wine you install on top of the ubuntu os essentially?

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You can install it on mint if you want. I would just pick the linux that would work for you instead of guessing.

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Ok fair enough- for a first time would you say go ubuntu or mint?

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I’d say mint since its lighter than ubuntu

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I to would recommend Mint Linux, I have tried all three major distributions of Linux but have found Ubuntu the most easiest to learn, and Mint the easiest to install.

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I’ve used Ubuntu Budgie for a while and it was a really enjoyable experience, i can fully recommend it. If you don’t value style than you can go with Ubuntu mate which was my long term go to Linux version. Can’t go wrong with either.

especially for a Linux beginner i’d recommend sticking with a flavor of Ubuntu just because of its popularity and the amount of help you can find for it. And keep the installation medium for a while, the first time i switched to linux i couldn’t deal with the power that comes with sudo combined with rm.

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Thanks everyone for your input - strictly based on light research as well as everyone’s posts it sounds like I’m gonna start experimenting with mint first.

I know my ram is no problem-my biggest fear/issue is the bloody amd c60 lol…is there any particular version of mint which I should be considering ?

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Have used and fixed a lot of netbooks and small laptops, It usually helps to turn off turbo boost if you can, turbo boost is usually a quick way to hit thermal throttling as most netbooks don’t have adequate cooling in the first place.

Mint is a good starting point but it is a heavy weight for that APU. The c-60 is about on par with an Atom n450 but with better graphics capabilities.
If Mint ends up being too slow you might want to try MX linux, antiX, Puppy linux or Manjaro.

With Mint probably the XFCE version, then mate. Don’t think I would ever want to try Cinnamon on one of those.

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You could try Xubuntu. It runs pretty good on my netbook with much worse specs than yours, Atom N270, 2gb ddr2, 160gb 5400rpm HDD. It’s only using 200mb of ram at idle.

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in the education section you will find a post for education links for cli these can help you a lot