What the heck should I do with it! It’s an absolute slug…I bought it while living in Germany so it has a German style keyboard, nobody will ever buy it in America, so selling it is out. Here’s the specs so you guys have something to chuckle at:
Processor: 1.50 GHz AMD A4-5000 APU with Radeon HD Graphics
RAM: 4.00 GB
OS: Windows 10 Home
The thing is unbearably slow but in perfect shape so it’d be a shame to just toss it.
Install pretty much any linux distribution and it will run way better I had a very similar laptop that performed just fine running linux mint.
Trying installing some random software on it like FreeNas or maybe XenServer. Just play with some stuff. You've got no use for it, so devote its purpose to learning some software you haven't experienced yet.
That's actually a good idea! I have my first ever Linux class this Summer, maybe it can be my guinea pig.
Put arch on it?
A4's are pointless. I don't know how an APU could be so bad unless its built off null resistors.
What's arch?
a lightweight linux distribution
What is arch.... Hmmm.
You got legos as a kid right? Think of arch as your green base with everything you need to get started right there. Then all your packages are the blocks yu put in yourself. Xorg, a DE/WM, maybe no WM and you render pruely from mesa to preprogrammed spaces on each TTY! You choose what block goes where, what arrangement, color, size, if its a house, a dick, a duck, or a working drill.
The only difference is that you start with a terminal rather than a DE like most distros.
Ditto. I got an old Core 2 Duo netbook from a friend of mine that was from the late-Vista/early-7 era. I tried Windows briefly but it was awful. I use Ubuntu GNOME a lot anyway so I tried that from a live CD, and it was awesome. The laptop gets better boot times, better battery life, and produces less heat doing simple things with Linux than with Windows. Tiny low-power laptops are one of the best applications for Linux.
I'm so jelly rn
You could try Proxmox VE, although KVM virtual machines with 4GB of RAM isn't much fun. One thing I would definitely try is LXC, that would let you use it to get your feet wet with lots of Linux stuff without having to constantly reinstall the OS on the bare metal. If you don't know what LXC is, it's basically a super light way to run virtual machines in "containers". The way it works it can only run Linux, but it's really efficient at doing that. An A4 would probably be able to run at least 4-5 containers doing simple server stuff.
Don't recommend FreeNAS, not with 4GB of RAM. If you can upgrade to 8, maybe, but even then that's pushing the hardware requirements.
VMs on an A4? Those things are worse than P4's (IMO) that sounds like an awful idea.
That's an awesome explanation, thanks a lot!
That's why I suggested containers. I've run VMs on an A6 and it's functional, it's not exactly pleasant though. Containers, however, I've run on an Athlon 64 X2 without a hitch. (This was with OpenVZ but LXC is pretty much identical, or better, in performance in my experiences)
Pardon me while I get totally off topic. The thing is great. Best Linux box I could ask for. I drag it everywhere I go.
It's not the thinnest thing out there, but it's light and it was free so I can't complain. Still thinner than my 17" laptop.
Plus you can get at all the insides (including the uSATA SSD, WLAN card, RAM, and various cooling systems) by removing one screw and one panel. Other laptop manufacturers need to take lessons from Dell in this area.
And yes that rectangular connector with a billion pins is one of those dock connectors. I have the dock but since I've got a bigger laptop I don't really use it with the netbook much since I'd rather use a beefier machine at my desk. Still nice to have though since it fits every Dell business laptop.
Edit: Specs:
1.6GHz (I think) Core 2 Duo
3GB of RAM, maximum of 5GB
128GB uSATA SSD
Some 802.11n card I stole from an old Toshiba laptop. This netbook originally had a Broadcom, which worked, but it was only 802.11g and I have a deep hatred for 802.11g.
Is it running ubuntu gnome ?
Yep. Ubuntu GNOME 15.10, soon to be 16.04 once I get around to babysitting the upgrade, which will likely be this weekend. Only complaint I have is that the terminal emulator stopped being awesome and started being terrible between 15.04 and 15.10. Other than that, Ubuntu GNOME is 10/10
Oh, and the battery lasts like 4 hours when you're just doing SSH/web browsing stuff. The shortest battery life I've ever had was 2.5 hours, and that was when I was doing a bunch of APT upgrades along with Banshee music, Chrome, and LibreOffice. The thing is amazingly low-power for its speed/age.