Prepping old 2.93Ghz Celeron PC for relatives. After upgrading to 2GB of memory and installing a new 7200rpm HDD, I installed Windows 7 Home Premium and it works quite smoothly.
One user at intended recipient's home tends to corrupt Windows systems so I figured I'd try Linux for my first time. Chose Ubuntu after reading article at Howtogeek.
First installed 14.04Ls 64-bit in VMWare Player on my personal i7 PC as a dry run. Impressive results but then my 32GB system is running Windows 8.1 on an SSD.
Installed 32-bit 14.04LTS on thumbdrive, then booted the Compaq SR1220NX from it. Experienced first disappointment. Typing password or any text is SLOW: type 8 characters and wait almost 8 seconds for them to appear. Mouse left-clicking similar. Opening and closing a Window takes several seconds as it slowly fades in or out. I figured this was caused by USB 2 so I installed the OS in dual-boot mode.
After installing ~250MB updates it runs a little better but still keyboard and display much like they did when run from a thumbdrive. We're talking molasses-in-Winter keyboard and display behavior. Firefox seems to run okay once it's open, searches return relatively quickly, but window opens/closes with long fade in/out.
FYI, the SR1220NX uses an Intel 845GV chipset, Celeron 2.93Ghz CPU. 2GB memory installed.
Note that "About this PC" lists for "Graphics:" "Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LVM 3.4, 128bits)" whereas going through "Systems Settings | Details" the "Graphics:" shows "Intel 846G x86/MMX/SSE2". That's the only seeming inconsistency I've found, other details listed are identical and match physical system.
What's best advice given my overarching goal of providing non-Windows word processor and browser to one goofus in family? Please remember my newbness if you're going to suggest driver changes or troubleshooting.
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