Zorin OS ON on ultra budget Hardware

Hi folks im a new Zorin OS user since i a few days and i like it so much that i installed on my Main PC Zorin Core and on my T430 Zorin Lite. Coming from WIndows 7 and i liked Zorin a lot!
So my dad needed a cheap notebook and i bought for him a Thinkpad R61i with C2D Merom 1,6Ghz and 3GB Ram - no battery pack for 48 euro inclusive shippment. I bought a SDD for 20 euro and and Intel T8100 (Gen: Penryn, last Generation before C2D died out I think) 2,1 GHz for 19 Euros and 2 Gb DDR2-Sodimm for 13 Euros from Amazon.

The configuration will be:

Zorin OS Lite

C2D T8100 2,1 Ghz
4 Gb DDR2-SOdimm
120 GB SSD

Total investment: 48 Euro for Notebook + 86 Euro Upgrade parts ( new battery pack, better cpu, more ram)

How will this notebook perform with Zorin lite ?

The second configuration is for my sisters budget ideapad:
She is going to have:

Zorin OS Lite
Intel Celeron 3350 Apollo Lake (2016 cpu) i think
8GB DDR3L Ram
120 GB SSD

Total investment : 65 Euro for new Ram and 120 Gb SSD

can you guess the performance ? And is the investment good or bad. Are these machines going to handle well (Watch youtube, Office pack, watch movies from stream pages etc.)?

The spec looks reasonable - my only caveat is:

Are these budget notebooks 64-bit ready? If not you will be limited to Zorin Lite 32-bit edition.

As for the SSDs - you should use rEFInd - http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/

And don't include a swap file when partitioning the SSD's - you don't need one at all because it is SSD.

Format partitions of '/' and '/home' to Ext2 file format - Ext3 and Ext4 file formats are journaling file systems, shortening the life of your SSD.

And don't forget to set up TRIM - Windows does this automatically: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/ ... ux-servers

Swarfendor437 wrote:The spec looks reasonable - my only caveat is:

Are these budget notebooks 64-bit ready? If not you will be limited to Zorin Lite 32-bit edition.

As for the SSDs - you should use rEFInd - http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/

And don't include a swap file when partitioning the SSD's - you don't need one at all because it is SSD.

Format partitions of '/' and '/home' to Ext2 file format - Ext3 and Ext4 file formats are journaling file systems, shortening the life of your SSD.

And don't forget to set up TRIM - Windows does this automatically: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/ ... ux-servers

Thank you very much! The N3350 (Intel Atom is x64 i am going to install in this 8 Gb of ram). I was thinking that Zorin OS Core could be too heavy for an Intel Atom...? What do you think about?
The C2D Penryn CPU is also x64 ready but i will use here only 4Gb of ram. I was thinking installing the normal 32 bit version of Zorin Lite.
Didn't know about Ext3 and Ext4. Thank you for that!
Since i am going only to use Zorin OS i don't need rEFInd ? Or? I am a total newbie so i have also research a little bit about Trim. Thank you very much for the information!

My only comment about the N3350 Processor is that whilst it is 64-bit I have read on occasions that manufacturers did not allow it to run 64-bit OS to cut down cost on the circuitry provided. Before you install Zorin on either, run in Live Mode to see how they perform. Would be worth trying Core on the 4 Gb device just to see if it picks up everything - screen res etc.

cyhak wrote:Thank you very much! The N3350 (Intel Atom is x64 i am going to install in this 8 Gb of ram). I was thinking that Zorin OS Core could be too heavy for an Intel Atom...? What do you think about?
The C2D Penryn CPU is also x64 ready but i will use here only 4Gb of ram. I was thinking installing the normal 32 bit version of Zorin Lite.
Didn't know about Ext3 and Ext4. Thank you for that!
Since i am going only to use Zorin OS i don't need rEFInd ? Or? I am a total newbie so i have also research a little bit about Trim. Thank you very much for the information!

If it is useful, I run Zorin OS Lite 15.2 x64 on a 2007 Macbook C2D 2,2ghz with 2GB ram and it runs well. Ram usage when booted is 0.46GB, CPU 2% or lower. I don't see any reason why you should go 32bit if your laptop allows it.

BTW I've tried accesing my desktop Windows PC via Parsec, for tough workflows, and, man, hahaha, using lightroom and Davinci Resolve running smoothly in that old laptop, even away from cable, with my mobile data (wifi hotspot with the phone (I have 40 GB of data/month on my phone company)) if you have good 4G reception... Damn! cpu coolers don't even blow the minimum noise!! Hahaha. I was using it in the librabry (before corona...) and whatching all those people suffering with their 1000$ laptops with fans 'airplane-turbine' mode on... (Didn't manage to play 3D games smoothly, though. Just minecraft haha)

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