My wife's 2011 Macbook Pro, with 8 gb of RAM, had become unusable for her. Slow beyond toleration. She got a new one. In the attempt to wipe the old one, it got bricked. I'd been wondering how hard it was to install Linux on a Mac, and it turned out to be just amazingly easy -- not much different than installing on a PC. The only difference is the need for a new wireless driver, so you either need to install while attached to a wired connection, or use a wireless dongle (which I had lying around) to add it post installation.

The browser, Epiphany, is reputed to use about a tenth of the RAM of Firefox or Chrome. It certainly feels light and responsive. Elementary comes with its own suite of apps -- software installation, email, calendar, movie player. None of them worked for me, which was disappointing. But using the Debian based command line, I added a few things (Synaptic package manager, a mind map program, and Emacs. Then I used Google Suite through the browser, and Dynalist (which could also be quickly set up as a standalone "web app"). I find that this old machine now feels really snappy. With Dynalist and Emacs, I can outline away. I like the minimalist feel of it.

At any rate, nice to know we can revive old hardware to do new tasks. It's just a pleasure to use!

Nice tips. I've been waiting to find time for over a year to put a couple of distros on a couple of my old laptops, a Mac and a Thinkpad. Thinkpads vary as over the decades they're the fave of coders for many reasons. From a few bucks on eBay for an old one which will be fine for Linux to whatever price range for a bargain online to fairly latest models of about two years in the usual corporations fleet clearance specialists online, bargain for Win10 use.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Thinkpad+linux

https://www.ebay.com/b/Lenovo-Thinkpad-PC-Laptops-Netbooks/177/bn_7115838996

Latest models:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=thinkpad+x1+gen+review

I was a little bummed when I found out that Chromebooks have an expiration date (no more security updates). My older C100PA, bought in 2017, will expire this year! So I was looking around for a replacement. I've lived in elementary for the past couple weeks, got AppCenter going (had to do a command line apt-get update and upgrade, then logout and in again), installed VLC and the dvdlibs to wake up movies and music, and I'm finding it really nice. The battery, a new one, only goes about 3-4 hours, and that's with an installation of tlp. I also moved from the Epiphany browser to Firefox, with no appreciable loss in speed.

The key feature of elementary is the Pantheon desktop. The aesthetics of the bundled apps are nice, but they lack what I judge necessary functions. (The lovely Quilter markdown editor is an example. It's clean and fast. But even though you can display headers in an outline panel, you can't use it to navigate. You can't fold text on the right pane.) Nonetheless, I find myself looking for excuses to fiddle with this suddenly very interesting laptop. It offends me to have perfectly acceptable hardware crippled by software. Under elementary, I feel like this is a new machine. Very responsive, and quite pretty!

Eventually, I suppose I'll go looking for a way to install Linux on the Chromebook...

Chromebooks can have Linux mode to switch to via crouton etc (I have, also on Windows 10), or dual boot (rare) or complete replacement of chromeOS with a distro which is increasing as many models' updates are sunsetted by Google. Still, they sell as much as Macs & for much less with good specs. Many guides online for software & hardware tweak.

Several Linux distros are getting very tempting so many are switching from win & macos to them in millions. Big positive changes & developments coming too over the next few years. Anyone can test any distro online in the link below.

Daily news & improvements with pictures & videos by many on Reddit subs for each distro. I use several apps on Android and Windows to browse my Reddit subs, a proportion of which are about Linux /Distros. Reddit official Android app or just the browser on Windows is not good enough for me. Many of my fave subs are not mentioned in the bottom link.

Best overall Outliner for me, Notecase Pro, has versions on Windows Macos & 11 Linux distros:
https://www.notecasepro.com/download.php#linux

Models' update sunset dates:
https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en

Test any distro, online:
https://distrotest.net/

Reddit subs:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/wiki/

For those with older notebooks, I can thoroughly recommend Xubuntu. It’s been around for a long time, and keeps getting better. The footprint is minimal, so it runs like the blazes even on much older notebooks (like my 11-inch Asus Eeeeeee - anyone remember those?!)

I’ve no idea about Chromebooks, alas. But the sunsetting seems to me singularly dishonest, given Chrome’s minimal footprint.

MadaboutDana wrote:

I’ve no idea about Chromebooks, alas. But the sunsetting seems to
me singularly dishonest, given Chrome’s minimal footprint.

I don't find this dishonest. You get good value for money.

AFAIK, separate versions of Chrome OS are developed for each hardware model (which is partly what makes Chromebooks more secure), so with the proliferation of new models it would be increasingly expensive to develop updates for decreasing numbers of aging hardware.

Considering that most Chromebooks are cheap and cheerful, the hardware rarely lasts more than 3 years with daily use. My Chromebooks lasted about 2.5 years on average.

However, now that more premium and better built machines are appearing more frequently, Google have actually extended end of life to 8 years for new models from 2020 onwards.

But the option is still there to convert an old Chromebook to a Linux machine or install CloudReady.

Dr Andus wrote:

MadaboutDana wrote:
>I’ve no idea about Chromebooks, alas. But the sunsetting seems to
>me singularly dishonest, given Chrome’s minimal footprint.

I don't find this dishonest. You get good value for money.

I guess where dishonesty might come in is with retailers who are selling older models without making it clear to the uninformed buyer that the OS has a shelf-life, some of which has already been spent.

So yes, if you buy a 2017 model in 2020, you will have lost 3 years of shelf life.

MadaboutDana wrote:

For those with older notebooks, I can thoroughly recommend Xubuntu.
It’s been around for a long time, and keeps getting better. The
footprint is minimal, so it runs like the blazes even on much older
notebooks (like my 11-inch Asus Eeeeeee - anyone remember those?!)

Yup, I got one of them in the drawer, with XP on it still. I even bought a bigger battery for it, but haven't turned it on for a couple of years now. Do you have a link for how to go about installing Xubuntu on it?

Er, from memory, I just downloaded Xubuntu, put it on a USB stick, launched it from said USB stick (where it resided as an executable) and then instructed it to install itself on the hard drive. I don’t remember the Eee having any BIOS restrictions on installation (e.g. being locked to Windows or anything). When you instruct Xubuntu to install itself on the hard drive, you have the option of telling it to take over the entire hard drive, or simply creating a new partition and installing itself alongside Windows. I opted for the Total Nuke option and now Xubuntu is the only OS on the machine. XP was running ridiculously slowly in any case!

Oh, hang on, having sniffed at the Xubuntu site, I see that the old Windows executable doesn’t appear to be available any more. Okay, so here are some instructions: https://www.wikihow.com/Install-Xubuntu

It’s not super-complicated, although it’s a bit fiddly.

MadaboutDana wrote:

Oh, hang on, having sniffed at the Xubuntu site, I see that the old
Windows executable doesn’t appear to be available any more. Okay,
so here are some instructions: https://www.wikihow.com/Install-Xubuntu

Thanks for the link. Maybe this will be my chance to dip my toe into the Linux world finally.

I did a bit of Googling, and apparently there is even a reddit sub called EEE PC Master Race :-)

https://www.reddit.com/r/eeepcmasterrace/comments/7w4nu0/best_operating_system_for_eee_pc/

Notes Up Markdown editor:
Free plus open source, dark theme too, should work on many distros not just elementary as with many elementary os apps:

https://www.fossmint.com/notes-up-a-markdown-note-editor-manager-for-linux/amp/

https://github.com/Philip-Scott/Notes-up

Yes, I saw Notes Up. It looks like a reasonably clean Evernote alternative (with both "books" and tags). elementary apps do look good. Although Joplin adds the encryption feature that might justify my moving everything over from Simplenotes. I'm not sure Notes Up would be worth it for me, especially since I'm not sure how it works on mobile.

Joplin is awesome, he put in a couple of major features when I asked, dark mode/theme and even bigger: dual left columns. But using multi Markdown editors is a must for me. Some for Outliner and planning, others for fast GUI editing, etc. Can copy and paste between them anyway.

Some are getting superb on even Windows specially with GUI shortcuts, even Android (phone, Chromebook etc). Add a static site generator (I use several, needs some techie know-how/coder to setup then child's play to post), and can be doing fab looking stuff to put online in minutes.

I think I DID find it a little dishonest. I bought in 2017 a machine from 2015. I was not aware, until two years after buying the Chromebook, that it had a software end of life. I did a fair amount of reading on Chromebooks before I bought one, too. Nor was it mentioned by the salespeople (who may not have known, either). I use my Chromebook quite a lot, and it seems to have plenty of life left in it. In some ways, this brings me back to my original post about the Mac: this is a fine machine, capable of more work, and it's irritating to have it deliberately obsoleted by software.

But you're right that the price point is low enough to justify a shorter life span. I'm just so CHEAP I hate to recycle what might last a little longer. But yes, there are options to convert it to Linux. One example: https://itsfoss.com/install-linux-chromebook/

Dr Andus wrote:

MadaboutDana wrote:
>I’ve no idea about Chromebooks, alas. But the sunsetting seems to
>me singularly dishonest, given Chrome’s minimal footprint.

I don't find this dishonest. You get good value for money.

AFAIK, separate versions of Chrome OS are developed for each hardware
model (which is partly what makes Chromebooks more secure), so with the
proliferation of new models it would be increasingly expensive to
develop updates for decreasing numbers of aging hardware.

Considering that most Chromebooks are cheap and cheerful, the hardware
rarely lasts more than 3 years with daily use. My Chromebooks lasted
about 2.5 years on average.

However, now that more premium and better built machines are appearing
more frequently, Google have actually extended end of life to 8 years
for new models from 2020 onwards.

But the option is still there to convert an old Chromebook to a Linux
machine or install CloudReady.