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I am new to Linux, the main reason I am wanting to use it is to revitalize some older laptops I have. Mainly just for web browsing and some document creation. I installed Ubuntu 16.04 yesterday on an old gateway I have. It took me awhile to get it to finally work. I kept getting an "ACPI PCC PROBE FAILED" message. I ended up disabling that and it installed. I am not even sure what it exactly means, or if that has something to do with the speed but wanted to mention it.

Anyways, this laptop was running Visa. When it had Vista "any" web browser would pop open much faster than Ubuntu, as well as load the pages in a reasonable time frame. Now it takes about 10 seconds just to open firefox, and 20sec or so to load the entire pages. Any application, such as Libre does the same thing.

My specs: 2GB Ram Pentium Dual Core, 1.60GZ Video card seems to be showing up wrong in system details (Gallium 0.4 iivmpipe) 64bit OS 155GB free HD

Is this laptop just too slow to run Ubuntu?

Thanks!

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3 Answers 3

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Indeed, your system is too old to run the standard version of Ubuntu, with Unity. The main problem is that your graphics card is not good enough - Ubuntu needs a fairly good graphics card. The result is that instead of actually using your graphics card, Ubuntu does everything on the CPU, which is very slow. That's why you're seeing "Gallium 0.4 iivmpipe" as your graphics card.

You should use a more lightweight variant of Ubuntu, such Ubuntu MATE or Lubuntu. You can also install a more lightweight desktop environment on your existing Ubuntu installation (such as MATE or LXDE, but there are many others too), which will give you much better performance.

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    I appreciate the response! That makes sense and I am glad I now know what is causing the slowdown. I am installing LXDE now! Ubuntu has been the only distro that I could get to install due to two major hangups. So I am hoping I can get this to become functional at least!
    – Aleforge
    Jun 23, 2016 at 15:01
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    Xubuntu is very fast! I have it running in a 2009 laptop. No problem at all. You should give it a try.
    – user308164
    Jul 30, 2016 at 11:47
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Try with the alternate-version, that is optimized for older machines. Of course 2GB RAM is low memory. Or try an older Ubuntu, maybe Ubuntu 14.10 64 bit. I dont know what do you want to do with this laptop, if you want only internet surfing maybe Puppy Linux is the best. There is also Lubuntu-Netbook 14.10 to try that requires less memory and cpu usage.

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  • Or he could try lubuntu? I heard that that uses less ram. Jun 22, 2016 at 15:02
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"Is this laptop just too slow to run Ubuntu?" Yes it is. My personal experience with HP Compaq 6730S 4GB RAM Core2DUO 1.8GHz confirm that. I have tried Ubuntu 12.04, 14.04 without success. Lubuntu 14.04 prove to be the solution, a good compromise between interface and performance. 2GB RAM...hum...well...in extreme cases you can try Puppy Linux.

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