Linux???

[Nick1911]

The machines he's trying to get up and running don't have the horse power for straight xfce with only 1GB of ram and a 32 bit CPU. Min for straight xfce is 2gb and 64bit

I thought he already was using it and considering something more aesthetically pleasing, based on:

The Xfce desktop is functional, but ugly. Does anyone know how I could install the LXQt desktop? And Thunderbird (or another decent e-mail client)?

[JTHunter]

Okay, the majority seems to be for Mint.
Now, my question is for an older Windows 7 system and replace that with Mint.  Then, what replacements do you suggest for these programs?

Photoshop 6
Word
Excel
These are probably the three I use the most (daily on Word and Excel).

[Nick1911]

Okay, the majority seems to be for Mint.
Now, my question is for an older Windows 7 system and replace that with Mint.  Then, what replacements do you suggest for these programs?

Photoshop 6
Word
Excel
These are probably the three I use the most (daily on Word and Excel).

GIMP and libreoffice.

The learning curve for gimp vs photoshop might be steep depending on how advanced of a user you are.

[WLJ]

Okay, the majority seems to be for Mint.
Now, my question is for an older Windows 7 system and replace that with Mint.  Then, what replacements do you suggest for these programs?

Photoshop 6 
Word
Excel
These are probably the three I use the most (daily on Word and Excel).

PS6 - For simple light photo work Faststone, for more heavy duty GIMP
Word and Excel - LibreOffice

[WLJ]

I thought he already was using it and considering something more aesthetically pleasing, based on:

I may have lost track here but I think he's trying to splice together different distros to try to get something to work in 1GB of ram and 32bit.

[lee n. field]

The Xfce desktop is functional, but ugly. Does anyone know how I could install the LXQt desktop? And Thunderbird (or another decent e-mail client)?

Thanks.

XFCE is plain, but the lower resource desktops are even more so.  IMHO & YMMV.  If XFCE works, run with it.

Mate also works well.  It was deliberately designed to look and act like Gnome 2 (because Gnome 3 when it came out was so jarring.)

[Hawkmoon]

The machines he's trying to get up and running don't have the horse power for straight xfce with only 1GB of ram and a 32 bit CPU. Min for straight xfce is 2gb and 64bit

I was able to find memory, and the machine now has a whopping 2GB of RAM. That's all it can take, according to the specs. The Debian 32-bit distro I found came with Xfce as the desktop.

[Hawkmoon]

I thought he already was using it and considering something more aesthetically pleasing, based on:

Correct. LXQt is better looking, and supposedly even lighter on resources, but the LXQt distro I got was corrupted -- that's what locked me out of the computer. To switch to LXQt now, which I would like to do, will mean installing it mmanually over the existing OS.

[Hawkmoon]

Okay, the majority seems to be for Mint.
Now, my question is for an older Windows 7 system and replace that with Mint.  Then, what replacements do you suggest for these programs?

Photoshop 6
Word
Excel
These are probably the three I use the most (daily on Word and Excel).

I don't think this computer will run Mint. I tried running it live from a DVD and it stalled.

If you are contemplating a switch to Linux, GIMP has plenty of features to rival Photoshop, but it's a steep learning curve.

LibreOffice is free. Writer = Word, Calc = Excel, and Impress = Powerpoint. LibreOffice also includes Draw, which I've never found a use for. For a different Linux office suite that looks and acts a bit more like the Microsoft Office products, take a look at FreeOffice (www.freeoffice.com).

A Mint distro probably already has LibreOffice installed, and may have GIMP installed.

[WLJ]

Okay, the majority seems to be for Mint.
Now, my question is for an older Windows 7 system and replace that with Mint.  Then, what replacements do you suggest for these programs?

Photoshop 6
Word
Excel
These are probably the three I use the most (daily on Word and Excel).

I don't think this computer will run Mint. I tried running it live from a DVD and it stalled.

I believe he was asking for his window 7 machine. If it can run W7 it should be able to run Mint unless his machine has a 32bit CPU. Only 64bit is supported in Mint now.

[Hawkmoon]

try this.

Open a terminal session.

type "sudo tasksel" and press enter.  Enter your password when prompted.

You'll get a text mode menu.  Arrow down, and check the box for XFCE.  Also maybe try LXDE or LXQT.  Spacebar selects and deselects.

Tab until OK is highlighted.  Press enter.  Stuff will then install.

Next time you start up, there will be a place at the main login screen to change to one of the other desktop environments.

The options presented are
* Debian desktop
* XFCE
* Laptop

Already running Xfce, so what would either of the other two options get me?

[Hawkmoon]

open a terminal session.

in the terminal session, type "sudo apt-get install thunderbird".

That should do it.

There are other email clients, but I haven't looked at them for years.

See my post above, about running tasksel in a terminal.

Package thunderbird is not available but is referred by another package.

[Nick1911]

Package thunderbird is not available but is referred by another package.

Have you updated apt-get?

[Nick1911]

Correct. LXQt is better looking, and supposedly even lighter on resources, but the LXQt distro I got was corrupted -- that's what locked me out of the computer. To switch to LXQt now, which I would like to do, will mean installing it mmanually over the existing OS.

This... isn't quite right.

You must not think of Linux systems the same as Windows, where you get an OS as a big monolithic thing.  When you pick a linux distribution, you're really getting a image where someone has selected and bundled a bunch of different packages together, along with the config, and made sure it all plays nicely.

As an end user, you can add your own packages, remove packages, upgrade them or change them out.  And the desktop environment is... just a series of packages.  You can add or remove them as you see fit.  There can be dragons here,  dependency conflicts and whatnot - but it's not correct to think that because you picked an image with a particular desktop environment on it, you're stuck with that.

[Hawkmoon]

Have you updated apt-get?

Short answer: no.

Long answer: didn't know it should be updated, and have no idea how to do it.

[Nick1911]

Short answer: no.

Long answer: didn't know it should be updated, and have no idea how to do it.

Images are never up to date.  Good first steps on a clean install are update/upgrade on the package management system.

For apt-get:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

[lee n. field]

The options presented are
* Debian desktop
* XFCE
* Laptop

Already running Xfce, so what would either of the other two options get me?

Try this. 

Open a terminal.  Type "sudo apt install task-lxqt-desktop".  press enter.  enter your password when requested.

[lee n. field]

Package thunderbird is not available but is referred by another package.

something's hosed.

[Bogie]

FWIW, I've been running Mint for I'm guessing is 6-8 years...
 
If you need a hotter machine, look at the refurb boxes at microcenter dot com...

[bedlamite]

FWIW, I've been running Mint for I'm guessing is 6-8 years...
 
If you need a hotter machine, look at the refurb boxes at microcenter dot com...

Similar story here. Bought one of these a little over a year ago:

https://www.newegg.com/hp-elitebook-840-g3/p/N82E16834271970

Dropped in a M2 1TB drive and haven't had any issues.

[Hawkmoon]

FWIW, I've been running Mint for I'm guessing is 6-8 years...
 
If you need a hotter machine, look at the refurb boxes at microcenter dot com...

Back to the beginning. I HAVE a hotter machine. This one was given to me, non-functional, and I just want to get it running enough so that I can find it an adoptive home. That means setting it up so that someone who knows even less than I do about computers can just turn it on and do things.

[JTHunter]

I believe he was asking for his window 7 machine. If it can run W7 it should be able to run Mint unless his machine has a 32bit CPU. Only 64bit is supported in Mint now.

Thanks to all for their suggestion, esp. Nick and WLJ.
Yes, this is a 64 bit CPU (Intel i5-6500 @ 3.2 GHz on a Win. 7 Pro.  I tried to find how much RAM on this but can't find the actual amount.  IIRC, it is 4 gb.

[Ben]

Thanks to all for their suggestion, esp. Nick and WLJ.
Yes, this is a 64 bit CPU (Intel i5-6500 @ 3.2 GHz on a Win. 7 Pro.  I tried to find how much RAM on this but can't find the actual amount.  IIRC, it is 4 gb.

Run Belarc Advisor. It will tell you RAM and just about every other thing about your computer. A Belarc report is generally valuable to run at least once and print out. Especially for stuff like software information.

[WLJ]

Thanks to all for their suggestion, esp. Nick and WLJ.
Yes, this is a 64 bit CPU (Intel i5-6500 @ 3.2 GHz on a Win. 7 Pro.  I tried to find how much RAM on this but can't find the actual amount.  IIRC, it is 4 gb.

Just last Dec I upgraded from a i5 6500 to a AMD Ryzen 5 Zen 3 5600G on  my main PC

[Hawkmoon]

Thanks to all for their suggestion, esp. Nick and WLJ.
Yes, this is a 64 bit CPU (Intel i5-6500 @ 3.2 GHz on a Win. 7 Pro.  I tried to find how much RAM on this but can't find the actual amount.  IIRC, it is 4 gb.

Right click anywhere on the desktop, then click "Display Settings." Scroll to the bottom and click "About."