Faster OS for my celeron netbook

Choidebu

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Aug 16, 2017
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I was gifted a quite recent convertible laptop/tablet with innards that of a netbook level. It's an hp spectre x360 11-ab035tu, don't let the spectre moniker fool you, this sloth of a pc is dog slow. Cold boot to win10 takes 5 minutes. 15 minutes if microsoft decides it needs an update.

What's inside is celeron N3060, dual core 1.6 GHz with boost up to 2.3 GHz, and 4 gigs of ram.

I'm thinking of turning it into my kid's play tablet, ideally running android just so it can do youtube and some drawing/painting apps, take photos and such.

Linux might be the easiest, but Idk any flavor which interface is optimized for tablet and if there's any drawing programs easy enough for kids to use.

I did found RemixOS, but it's discontinued. Android-x86 has horrible website I can't figure out if it'll work at all.

Anyone have any ideas or suggestions?
 

Choidebu

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Aug 16, 2017
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Hmm searching r/Androidx86, only found one redditor installed the thing in his 11-p007la... an even shittier yesteryear model... maybe I'll try after all...

Anyone knows a guide somewhere? I'd like to dualboot if possible. Or even install it on an sd card is fine.
 

sheepdog43

Caliper Novice
Feb 17, 2019
25
12
Windows isn't your biggest issue, that internal hard drive is, it's a very, very low speed budget hard drive. It's one of the slowest drives made in the last few years.

Swap it with a low end SSD and you will see that laptop come alive. It will never be fast due to the ram (cpu is not terrible), but spending $30 or so here on an ssd will make a world of difference in usability. My advice, install the cheapest ssd you can find from a known brand then install something Ubuntu based since Ubuntu has some of the best power management among Linux distros. I wouldn't even worry about the ssd size as the new OS won't take up nearly as much space as Windows did.
 

Valantar

Shrink Ray Wielder
Jan 20, 2018
2,201
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Yeah, get an SSD in there and Windows will work perfectly fine - certainly better than any Linux distro off an HDD. Even a budget cacheless drive will be miles better than a HDD.
 

rfarmer

Spatial Philosopher
Jul 7, 2017
2,586
2,700
I picked up a 120GB Adata SSD for my Deskmini 110 for $20, really hard to beat at that price.
 

Choidebu

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Aug 16, 2017
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Androidx86 isn't worth the time of day imho.
Why?

Thanks for the suggestions people, can't believe I didn't think to check whether it's ssd or hdd inside. But I still think the cpu's kinda slow for chrome - youtube, it stutters and struggles with each click. I wonder how paint fares...
 

GuilleAcoustic

Chief Procrastination Officer
SFFn Staff
LOSIAS
Jun 29, 2015
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Recycled my wife Netbook (low end AMD fusion APU). It was struggling under windows 10, even after I switched the HDD for an SSD, tried Windows 7 too with no luck.

Solved the problem by installing Manjaro (with KDE Plasma DE).
 
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Choidebu

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Aug 16, 2017
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Linux's good and all, but this laptop is touchscreen so that's why I thought Android would be a better choice. And a drawing tablet for a toddler.

How's touchscreen on Linux these days?
 

Windfall

Shrink Ray Wielder
SFFn Staff
Nov 14, 2017
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Linux's good and all, but this laptop is touchscreen so that's why I thought Android would be a better choice. And a drawing tablet for a toddler.

How's touchscreen on Linux these days?

On UBUNTU with Gnome, it's great! Free painting software, there's Mypaint, which works good.
 

Valantar

Shrink Ray Wielder
Jan 20, 2018
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Linux's good and all, but this laptop is touchscreen so that's why I thought Android would be a better choice. And a drawing tablet for a toddler.

How's touchscreen on Linux these days?
I'm willing to bet quite a lot that a major Linux distro with a touchscreen is better - or at the very least less bad - than Android outside of a smartphone. I love Android phones, but their large-screen interface is terrible, and app support for non-phone screen sizes and interfaces is borderline nonexistent. And a phone UX on a >10" display is bad.
 
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Smanci

SFF Lingo Aficionado
Apr 21, 2017
126
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I had one of them n3150 (4c4t) desktop boards with 4GB dual channel 1066Mhz. Nearly unusable on Ubuntu/7/10 paired with 7,2k drive but completely alright with SSD.
 
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Choidebu

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Aug 16, 2017
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Yesterday I finally got free time to do the migration to ssd... there's good news and bad news though...

Bad news first - my plan was just to connect the hdd from the laptop to my main, which is an S4M-C with Hdplex 160W internal brick, then clone it to my spare 850 evo. All I did was unplug the AC cord, took off the side panel, connect the hdd and leave it hanging to the side then plug the AC cord again - and as soon as I did, 'pop'....

Didn't even press the power button. Took me a while to figure out what went wrong... I've had it for a while and it survived shorted mains, shorted usb header, one cheap china made AC cord failure...



Now on to the good news:
This morning I bought a PowerAdd 150W (200W on convection) 24V (pot controlled to 22V) power supply, quick-hacked a connector to my dynamo mini and it worked! I'll spare you the boring, slow story of moving files and defragmenting a system drive then shrinking the partition with a celeron laptop because my target drive is a measly 120gb ssd vs 500gb hdd it originally came with.

Then I fire Macrium Reflect, hit clone (had to let windows RE tools' and recovery partition go) and half an hour later the ol' ssd is up and running on it. From my initial impression, the thing helps tremendously. Not great, but very much more usable than before.

Thanks for all the advice everyone!
 

Windfall

Shrink Ray Wielder
SFFn Staff
Nov 14, 2017
2,117
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Yesterday I finally got free time to do the migration to ssd... there's good news and bad news though...

Bad news first - my plan was just to connect the hdd from the laptop to my main, which is an S4M-C with Hdplex 160W internal brick, then clone it to my spare 850 evo. All I did was unplug the AC cord, took off the side panel, connect the hdd and leave it hanging to the side then plug the AC cord again - and as soon as I did, 'pop'....

Didn't even press the power button. Took me a while to figure out what went wrong... I've had it for a while and it survived shorted mains, shorted usb header, one cheap china made AC cord failure...



Now on to the good news:
This morning I bought a PowerAdd 150W (200W on convection) 24V (pot controlled to 22V) power supply, quick-hacked a connector to my dynamo mini and it worked! I'll spare you the boring, slow story of moving files and defragmenting a system drive then shrinking the partition with a celeron laptop because my target drive is a measly 120gb ssd vs 500gb hdd it originally came with.

Then I fire Macrium Reflect, hit clone (had to let windows RE tools' and recovery partition go) and half an hour later the ol' ssd is up and running on it. From my initial impression, the thing helps tremendously. Not great, but very much more usable than before.

Thanks for all the advice everyone!

Something about that picture looks a bit off....
 

Choidebu

"Banned"
Original poster
Aug 16, 2017
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He might be talking about the pcb color scheme. Something is indeed off about white pcb with black overtones /s.

Update: FWIW, this supply is rather unreliable - consistently need to be power cycled once in a while, twice already today. It's not really an IT grade supply (1% ripple that's 240mv), so I didn't expect much out of it. The only meanwell they sell that fits my requirement is an RS-150-24, which is way worse than this. As a stopgap while waiting for the new hdplex 200W to come out, works I guess.
 
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Windfall

Shrink Ray Wielder
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Nov 14, 2017
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I think it's the brown/grey at the edges of the black splot. That's what bothers me. Some white spray paint could fix that right up, and you could resell it no issue!
 
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Valantar

Shrink Ray Wielder
Jan 20, 2018
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I think it's the brown/grey at the edges of the black splot. That's what bothers me. Some white spray paint could fix that right up, and you could resell it no issue!
Ah, I see. I agree that it doesnt quite go along with the rest of the color scheme. I'd just go for a white paint or chalk marker instead, though. Less mess and more precision. Or maybe some whiteout?
For that proper professional look.

Update: FWIW, this supply is rather unreliable - consistently need to be power cycled once in a while, twice already today. It's not really an IT grade supply (1% ripple that's 240mv), so I didn't expect much out of it. The only meanwell they sell that fits my requirement is an RS-150-24, which is way worse than this. As a stopgap while waiting for the new hdplex 200W to come out, works I guess.
Might be a dumb question, but there aren't any capacitors on the dead HDPlex you could "borrow" for filtering the output of the new PSU? If my understanding of in-cable capacitors in PSU cables is on point (don't quote me on this - look it up before you blow something up!) all that should be needed is a capacitor of suitable voltage (slightly higher than the output voltage, 16V caps are used for 12V power) and capacitance (the ones on my EVGA G2 PCIe power outputs are 220 microfarad) stuck across the power output of the PSU. Might help you reduce that ripple somewhat, smooth out the power output a bit. (and no, this part isn't sarcasm!)
 
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