Acer Aspire One AZ3 (AO75, x86 32 bits), install a linux system in 2022

I’ve received an old laptop from my girlfriend with these specs:

  • Windows Vista
  • HDD 250 GB 5400 RPM
  • 2 GB RAM DDR2 533 MHz
  • Intel Atom 1333 MHz (x86 architechure, 32 bits)

Here is a copy of the quick guide manual.

The system is very slow, and though the wifi card works it is imposible to browse the web because the software has been discontinued and is not supported anymore, and also the higher CPU and RAM cosumption is caused by the antivirus (with no scanning) and just by opening a few windows it’s almost at full capacity, in summary is a mess.

My first reaction was dispose it, but she asked me try to do something about it (I don’t know why, she has a new laptop and don’t use this anymore), well surfing on the web I found some linux distributions that still has support for x86.

I’ve tried each one and I want to share my comments in this entry. The linux distributions are:

  • LOC-OS
  • LXMDE
  • Zorin OS

LOC-OS: is a distro for old computers with low resources consumption, it is based on LXDE and I’ve really impressed with the performance, considering this device is old, the wifi card is recognized by default and video driver too (gma500_fgx), the keyboard function keys are working very good (brightness, volume, suspend, etc.) except the bluetooth, the CPU and the memory consumption are in acceptable levels, all seems to works fine. BUT the sound doesn’t work and the user interface is not so friendly, the software has a different look and feel and it’s like the are taken from different sources, but works really well in this laptop.

Showing thunar app and memory consumption at 292MB with firefox opened!! =O is awesome.
CPU usage average at 1.3%, RAM consumption at 167 MB in standby.

pros:

  • Driver support (video, wifi, 3D acceleration)
  • A low resource consumption
  • Based on debian, support all repositories
  • Keyboard function keys are supported

cons:

  • LXDE desktop… is not for me sorry and I think it is not user friendly
  • Multiple applications with different look and feel
  • Bluethooth doesn’t works
  • A little community with a poor documentation to solve problems
  • A water mark in desktop, I mean I like the logo of this distro but I don’t like that is showed always!

LMDE5 (Linux Mint Debian Edition 5): As their website mention «LMDE aims to be as similar as possible to Linux Mint, but without using Ubuntu. The package base is provided by Debian instead.«, and it is, the look and feel is very good the UI is very handy, but the consumption is arround of 650 MB of RAM and CPU usage is upper to 60% almost all the time, the keyboard function keys doesn’t works and the video driver is not loaded too, my experience using it is awful because the hardware is not responding, I’ve tried to fix some issues and load the drivers but I’ve falied.

I dont take screenshots because I think there is a lot of work to do trying to fix all the issues and don’t have time to do that.

pros:

  • UI and integration of the look and feel
  • Based on debian and support their repositories
  • Installation wizard is very handy
  • Wifi card is working

cons:

  • Driver support (video, audio and bluetooth doesn’t works)
  • A high resource consumption, intensive use of CPU and memory
  • Keyboard function keys aren’t supported

Zorin Os(x86 free version): this distro «is the alternative to Windows and macOS designed to make your computer faster, more powerful, secure, and privacy-respecting«, I like to say that is similar to windows but feels like a linux, the installation wizard is very friendly and all the UI is integrated, the look and feel is some customizable (not like other distros but is enough). This system loads by the default the video driver with vesa module, but there is avaliable gm500_gfx (I don’t know how configure to use it yet but the 3D acceleration is working well), the audio doesn’t works but there is a really quick fix, the brightness can be adjusted by commands in terminal but not with keyboard functions keys.

Showing neofetch and thunarapp.
Showing standby consumption with htop, CPU usage at 11% with 500 MB RAM.
Showing 3D acceleration test with glxgears, 91 FPS reached.

These are some fixes:

Audio issue

To fix the audio, edit the file /etc/pulse/default.pa and add tsched=0 to the line saying load-module module-udev-detect, then save and reboot:

load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0

Update repositories issue

The Zorin repositories can’t be updated because the certificate validation fails, then:

sudo apt install ca-certificates

Brightess issue

Here are some options to adjust the brigthess:

# 1. With sudo command, setting to 50% level of brightness
sudo su -c "echo 50 > /sys/classes/backlight/psb-bl/brightness"

# or set permissions to modify the file directly adding your user as owner
chown myuser /sys/classes/backlight/psb-bl/brightness
echo 50 > /sys/classes/backlight/psb-bl/brightness

# 2. Installing brightnessctl
sudo apt-get install brightnessctl

# Increase brightness 10%
brightnessctl set +10% -q

# Reduce brightness 10%
brightnessctl set 10%- -q

# 3. Install Brigtness application fron Github: 
# Read instructions here: https://github.com/Sakartu/psb_brightness

The best option for me was the second one, after the installation the hotkey could be mapped adding these commands:

At the end I’ve had to add the ubuntu repositories to update the software but I want to say the experience is more fluid than LXMDE but it is not to better as LOC-OS, and I feel very comfortable in this distribution though it starts with 418 MB of RAM.

pros:

  • UI and integration of the look and feel
  • Suport debian and zorin repositories
  • Installation wizard is very handy
  • Wifi card is working
  • Composite is working without video driver

cons:

  • A medium resource consumption, not too high but no too lower
  • Keyboard function keys aren’t supported
  • Bluetooth and audio doesn’t works
  • Based on ubuntu Bionic (18.04), old distro with recent kernel
  • Initial boot is slow

Conslusion

if the HDD is replaced by an SSD maybe the experience will be much better, and the best performance it has with LOC-OS (167 MB) but I preffer the Zorin OS because the UI is more user friendly though the memory consumtion is a quit higer than LOC-OS. I just wanna mention if the computer would have more powerful certanly I would had insttalled LXMDE, because is more customizable and it could load more gnome 3 applications.

Well, by now Zorin OS is the winner.

I hope this entry has been useful if you have and old computer, bye bye! =D

References

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