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Comment by anoncoward111 | Hacker News Reader

$100 Pre-2010 laptops running Lubuntu are an even more dangerous threat that more and more people are learning about

The first time I tried Lubuntu, was on an old, no-name brand laptop with Windows XP, that a friend gave me. Installed in a few minutes, and was pleasantly surprised how performant and usable it is, considering the limited hardware resources. I mostly just use it as a browser and book reader, but for giving new life to old laptops, I think Lubuntu works great. Not sure how much of a threat to the market it is though.. Hopefully it provides an open-source option for educational purposes and the "next billion" in the developing world.

I highly, highly, highly, highly agree!!!! So glad someone else out there likes it. It's like ubuntu with snapiness, of course.

Lubuntu is really like "teaching a man to fish". If you give them instructions on how to install it, then suddenly nobody will ever need a shiny new $1700 macbook to get started with basic programming and content rich web browsing.

Though personally I prefer text :)

And every year they get better. I'm running Kubuntu with such beasts as Atom and Android Studio on a 2012 Laptop. I would like a few more pixels on screen but that's all

I don't think that the typical cheap laptop purchaser willing to spend the time and effort into installing and learning to use a different operating system.

You mean like chrome os?

Chrome OS is basically just a browser so anyone who has been on the internet is pretty comfortable on it.

Lubuntu is just as user friendly and comes pre-installed with all of the things one would expect, like a browser and media player and word processing software.

There's an app store and browser add ons work well.

The hardest thing for a casual user to learn would be "sudo apt-get install" and then guessing what the package name is that they might want to download, like vlcplayer or java

"The hardest thing for a casual user to learn would be "sudo apt-get install" and then guessing what the package name is that they might want to download, like vlcplayer or java"

Everything you said in this sentence is a deal breaker for a casual user, and a terrible user experience in general.

Graphical package managers exist now.

My roommate (about average technical literacy) tried getting a $100 laptop and putting Lubuntu on it, and ended up selling it because he couldn't figure out Linux and couldn't get any good games on it.

Like TF2? Yeah, a lot of games have been bloated. But there's always Nexuiz and Xonotic which have cool little communities.

Linux takes time. Life is finicky. But for the average Thai person or Vietnamese living on $300 a month, a $100 investment is more palatable than $600

Don't the pre-installed ones come with a graphical package manager?

Yeah and like I find it really hard to believe that a casual user who really doesn't want to spend $600 on a chromebook can learn how to copy paste basic command line stuff on the very rare occasion that what they need isn't available graphically

If you buy a Chromebook, Chrome OS is already preinstalled.

You can't be serious. Even know activist circles where they actually upcycle old laptops for poor people, I haven't heard of any actual interest in such devices. They're just happy to have something that resembles a computer.

How am I not serious? My T410 Lenovo from 2008 is my daily driver. Have been on Lubuntu since 2014 and before that Ubuntu and Win7.

Chromebooks are targeted towards college students and websurfers are they not? Lubuntu is perfect for them, especially, if they don't have $600 to shell out on a Chromebook.

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