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I have an old Dell Studio 1535 laptop running Vista. It runs like garbage. I'm thinking of purchasing a new laptop for most purposes, but thought I would repurpose the old one as a media player/backup/kids machine.

Any issues installing Ubuntu on it? I've never installed linux before, and want it to be an easy installation experience. I'm mainly worried about the wireless lan card and the HDMI output working. If I can get online and use the HDMI output to a tv, I could use it as intended.

These are the rough specs I pulled:

Studio 1535 Broadcom 1397 wlan?? 3 GB ram 2.16 GHz Intel graphics

Adam
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    Why don't you just try? We don't have the hardware here, so the best answer is just trying yourself!! Then come back with more specific questions. – gertvdijk Oct 15 '13 at 16:28
  • Repeat, don't have specific hardware but. I have a 1520 and 1525 that run flawlessly. Broadcom wireless needs "Additional Drivers". But why not boot from a LiveUSB session and know for certain without changing anything on the laptop. It will be slower than an install but will at least show how well devices work. – Dennis Oct 15 '13 at 17:23

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Yeah you can. Ubuntu and most distros of linux use significantly fewer resources, so it will run a lot faster than vista, but then again anything runs better than vista - ha.

As far as driver compatibility - There is a few times with drivers not working, for example on my old gateway the wireless card was incompatible with the basic install, however you can use tools like ndiswrapper and wrap windows drivers and run them in linux.

So.. in my experience -- I have never ran into any issues with drivers on ubuntu or linux that wasn't solvable, just a bit of searching and you can figure out a fix if its needed. Usually on popular platforms like DELL the more standard the hardware - the more standardized the drivers are with the distro.

I say go for it! You will be shocked at how a crappy computer suddenly feels like a power house.

actionseth
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