Hello my name is Calm Cal, welcome to another video, this is another video in
the improve or re-use your old laptop series, in the last video we used the same
computer to install botacera on to the hard drive within this computer
due to this computer's configuration and setup
it wasn't compatible with botacera, but we're not going to give up! We're
going to install a new operating system. We're going to install - Linux Mint - 19.2
codenamed "Tina!" this is the cinnamon desktop edition, this laptop is a
hewlett-packard Compaq 2715 B and looking at it - I didn't realize how old
this computer was, it must have cost a bit of money when it was first purchased
but this computer is from 2007. It originally came with Windows XP Pro
which is now redundant as an operating system - it's not supported by
Microsoft anymore and is not safe to use on the internet.
So firstly we need to make bootable USB media for this software so head on over
to Linux Mint.com I will leave a link in the description below and under the
Downloads tab, scroll down the page until you actually see the Downloads links. So
here I'm gonna select cinnamon 64-bit and this is the desktop Edition, they
are all free to download and it will download into your downloads folder, this
version of Linux requires very little maintenance and has its own updates as
well, so once it's downloaded. Go to your downloads folder and just make sure
it is an ISO image, this may be compressed so if it is - then just extract
here using 7-zip. The file is less than 2 gigabytes so make sure you have a USB
Drive that is big enough to contain this image, next run Etcher - I will leave a link in
the description for this, press select image and
select the right iso file from your downloads folder, the USB drive should automatically
be selected but if it isn't press select drive and select the USB Drive,
and then select flash, this will take a few minutes for this to copy across to
the USB Drive so just be patient. On the laptop I just need to change the boot
order to boot from USB so I'm just changing all the USB indicators on here
to boot first - before anything else. Now Etcher is finished all I'm going
to do is Eject the USB stick from my computer plug it into the USB port on
the laptop then select Save Changes and exit on the BIOS screen and then let it
boot up. Linux Mint will now start booting from the USB stick, so here it is
booted up to the desktop screen, on here you have the option here to install
Linux Mint and that's what I'm going to select. The first screen here is
selecting your language so I'm going to select English and then continue, oh,
that's quite a few different versions of English here, so I'm just going to select
English UK and then English UK on the right hand
side and then continue. On this next screen it asks you to install third-party
software for graphics and Wi-Fi etc - Tick this box and it will help to install
drivers for your graphics and peripherals and things - it's gonna make
things a whole lot easier, then click continue. On this next screen you've got
various different options, all I'm going to select is erase disk and install
Linux Mint and then install now. You now get a warning screen which is just
advising you that everything is gonna be wiped off the disk, what I'm gonna do
here is just select continue, here you get a little map of the world so you just need
to select where you are. It didn't seem to like me typing in this box where you
see New York, so I just, in the end just clicked on the picture - the region
where I am, just the UK and then continue again
on this next screen you just need to fill in your details, pick a username
choose the password & confirm it, and then you've got the option then to
either login automatically or require your password to log in, you will be
required to enter this password when you want to install software so make sure
you remember it or write it down, then press Continue again.
next we have the install screen so this is going to take a little while on this
computer.
It didn't take as long as what I thought it would, so now we've got the
installation complete screen and we've got the option to restart now, so I'm
just gonna unplug the USB stick and select restart now. So that's now booted
up - what we need to do is make sure check updates and just check to see
there's no drivers and things missing. For this, we do really need to
attach it to the Internet. If you've got an old computer that hasn't got an
Ethernet port you can use one of these USB Ethernet portable adapters I did use
this adapter just to check to see whether it worked out of the box and it
did. So, from this first steps tab, select driver manager, and just select launch.
You'll have to enter your password to give it permission to do this, then
select authenticate. It will then update the package itself and download any
drivers or missing software that's required to run your system, so for this
laptop it's found a problem with the driver for the Wi-Fi and it's given me
the option here to actually change this. so I'm actually going to select the
radio button here and then apply changes and then it will install the latest drivers
for the Wi-Fi.
It now requires a restart for these driver changes so I'm just going to
select restart here. All right so now that's rebooted we can just have a quick
look at these features again, if you just scroll down here all the way to software
manager you can see you can actually install 60,000 different applications!
Let's just go to the Start bar down here and just see what we've already got
installed, we've already got GIMP and some graphical software already
installed.
Libre Office is included within this suite as well, and LibreOffice contains
various pieces of software similar to Microsoft Office and this is all installed free!
with this operating system. There's a document to open from before,
so it's just like a normal word processor and as you can see this word
processor is very functional and saves quite easily which turns this laptop
into something usable again! Close document and then I can come out close this
window as well, now just quickly show you the internet so we got Firefox already
installed here.This is not gonna be a Linux presentation of this software.
Obviously you can install all of the different applications and things on here
as well, I just want to quickly show you how you can make use of an old laptop
like this and give it a lease of life again. You might actually have a current laptop
which with Windows 10, with the size of it and all the information it packs in, your
current laptop might be struggling with Windows 10, this might be an alternative
rather than struggling with Windows 10 and having a laptop that doesn't
function very well or very quick anymore, this might be an alternative to that - but that
will be a decision for you, alright so we just type in YouTube.
Ok let's try this then.......
Try and pause this.....
I'll try and get on my page.... (but no! video starts playing already)...
Video audio plays regarding building your own PC.....
More audio from video (he's very good you know.....!)
Right, I think that's enough of that (stops video). I
think we can say that we've successfully re-used this old laptop, don't forget to
Like subscribe and hit the bell notification for future videos. I'm up to
about 70 odd subscribers at the moment and I'm gonna have a competition when I hit
the hundred subscribers mark. I hope you're enjoying these videos, don't forget to
leave a comment below my name is Cal, have a good morning, afternoon or good
evening, farewell till next time - and I will see you later!
Thanks for reading and watching ! 👍