So the Netbook I bought for my parents is just sitting there catching dust.
I decided to use it for myself when I'm traveling around.

Its an Acer aspire V5. Don't remember the exact model, please just assume its a very basic version.
I need suggestions on which OS to use on it.

While Windows 7 does run on it, its slow. I have a free upgrade token for Windows 10. Is Windows 10 better, i.e. faster on basic hardware?
My preferred OS is Ubuntu and I was about to install that, but then thought I might ask around.

My only requirement is secure browsing.

I've heard good things about Jolicloud, eeepc and some others as well.

Any suggestions and opinions, especially on the upgrade to Windows 10 would be most welcome.

 

I'm assuming it doesn't have a touch screen since it has w7 on it. W10 is on the laptop I just got my mom, and it boots in two seconds flat, but that's on skylake...a few of my friends got the "go ahead and upgrade" and ended up having to format and go back to 7 because it just ran like junk on their hardware from 2011 (3rd gen I think?). Without knowing how old this netbook is and what gen CPU you've got in there, I'm wondering why don't you want to just put ubuntu on it? You already know that's going to be zippy.

 

When it comes to linux distros I've pretty much always gone with Arch Linux or variants thereof. It's lightweight, and you can add as much or as little bloat as you want. And while I've never had a problem doing the whole command line install thing, one could use ArchBang to get it done quick and easy.

 

Thanks guys.
Zombie Yeah, I figured as much about Windows 10. I haven't used it yet, so thank you for the info.
slutmonkeyradishballs Lol, this one's really old man. Like probably a Dual Core APU or something similar. I mean, a lot of tabs run faster than this machine. It was meant for my parents about 2 1/2 years ago. Which is why I hesitated to install Ubuntu on it as well.
redlibertyx Thanks for the Arch Linux recco. Checking it out right now.

Cheers guys.

Will probably go with one of the Linux distros.

 

Have to second the Arch Linux (or variant) suggestion. I have it on my old desktop - first gen i7 from 5 years ago - and it runs smoothly, no problems.

 

I tried getting it working on my ARM-based chromebook to no avail sadly. However, the fun in typing out "pacman" 29812398407 times kind of prompted me to set up a server for our home network again, and I have to say arch works quite nicely for that. For funsies I even installed linux steam and heyyyyy gaming on *nix, how YOU doing... I pieced it together from three different builds and had no issues getting everything running smooth as buttah...which was nice since w7 had about 20 issues with that particular zombie machine.

 

depends what kinf of device it is.

Lubuntu is good for the old Atom based ones.

Anything much stronger than that and I would just say Windows 10. Its fairly snappy even on tablets.

 

Dependes on your level of linux familiarity. I'd also recommend Arch Linux (run it on all of my systems) other possibilities would be some XFCE flavoured Fedora installation.

 

I've had good luck with Xubuntu for a tech-illiterate friend.

 

To repeat the recommendations post above, Lubuntu is certainly a good choice for old netbooks. For a different flavor, Linux Mint with MATE as the desktop environment is a good choice. I am running this on an older P4 laptop.

Even if you run Linux, secure browsing is still user dependent. Please exercise common sense and you will be fine.