Title: lubuntu on an ancinent ThinkPad A31
Date: 2014-04-15
Lang: en

My mom has a [ThinkPad A31](http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:A31) that she uses to read eMails and surf the web. It was running the Windows XP install that the machine came with.

The end of Windows XP support appeared a few times in the daily print press here. This made my mom beware of the issue and she got nervous, asking me what to do about it. As she was already using [Thunderbird](http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/) and [Firefox](http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox) on XP, why not switch the OS to linux?

Looking around for a lightweight and user friendly distro I settled to go with [lubuntu](http://lubuntu.net/). First experiments with the livecd went very well and yesterday I finally took the big step. The install went smooth and after about two hours I had a working system that was feature-wise up to par with the XP install. 

It only took me three more hours to setup the darn printer but that's not really lubuntu's fault. It's just another proof of my theory that printing is soooo 90s.

All in all, the new setup seems runs a bit slower than before but that's OK. Maybe I can buy a bit more RAM ...