Reviving Your Computer with Linux

I suddenly wanted to tinker with something.

I dug out that tablet I bought in 2018, which has a back full of batteries, and I suddenly felt the urge to do something with it.

—— Especially when I saw that the Taobao store for Zhongbai is set to cease operations on April 16, 2025, while I am still trying to breathe new life into its products. As a loyal customer, I was almost moved to tears.

In the few free days I had, I installed the latest version of Windows 10 on it several times, but unfortunately, being old, it started to lag right after booting up. Running a browser or WPS made everything slow down. — Slow is not important; life can be slow, but it must not be stagnant.

Later, I tried installing Windows 7, but unfortunately, I couldn’t switch to traditional boot mode. In UEFI mode, the system just wouldn’t start.

So, I decided to try Linux. I vaguely remember that around 2019, I had installed Ubuntu on Zhongbai, but lost the touchscreen functionality (no drivers), and the desktop was inverted, with a very small interface that was sluggish.

This time, I thought I would try a different distribution. After all, having encountered so many distributions, there must be one that works. Since 2021, I have had a few brief experiences using Linux on my physical machine, especially since the end of 2021, when I have been experiencing a domestic system — Galaxy Kirin — in the office.

Of course, the performance of Zhongbai’s tablet cannot handle the Kirin desktop. So, after a simple search for Linux distributions online, and based on my years of experience with Debian, I found a direction.

• Simple desktop
• Lightweight system
• Light version
• Can run on old computers

Thus, I had the following options:

• TinyCore
• Linux Lite
• Lubuntu

I had previously run TinyCore on a virtual machine, and it was so minimal that I doubted it even needed a GUI.

Then, I tried downloading and using Linux Lite.

The interface was very minimal, and it didn’t lag when entering the desktop, but the only downside was that it would default to opening the FN key on the keyboard. This means that under normal circumstances, if I wanted to type ‘yuio’, it would turn into ‘y456’. After searching for a long time, I couldn’t find a solution, so I had to give up.

Subsequently, I installed Lubuntu. Compared to using Gnome’s Ubuntu, the desktop resource usage is low, and the system is very smooth. I used it for two days, but the 11.6-inch screen displaying<span>1920*1080</span> was hard to see clearly even when squinting. Scaling directly to 2x failed when I tried to set it to 1.5x.

So, I tried Linux Mint Xfce.

By modifying the DPI value, I successfully achieved a 1.5x zoom. However, after much consideration, I still wanted to return to a system brewed in a pure community environment.

—— Moreover, being based on Ubuntu, which is backed by a commercial company, feels a bit uncomfortable in the Free world.

So, I installed Debian and chose Xfce for the desktop. After a minimal installation, I had all the interfaces I currently use.

The entire system had few modifications, mainly downloading themes from<span>xfce-look.org</span>, and the rest were simple adjustments.

• Changed the software source to a domestic one; I used Aliyun source.
• In “Settings” — “Settings Manager” — “Appearance” — “Fonts”, I changed the DPI from the default 96 to 144.
• Replaced with larger icons.
• Rebuilt the icon cache.

ounter(lineounter(lineounter(linerm ~/.cache/icon-cache.kcachesudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/*sudo update-icon-cache /usr/share/icons/*

• Copied all fonts from the Windows system to<span>/usr/share/fonts/windows/</span>, and executed<span>sudo fc-cache -fv</span> to update the font cache.
• Modified the lock screen shortcut key; in “Settings” — “Keyboard” — “Application Shortcuts”, found<span>xflock4</span> and changed it to Super + L, so it matches the shortcut key in Windows.
• Modified GRUB to skip the countdown for selecting the system at boot.

ounter(linesudo nano /etc/default/grub

Found the following two lines and modified them to:

ounter(lineounter(lineGURB_TIMEOUT=0 # Set timeout to 0 seconds. GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=true # Single system, no need to detect other systems

Then executed the update.

ounter(linesudo update-grub

• Added SMB access functionality to the file manager Thunar.

ounter(linesudo apt install gvfs-backends samba-common smbclient cifs-utils

• Added Timeshift to create recovery images.

ounter(linesudo apt install timeshift

Finally, downloaded the deb packages for WeChat, QQ, WPS, and Obsidian from the official website.

And executed the update command to complete the remaining installations.

ounter(lineounter(linesudo apt update -ysudo apt upgrade -y

After everything was completed, I created a recovery image and then started using your Linux.

—— Finally, if your computer can run Windows smoothly, I still recommend you continue using Windows. Unless you want to tinker.

Hi, I am Jiang Chen, long time no see.