Q4OS Small but Powerful

advertises itself as the ideal OS for older computers. What attracted me to this OS was the internal storage requirement. Only 3GB for the Trinity Desktop edition and 5GB for the KDE Plasma edition. Now that is small indeed and it runs with KDE! They have an edition for the Raspberry Pi too, but that is not my immediate need.

Last year I successfully converted a Dell Chromebook 11 into a Linux laptop. The challenge of these older Chromebooks that they have limited internal storage. The Dell model has a whopping 16GB. Only small distros are feasible. I installed Peppermint OS. It was adequate but not exiting. Typical of converted Chromebooks some of the function keys did not work, foe example, the brightness key. I chose to install the most recent release of Q4OS, version 4.6 “Gemini”.

Booting from the live USB proceeded normally except for a pause while the OS configured itself to the equipment. At second pause I was asked if I wanted to increase the default font size. Normally I would do this after installation, increasing about 25% to compensate for my eyesight problems. Pre-configuring it was a nice surprise. Once the boot was complete I was presented with the home screen. I was impressed by the bottom panel with an easy to read clock and large icons. And all of the function keys on the laptop worked!!!

Playing around with the distro I found a software store from which I could install Firefox, gparted and some other goodies. Being Debian based the apt command could install quite a bit more. More importantly, my SD Card was recognized and accessible. This means that I can download AppImages, the Linux equivalent of Windows portable apps.

Without hesitation I proceeded to install Q$OS to the hard disk. Booting the hard disk I was again asked the usual things about location, passwords and etc. And once again about default font sizes. The little Dell is now a very usable laptop.