Revamping my old core i3 7th Gen laptop with Lubuntu!

I had an old core i3 7th Gen laptop in a dilapidated state sitting in my almirah for some time. I thought of revamping it for livestreaming and got help from Gemini as usual. The best option was to install Lubuntu and remove the existing Windows. Lubuntu is very lightweight, uses the LXQt desktop environment, which takes up very little memory (RAM). It runs smoothly on older processors and low RAM. Lubuntu has a familiar layout, it looks and acts like a traditional Windows desktop. I had been a Ubuntu user about a decade back after my trials with Windows 95 to XP. Later somehow I moved back to Windows again.

Though I was told that I need only a 2 GB or 4 GB flash drive to prepare Lubuntu bootable image, I used a 64 GB one which was available easily from the local quick delivery option. Lubuntu 26.04 LTS (Long Term Support) ISO file, the latest long-term support release, backed with updates until April 2029 was downloaded and unzipped in another laptop. Used Balena Etcher to flash OS image into the flash drive to make it bootable.

Plugged it into the old laptop and pressed Esc and then F9 while booting to get boot menu. Selected the USB drive from the list to start Lubuntu. Chose Install Lubuntu option and then “Erase Disk” as I did not want to retain the old Windows files. Luckily everything went on smoothly and only slight delay was in setting up the WiFi for internet connection. Finally I now have a ‘new’ laptop which can be used for live streaming with OBS Studio. Used instructions from Gemini for downloading and installing OBS Studio as I am not very familiar with Linux terminal operations!