Vostro 1520 Restored with Linux

Today when I came home there was a box sitting in the house waiting for me. My wife said it was a computer my brother-in-law had used in his business. She said, “Dave wanted you to have this computer back now that he’s retired.” I vaguely remember helping Dave get this computer about ten years ago. It’s a Dell Vostro 1520. Checking on the Dell support website I found that the warranty expired nine years ago. The computer came with Windows XP which is what he needed at the time. I checked out the BIOS and determined it had a Core 2 Duo CPU with 2 gigabytes of RAM. It has 300 gigabyte SATA hard disk and Intel wireless.

It was a perfect candidate for Linux Mint XFCE. I made the Mint XFCE 20.1 thumb drive with my desktop computer and fired up the Vostro. I pressed F12 to boot from the USB drive and the install went really well. I ordered a new battery and a memory upgrade to bring it up to 4 GB of RAM. I’ve got a spare 120 GB SSD drive to put into it. Someone will soon be getting a lovely refurbished Dell Vostro 1520 that’s been refitted with Linux. You just have to love Linux and open source. It’s the gift that keeps giving.