Installing Linux on HP EliteBook 1030 G3

Yes, it’s indeed "Snoopy" snoopy means "curious" or "snooping" in English

Dog breed which first appeared on October 4, 1950

But in my avatar it signifies more serenity and calm at the edge of a Canadian lake.

The NVMe SSD is the modern version that replaces the mechanical "Hard Drive" by a card of memory components... Not RAM and not CPU. Although electrical power is also very necessary for its operation.

YES, nowadays, it’s really not much..!! at least we should know what this CPU is..?

Or something else, prevents the CPU from running faster... Either hardware or software..

Hello,

I am surprised to see discussions about which distributions are optimized or not. Between two distributions, a given software is relatively identical.

Even recompiling your software yourself by disabling features you deem non-essential (as allowed, for example, by the Gentoo distribution, which I do not recommend for novices), the performance gain is marginal.

However, several things can slow the machine down:

- An environment and applications that are too heavy. The extreme case is when RAM runs out and the system has to resort to the hard drive (swap) to get by. Therefore, on old computers you should favor a lightweight environment (Cinnamon is a good compromise between lightness and ergonomics).

- Some useless applications are launched. The ideal is to install a minimal distribution and install what you need gradually. But that requires knowing which software meets which need and being comfortable with the package manager. In this case, a Debian-type distribution is perfect. For a less tech-savvy audience, a Debian-based distribution such as Ubuntu (or one of its variants, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, ...) and Mint (MATE or Cinnamon variants) are more suitable. Indeed, more things will be installed, but once the installation is done, there will be little left to install.

Then I was quite surprised to see (cf #25) a regret between Ubuntu 24.04 and Ubuntu 26.04. To use Kubuntu on some machines, moving from Qt5 to Qt6 and to the new KDE version is quite significant (in ergonomics, customization, and rendering). And moreover, it would suggest that one should stay on older versions with all the problems that entails (security holes, obsolete software, more complex updates to implement later, etc.). Regardless of the distribution chosen, it is always better to take the newest possible version.

However, be careful, recent distributions may have trouble running on old BIOSes (I had this case on some ASUS Zenbook laptops). That is why it is always better to update your BIOS before installing Linux.

Good luck

Hello,

If you’re a Solus OS enthusiast, it’s still here: https://getsol.us/

And you can try both on the same PC... It’s best to create a partition for this on the disk and install each OS in its own dedicated partition.

For after-sales support, it’s better to join a Forum

Solus 4.9 Serenity released

• AnnoncesSolus Releases
• irondave Responds June 3

• Heya, friends! It’s time for Solus’s first release of 2026! We’ve made under-the-hood changes to make it easier and more intuitive for users to manage their system...

and also https://help.getsol.us/docs/packaging/

Hello Jeannets,

Thank you very much for your response and for the links.

I will try Solus OS, and I prefer its graphical style under GNOME to that of Pop OS, unless we can change the black background of Pop OS windows...

Which is lighter between Solus OS and Pop OS? Especially since I have heard (or read rather) a lot of good things about Pop OS.

I will try to install either today or tomorrow, and I’ll keep you posted. Hoping I won’t be confronted again with the BIOS error message on my EliteBook that I encountered the first time a few years ago when booting from the USB key where I had put a Linux distribution, I don’t remember which one.

Best regards.

Hello

I don’t know how to answer, whether heavier or lighter... I didn’t try them... I use Ubuntu and for lighter, I use Puppy... but you have to be very careful, it is always running as ROOT and it installs into RAM... you can do stupid things.

After your tests, you’ll be able to tell us which one is the lightest..!!

Good evening Jeannets,

What kind of nonsense?

I finally installed Solus OS. I prefer that one.

However, I don’t have enough experience to know if it’s lightweight or not, because I’m having an issue: the CPU shouldn’t be stressed above 40 or 50 percent I think, because the system is quite slow, especially the software repository, and it took me more than 25 minutes to install 34 updates, whereas with Linux Mint on the Lenovo ThinkPad X230 it was much faster.

I should note that I’m in balanced mode. Moreover, what probably confirms what I’m saying is that I haven’t heard the fan even once since I installed Solus OS.

Anyway, it’s quite slow, as if I were under Windows, but more heavy, it’s weird...

How can I fix the problem?

Thanks.

Hello Jeannets,

Thank you for your help.

Solus OS is installed on the internal hard drive, it’s an NVMe SSD. It’s the GNOME version.

However, when I reconnected the power cable, it was really fast.

So, I’m wondering, if I let the battery drain without the power cable plugged in, does Solus OS go into power-saving mode? I checked, and it was set to balanced...

And I’m also wondering, could installing 34 updates, including a major upgrade to Solus OS, have unblocked this?

Yes, and during these updates, the PC is busy with background tasks; so it slows everything else down...

The power supply source current is very important for performance...

We must wait until all updates are operational... the NVMe SSD is a good solution for speed... but it also needs power.

Okay.

When you say that you need juice for the NVMe SSD, are you talking about the CPU, or the RAM?

The little guy on your avatar reminds me of a comic I read when I was a child; could it be Snoopy?

I didn’t know about the English translation. :)

I just restarted on Solus OS and it seems a bit more responsive, but I could be mistaken.

On the other hand, I read somewhere on the Internet this afternoon that some HP EliteBook g3 laptops like mine would limit the processor to a very low frequency under Linux when the firmware or the ACPI driver does not behave as expected. And the problem would be known on certain HP machines when the charger is removed...

Hello,

I installed a monitoring software last night and I launched it and I saw that the CPU frequently caps at 800 MHz, which isn’t much…

Good evening Jeannets,

The CPU is a Core i5 Kaby Lake-R.

In the end, I installed Linux Mint and I no longer have this slowdown issue on battery.

Thank you for your help.

Hello everyone,

I see that many of you are discussing Linux. :)

I didn’t follow along because I have a flood in my apartment next to the washing machine for 4 days now, I’ve been mopping up from time to time, even at night, still haven’t found a solution.

By the way, I’d tried Debian, but if I remember correctly, I had a major issue with Bluetooth that couldn’t be fixed back then on my Lenovo X230.

Otherwise, is Fedora good? GNOME by default?

See you soon. :)

Hello to Eglantier and jns55,

Ubuntu, initially, is based on Debian, a bit like Android skins if you want to make a comparison. Ubuntu is then taken up in a somewhat different way under Linux Mint; that jns must already know this, however, for Eglantier, if you want to have a streamlined and distinct operating system, to echo what JNS said, there is LMDE, Linux Mint Debian Edition, with Cinnamon by default, no xfce or mate, for the latter, without making any modifications.

That’s where I leave you to ponder your choices, Eglantier: you can very well take Debian, already GNOME-based, and try to arrange it as you wish like Mint, or just go with LMDE 7.

Try them in a virtual machine, with GNOME Boxes (machine) under Linux, or VirtualBox under Windows, having enabled BIOS virtualization and the feature beforehand.

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jns55,

Personally, I had tested Debian GNOME version on a virtual machine and I could do essential things, although it indeed doesn’t compare with Mint.

I had installed Ubuntu on my laptop, version 24.04 then 26.04, I was a bit disappointed with the changes, finally, as Églantier had already told me on another discussion topic, Ubuntu is not what is most optimized and relevant as we would like to believe, even the old versions from years ago left me with bad memories back when I was starting.

By contrast, although I didn’t like Fedora Workstation in the older versions I had used before, with Bazite GNOME based on Fedora, I realize that it is very well designed for beginners, in fact everything was initially made so that one has nothing to tinker with in the terminal which itself is moreover very restricted, although there must be a method to unlock that.

With Bazite, updates are simplified, the library is complete and optimized for gaming, retro gaming, free gaming, you don’t even need to type a password to install a program, the ability to clean up files related during uninstallation is also very well thought out.

Then, the tips that allow using Davinci Resolve, Xbox Cloud, game managers like Epic Games, etc... A whole lot of small details very appreciable.

Although a lot is made for gaming, many things are quite appreciable in Bazite, however it is not really made for old machines, unfortunately.

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