I just got another used Toshiba Laptop from flea store for an amazing $10! It had no HDD but I already had previously picked up months ago an oddly new Western Digital SATA3 500 GB new drive in the box from the same store, for the same wonder price of $10.

Since I already had a similar but slightly newer Toshiba Satellite with almost the exact same hardware it was np for me to estimate in a mere few seconds this was workable, wouldl run the Linux I prefer with no problems, and the deal for me. Especially with the total investment risk of only $20.

Now I finally have an escort to my favorite "Flagship" running Linux Mint 18.3 with "Mate" desktop.

It fits well with my upgrade plans to as a test machine also. Since I wanted to test out the new Linux Mint 19.1 but was reluctant to load it on to my Flagship so soon. After all I am perfectly happy with 18.3 as it is as far as I am concerned a rock-solid and fully featured OS.

But now my upgrade worries are no more. I just loaded up the 'new' $20 Laptop with Linux Mint 19.1 'Mate" version. The performance is similar actually even though the $20 Laptop is slightly slower and has half the RAM of the Flagship its still 3 GIG which is plenty for the lighter "Mate" desktop and everything else.

Side by side here they are:
On The Left - my 'old' slightly more powerful and newer "Flagship" -- On the right -- The 'newbie' $20 Wonder:
[Linked Image]

The Flagship running Linux Mint 18.3 with "Mate" desktop , some stats:
[Linked Image]
the system resource use:
[Linked Image]

The 'newbie' $20 Wonder:
[Linked Image]
and its stats:
[Linked Image]

So you can see they are similar. In fact the newer is using slightly less RAM for the basic system presently.

You might notice where it says Kernel: Linux 4.15.0-47-generic X86_64 in both versions. That's one of the amazing things about Linux - the core "Kernel" versions - you can be running the same on various newer / older systems.

To wit; the Flagship Mint 18.3 is based on the Ubuntu 16.04 version which in turn is based on Debian 8. Whereas the newbie here is MInt 19.1 based on Ubuntu 18.04 based on Debian 9.
Practically completely revised systems underneath just still that use a comparible 'Kernel" base. It basically means you can more or less rely on not too many risks on production systems.

Of course in Linux there is a whole world of technical things to know that may be gibberish to the average guy or even myself but it a point to note you can count on some similarities when upgrading.

Helpful in this case additionally is that the Laptops have the exact same Intel HD Graphics card and so forth so that is using the same driver.

Also you might notice the Disk space on the Flagship seems limited. That is simply because I have left most of the disk unpartitioned. That's in case I want to upgrade on another partition or make a dual boot later. I probably will not even need to do that. I may just 'switch' and run the 19.1 or the Flagship and have the oh-so-reliable 18,3 on the backup. I haven't fully decided and usually I move real slow on stuff like this. Maybe next year?

Anyway I never really though about having 2 Laptops so similar but here it is. Thus my post for anyone's interest.

Attached Files 2laps.pngtsilvia.pngflag-stats.pngttesha21.png20wonder-stat.png