How I brought my laptop back to life (with Linux, of course!)

So I had this Laptop - an Asus Vivobook 202E which originally had Windows 8 installed. After 2 years of usage, it got infected by a virus so I decided to make it my "Linux Lab". I was able to Distro-hop for several months before the hard drive totally gave in (Windows was already detecting problems with the HDD before I switched to Linux). And now, its journey back to the land of the living begins...

THE SUBJECT

CPU:  3rd Generation Intel i3 ULV

RAM:  4Gb

GRAPHICS:  Intel HD4000

HDD:  500 Gb (broken)

SCREEN:  11.6" Touchscreen

RESOLVE HARDWARE ISSUES

Obviously, the first step to revive a dead PC is to fix any problem with its hardware. Be it bad memory, power supply or in my case, a bad hard drive. And so, I bought a 120 Gb SSD from a nearby tech store. I'm all good with just 120 Gb as I store my multimedia and important files in my desktop. Having a Solid State Hard Drive installed in the laptop would also mean a boost in performance.

MANAGE DISK PARTITIONS

Now I format and manage the newly installed disk with GPARTED (GNU Partition Editor), a powerful open source tool for managing disk partitions. I'll cover GPARTED basics in the future ;)

CHOOSE AND INSTALL A LINUX DISTRIBUTION

You can check out my previous post if you need an overview of what a Linux Distribution is. With my laptop's hardware configuration, choosing a distribution with the Gnome desktop environment seems to be a good option (if not the best). I can make use of the laptop's touchscreen with Gnome's touch gestures and its application launcher. I then install a distribution with one of the best Gnome implementation - Fedora.

AESTHETICS

I was planning on getting a custom laptop skin but it was a bit expensive so I had a printing stall print a couple custom stickers for me. Now I'll be promoting linux every time I bring my laptop with me.

 Now my laptop is happier than when it had Windows installed :p
 Snappier, Virus free and most of all - fun to use. Here's a short video of how the desktop looks like.