Reviving elderly laptop for my kid with Linux, Y/N?

Post date: 2020-03-27 07:11:11

I have a 2010-ish Sony Vaio laptop in a cupboard. My kid is doing school online using Google Classroom, currently on a iPad. This is fine for consuming video but hopeless for producing work - file management is confusing, it's hard to tell when and where changes are saved, etc. I am only moderately computer savvy. Is Linux the best route to making this old laptop into a computer a 4th grader can use for her schoolwork ? She needs Google classroom, youtube, pdf viewer, and a word processor.

The most recent relevant Ask is from 2010, and I am quite anxious about bricking our only proper computer option, hence this very basic question. Laptop model is VGN-SZ650N, running Windows Vista Business. It had some display problems but I seem to have solved these by updating the drivers. But it's running ancient versions of the browsers and it doesn't look like I can install up to date ones under Vista. I don't want to pay for a new version of Windows for such old hardware. I also assume Windows 10 or whatever would make it unbearably slow. Linux seems the obvious alternative, but while I've installed Windows before I have no experience with Linux. So

(a) If I went with Linux, would this computer stably run an up to date browser, Google Classroom and youtube, and office programs? If at all possible I'd prefer to use Chrome - the school district is all in on google and the teacher keeps saying the reason things aren't working is because people aren't using google stuff. It looks like Linux runs Chromium, not Chrome - is it similar? Please note that I don't care about privacy stuff.

(b) can a person without much computer expertise do this? What Linux version do you recommend? It doesn't need to be superfast or anything, just easy to install and stable and simple to use.

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