Our Kubuntu 16.04 on a 14 year old Acer Aspire v3-571g-6602 was breaking down. No longer supported, long response lags, browsers that were not being accepted by some sites, it was clear that a complete reinstall was required. I chose Kubuntu 26.04 because the interface looks a lot like Win and she was already used to Kubuntu. Here’s my reinstall log.
1. Overall install: It was overall pretty easy. I had to get a Kubuntu 26.04 iso onto a USB drive. The laptop was already configured to boot off a USB drive, probably due to the last Kubuntu install. This was a dual boot machine with Win7. There were some messages stating that the Broadcom WAN card needed some future attention. Kubuntu reduced the Win partition, eliminated one partition and reallocated some space by itself. It took a while to figure out what it was recommending, but in the end it was fine. I went with a standard install. Everything else went smoothly.
2. Broadcom WAN troubles: While the ethernet connection was immediate, the Broadcom WAN card was completely ignored. The laptop has a BCM943228HMB card, with a BCM43228 chipset. This was Broadcom proprietary and was not included in the Kubuntu install. This post by thingizkhan was spot on. The Google AI advice was not quite right, but he was. I had to verify if some of the packages were already installed, but after his advice the WAN card came alive and was workable. This fix took much more time to figure out than the actual Kubuntu install.
3. Adding extra programs was easy. Changing the preferences was also easy. Kudos to Ubuntu.
4. This Acer laptop is not for heavy users. The 4G RAM should be upgraded to 8G (4GB 204Pin PC3-8500 CL7 8c 128×8 DDR3-1066 SODIMM) to reduce the lags, and will cost only $20CAD or so. Even on a 14 year old laptop, Kubuntu still reliably runs. This is really a testament to why Linux is really great.