My youngest daughter got an HP Pavilion x360 11-u050nb in 2016 or 17. Its hard disk has been playing up as soon as the warranty expired. I replaced its Windows 10 Home installation with Ubuntu, because it performed better with the dwindling disk. But that didn't last, of course. I opened it up last winter, removed the disk and ordered an exact replacement online. But all sellers that showed stock, canceled my order because they didn't have one for sale. By the time the last vendor cancelled, holidays were over.
Today, I bought a solid state 1T disk to replace the 500G existing one. Same size. A non-brand one - for 60 €. I downloaded the latest Ubuntu desktop and wrote it to an USB stick.
If you plug the stick in the laptop, then press F9 during boot, you can select (amongst other options) to install Ubuntu. That's now running. Current status:
- disk partitioned,
- Belgian keyboard set up
- Location defined
- WiFi connected
- Touch screen recognised
It 'll act as a native Linux machine. No official duties. It's a laptop made for long battery life and light (browsing, office tools) typical student use. But hey, it's not going to the scrapyard.
After restart, I got this message: vmx outside txt disabled by bios. That means that Virtualisation has to be enabled in BIOS. Once I did that, the laptop booted.