General :: Selecting A Distro For An Ancient Computer?
Apr 11, 2010
I've got this old computer. PII processor, 4gb HDD, I forget how much ram but the mobo is an AOpen AX63 pro [URL].. The machine still runs great. I just finished cleaning all the connections with alcohol and putting the thing back together. I've got Ubuntu 5.10 on it right now, but with so little in the way of system resources, I want to get something more scaled down on there. Googling hasn't resulted in anything really useful.
So, does anybody know of a scaled down distro aimed at old computers? Obviously something current would be great (I considered trying to find a netbook distro and use that, but I don't know if there would be any issues using that kind of thing on a desktop.) but I'd be willing to use an older distro if I need to. I really just want to use it as a writing machine, with maybe some basic internet access.
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Jun 17, 2011
i got given an old IBM think pad R40 laptop with a broken HDD and im looking for a linux distro for it, its got 128 mb of ram and a mobile P4 - M 1.80ghz processor all im gonna use it for is basic word processing/taking notes in the field etc. but i would like to have a reasnoble GUI ive tried Puppy, DSL and SLITAZ but their GUI's are rather crude.
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Jul 25, 2010
i installed ubuntu to multiboot with windows 7 but i don't know how to remove it to where its just windows again you can't delete the partiton ecause grub comes up how do i make it go back to the way it was before i installed ubuntu
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Feb 4, 2010
Have have a computer from 2001 with: 700 Mhz Celeron CPU, 640 MB RAM (gonna up it to 1GB soon), 64 MB graphics, 30 GB hard drive. I installed Ubuntu 9.04 on this computer, but it runs slow. It's not unusable but slow. I was wondering in Fedora would run faster? I know it has lower system requirements but would it run faster on this older hardware?
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Nov 28, 2010
I am trying to wipe the hard drive on an ancient laptop. The current plan is to find a live distro that can run shred or equivalent program. The problem is that most ultralight linux's don't seem to work with the RAM restrictions (Optimistically 80 MB, Worst Case 16 or less). I will likely have to just bust open the case and physically mutilate the Drive I would prefer a more 'civilized' approach (defined as one which keeps the machine in one functioning piece).
Model: Dell Latitude XPi CD
Processor: Intel (Inside) Pentium (one?) MMX
Available Media: CD, Possibly Floppy (I have access to only one other machine with a drive)
OS: Windows 95
I am having a hard time getting any farther specs. If anyone knows of a distro that has a prayer of running in these conditions I would love to know.
Current candidates:
Puppy Linux < 1.0.2
DSL (Unsure of architecture compatibility)
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Dec 6, 2010
with the help of others (to whom grateful thanks), I've managed to get this distro installed and my PCMCIA Wireless card working without a LAN connection!Result......well it was for me!next big prob is sound.......any sound at all!This command sudo modprobe snd-cs4236 sometimes gives me some, just for the current session, if it don't want to play, it just ignores me!Two main questions,
1) How do I get the attention of the "Alsa Mixer"? (the GUI is normally just blank and may or may not be activated by the above command!)
2) Once I have the attention of the "Alsa mixer", how do I maintain it upon re-boot?
Some one guided me to this post and despite it's age, I appended my plea for help....but I fear it is not the correct place............I just hope I'm now in the right place.url
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Jan 9, 2010
nominate a disastrous distro from past or present that was simply AWFUL and what exactly was so bad about it?
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Jan 20, 2010
this is my first time actually asking for help here, so forgive me if I make any mistakes. The other day I was trying to install Ubuntu 9.10 on my mom's old system (not too old, has vista on it) and even from the live cd it wouldn't boot. Then I tried 8.04 because I know that works on my XP system. However it would freeze during boot but at least showed that it was booting (the bar was starting to fill).
The system is an eMachine T5226:
CPU : Intel Pentium D Processor 925 (Dual-Core)
64-bit processor with Intel EM64T Technology
(Each core operates at 3.0GHz | 2 x 2MB L2 Cache | 800MHz FSB)
Operating System : Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium
Chipset : Intel 945G
[Code]...
Since we bought it it's been upgraded to 2 GB of ram and has a nVidia 8400gs video card and a belkin wireless adapter now. I can't understand why the live cds won't fully boot since my single core 2.2Ghz boots just fine with 8.04.
I was thinking of trying 6.06 to see of that might work. However I was unsure if the system is capable of running Ubuntu and might need Kubuntu or another distro.
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Jun 9, 2011
My distribution upgrade got interrupted in a hard way and when I start the computer I get some errors:
Code:
kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root on block 0, 0
or sth like this and a few more errors. Can't look the exact message as I am writing from the liveCD. On Gparted the boot looks normal and it is said that it's mounted but there is no mount point. There are things on the hard drive that I must save.
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Oct 24, 2010
I got an old laptop from my brother, it has ubuntu 6 on it right now. The computer is real old, complete with a windows 95 and pentium II sticker on it. I'd like to put a new install on this but first I would like to find out how to check the hardware specs like processor and ram so i can choose what to install. How can i do that?
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Mar 1, 2010
I want to install all the ubuntu distro packages on a computer without an internet connection. I read the website, but it didn't say if the DVD you buy has all the packages. Or are there ISO's of them?
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Apr 27, 2011
I have a dell CPi laptop that I only want to use for connecting to my office computer via freenx. The laptop has a pcmcia wifi card, 4gb hard drive space, 128mb ram, and is a Pentium II 400mhz. Can you recommend a linux distro for me? I won't use any features other than freenx and wifi, so i'm sure this laptop is fast enough for that.
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Jun 1, 2011
If you read /etc/passwd you find all sorts of entries with important sounding names: Before I get flamed about publishing this list, I chopped it up from a live-DVD copy of the contents.)
Code:
root:x:0:0:root
daemon:x:1:1:daemon
bin:x:2:2:bin
sys:x:3:3:sys
sync:x:4:65534:sync
games:x:5:60:games
man:x:6:12:man
lp:x:7:7:lp
[Code]...
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Oct 7, 2010
I often have many windows open on many virtual desktops and I have hard time finding some application.
So is there any tool for searching open windows?
Currently I using Awesome as my window manager, but it does not need to be dependent on it.
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Mar 12, 2010
Our organization has several external IP addresses. I am behind 2 layers of NAT and the servers choose which IP address to route my traffic to. Can I specify which IP address to use when finally leaving the organizations network. I know that source routing can be done in IPv4 by adding some options in the header. But can I configure my PC to add these options automatically. I have both a Windows and a Linux Machine.
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Feb 24, 2011
I've been using Linux for about six years now, and I joined this website hoping to learn more about Linux, keep updated with Linux news, others less experienced than me; I spend so much time on Reddit I rarely remember there's a whole Internet how there and I've yet to really visit this website since I registered. I'm posting this in the newbie section because the problem I'm having feels like it probably has a simple solution, but I don't what to do. If this forum is inappropriate, I suppose a mod could move it?
Anyway, upon highlighting a link in either Firefox 4 nightly or Chromium, I get this pop-up menu: [URL](copy paste and remove the space between the h and the t - and yes, this is a "screenshot" taken with a camera, as this menu seems to inhibit the functioning of the PrintScreen key for some reason) I do not need to click - as soon as a URL is highlighted, the menu pops up, forcing me to click away in order to cancel the menu. At first I assumed it was a Firefox thing - it happens in both 3.6 and 4 Nightly - so I began checking all of my add-ons (only 4) and plugins to see if I have some plugin causing this. Nothing seemed to be.
When I switched to Chromium, I quickly realized the same thing happens in Chromium, as well, so it's independent of what browser I'm using. This leads me to believe it's some package I have installed (apt-get, I'm using Linux Mint on this laptop, and on my other computers, which are running Arch, I do not encounter this in either Chromium or Firefox4) that's causing this, so if someone could just identify what package it is I can remove it. Or maybe my assumption is incorrect and there's something else that leads to this popup, but either way, it's really annoying and I want it gone!
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Jul 29, 2011
I don't understand why this is so difficult.In the old days, there was lpforms which allowed some formatting. CUPS did not see fit to implement this into it's lp package.cgi-...-cgi?lpforms+1In the old days, lpr allowed you to select a font in the command line with -1=fontname. CUPS did not see fit to implement this into it's lpr package.htmIn the old days, printers had fonts installed on them that you could access. Modern printers don't seem to have this. So now I still need to be able to select a font when I print certain text files from the command line but it seems this is impossible. I've been working with instances and lpoptions, which allows me to do a lot of other things I need like orientation and margins and even set the font size, but I still cannot choose a font other than the default.
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Apr 10, 2011
The problem is said in the title. if i use facebooks normal uploader (basic uploader, u name it) it will zoom into the
is there some workaround to be able to use the normal uploader and be able to zoom into the photos so i know what i am uploading?
i don't want to reboot in windows every time i need to upload something but at the same time i want commodity...
Distro:ubuntu
vers: 10.04.1
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Jul 1, 2009
While I'm a 37+ year veteran of the Computer Wars, I'm a total nube regarding Linux, Unix, Solaris, etc. Please tolerate my highly elementary questions.
I intend to install Fedora on a number of machines that I possess. Newer equipment seems to be relatively straight forward. However, an ANCIENT ISA bus PC has me scratching my head. The HDD and optical drive are SCSI. IIRC, either floppy disk or HDD are the only boot possibilities.
All suggestions as to how I get the i386 version of Fedora V11 onto the SCSI HDD are most welcome. Perhaps installing an "inexpensive" PCI bus SCSI adapter in a newer machine, with Fedora 11 installed, and using the existing installation to build the new SCSI SYSRES is the best available method.
BTW, no PnP support exists on the ancient machine. I've my share of experience avoiding IRQ conflicts and need to know how to get the IRQ info. into Fedora. Maybe I'll try to install the ISA/PCMCIA hardware that's gathering dust.
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Apr 3, 2010
Intel Celeron processor 400mhz
96mb ram
ati rage mobility 4mb video card
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Mar 13, 2011
My brother must have the oldest computer ever, its got no option to boot via usb, when you boot with cd it boots up like a livecd usually would (gets to the Ubuntu screen with "Try Ubuntu without installing" and then "Install Ubuntu" (or the equivalent for other livecd's)) and then just goes into a black screen (which flashes - a sort of brightness high and brightness low) and keeps flashing until I turn it off. It has Ubuntu on it, but it's too slow since he has like 126mb ram. It was installed using the actual Ubuntu CD from the Ubuntu Store. Usb booting isn't allowed by bios and the computer wont install things via dvds.
I have tried:
Lubi
LiveCD's
grub chainloading USB
Installing xubuntu-desktop and then removing all ubuntu's stuff
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May 16, 2011
System Fossil age laptop, Debian testing with lilo. SymptomAfter an upgrade (2nd week May), custom kernel compiled, kernel panics on boot, saying unable to mount root drive. (or more precise, unable to mount whatever uuid device). Stock kernel can boot. Workaround Instead of uuid on kernel option, use prehistoric root=/dev/XXX.
edit:The kernel which panics is 2.6.38 (make oldconfig, all default answer from 2.5.32 config)Stock is 2.6.32 On 2.6.38 after boot with tweak, the command "uuid" looks good.
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Dec 20, 2010
i had windows 7 on my system and now i installed debian squeeze but grub does not show my windows 7 in menu for selecting how could repair this problem?
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Feb 1, 2010
I've got an eight-year old PC that I'd like to breath some new life into. I was using it for my old scanner (HP, no longer supported by MS or HP), but when my Windows installation finally died I thought it was a perfect time to try Ubuntu. (Xsane running under Ubuntu does support that scanner.) I can get Ubuntu started on it, but when I try to activate/install the recommended Nvidia OEM driver, the system gets sick. Ordinarily I'd not worry about it, but the system only starts into low graphics mode, which leaves some dialogs too large for the display and partially unusable or worse. The PC is a cheap homebrew, using an A7N266-VM ASUS mb. It has some kind of Nvidia chipset on board, but no graphics accelerator.
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Dec 23, 2010
I am ending my dissertation and suddenly the Polytonic Greek stopped working on my ubuntu 10.04! This means that all different accents and accent combinations are disabled. I found in the archives an old thread on this topic from 2007, [URL].
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Jan 10, 2011
I've recently found a Dell Optiplex GX110 - about 10 years old with a Pentium III. I installed Ubuntu 10.04 no problems, and it behaves quite well, despite its age.However, if I try and stream video from web sites (....., bbc etc), the result is underwhelming - very jumpy images, although sound is fine. Interestingly, viewing video files through VLC does not have such an issue - it seems to be OK - it is just http streaming (typically Flash) where I observed the issue.I found an old graphics card - a ATI Radeon 7000 and installed it. However, I saw no improvement in streaming video performance. I was a little surprised, but would like to understand the reason - is it:the card is so low spec it would not make a difference, or is it that:the card *ought* to make a difference, but is not configured and/or performing correctlyNote that Ubuntu appears to correctly find the card - lspci shows it correctly identified.
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Dec 15, 2010
Lubuntu is nice - but it seems the LXDE version is not as up to date as Fedora LXDE Spin or even Debian squeeze with LXDE installed. I do like Chromium on Lubuntu though... its faster and a nice touch. I am looking for a lightweight 64-bit distribution for my main laptop (it is by no means "old" or "low spec" but I like that Lubuntu starts up in like 2 secs).
LXDE version seems not to be recent (esp in 10.04 version which seems to work more stably for me - with Nvidia drivers etc)64 bit install is currently a pain - requires first install of minimal CD or alternate CD both of which required wired Ethernet, then install of lubuntu from PPA. Native 64-bit support would be nice. Linux Mint LXDE, for example, is also only 32-bit.
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Jul 19, 2010
I have an ancient Logitech Express webcam (046d:0850) that worked immediately when I installed 10.04 Lucid Lynx, except for a frame rate issue. GUVCVideo has the frame rate at between 1-3 fps. I'd like to see it at between 25-30. The video options within guvcvideo DO NOT allow me to adjust the frame rate, resolution, or auto-exposure. Cheese works, skype works, and camorama doesn't. All functioning programs have the fps issue.
In searching around, all I've found is some wild goose chases promising pots of gold that some leprechaun must have stuffed up his keister because they don't work for me.
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Sep 6, 2010
I have a linux box set up as a multi-purpose server for my home with three Windows client PC's. The linux box is based on a slightly modified Slackware 9.0 distribution using Linux 2.4.20 and an unfortinately old, slow AMD processor with a miserable 512Kb RAM. The linux box serves the CIFS file system to the Windows boxes, runs the SQUID HTTP proxy, the Apache web server, a print server, does masquerading, mail serving and a very effective firewall using iptables.
This system, although slow, has run perfectly for several years.Let me say that again - This system works perfectly.I had decided that now is the time to upgrade the hardware, so I bought a Gigabyte LGA775 motherboard which has two 1Gb network interfaces on it, an ASUS 256Mb PCI-E display card, 2Gb of DDR3 RAM, an Intel Core2-Quad processor and a bunch of 500Gb SATA drives to set up a RAID5 array (but I intend that the system boot off one of several 40Gb PATA drives I have).I set up the processor, motherboard, display card, RAM, a SATA DVD Drive and a 40Gb PATA hard disk in a "breadboard" layout and installed distro 13.1, being careful to set up the static IP for the local network, dhcpcd to get an IP address from the cable modem (my internet connection) and to enable ip_forward in the network configuration.
Then I installed a script invoked by /etc/rc.d/rc.local which installed all the SAME iptables rules as my old Linux box. There was one minor glitch when I had to change 8 occurrences of "-d ! $LOCAL_NET to" "! --destination $LOCAL_NET" but that was no problem. I also set up /etc/resolv.conf, /etc/hosts , the BIND server files etc. etc. exactly as in the old box.
I am able to ping mirror.aarnet.edu.au (this is at the heart of Australia's internet hub network - if it's down the whole bloody thing is down) and have the system find the correct IP from the designated nameservers and contact that server with a return trip time of 35ms. I am able to run a telnet session from one of the Windows boxes and edit files on the Linux server. So both network interfaces work and I've got them the right way around.I am able to run FTP on one of the Windows boxes and connect through to mirror.aarnet.edu.au, although it seems to hang when I try a DIR (but then so does the old linux system).
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Jul 27, 2011
I'm trying to use Pinta Image Editor but I cannot find an option to preview the image, in a viewable size, before I work on it.
what to do in this situation? Prefferably it would be nice to view all the pictures as thumbnails.
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