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Raspberry Pi releases an OS to breathe new life into old PCs

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Re: Raspberry Pi releases an OS to breathe new life into old PCs

#71

Post by yuhong »

Klinky wrote: post #67
olegkikin wrote: post #36

SSDs are what breathe new life into old PCs. And they are quite cheap. My wife's laptop turned from extremely annoying to decent, almost pleasant to use.

This should definitely be investigated before investing time getting an alternative OS up and running, along with the troubleshooting and training that comes with it. Upgrade to the latest CPU for the platform. For $25 you could gain an extra 1+ Ghz or more cores. Max out ram, for DDR2 systems this is usually 4GB - 8GB. 2GB sticks can easily be had for under $10 a stick. Replace hard drive with SSD. Especially if it'…

The SSD as a boot drive will require an OS reinstall anyway though.

Re: Raspberry Pi releases an OS to breathe new life into old PCs

#72

Post by Narishma »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #35

This will be an interesting one to watch. There's a huge number of tiny Linux distros, but most of them couldn't compete with something released by the Raspberry Pi foundation. I think their biggest competitor is lubuntu. It's just a stripped down Ubuntu with the LXDE desktop. PIXEL also uses LXDE, and it looks like they've made a few design tweaks to the file manager. They both have Chromium as the default browser.…

> I'm wondering why they didn't just use lubuntu

Ubuntu is compiled for ARMv7, so it doesn't run on the RPi 1 and 0.

Re: Raspberry Pi releases an OS to breathe new life into old PCs

#73

Post by copperx »

yuhong wrote: post #71
Klinky wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should definitely be investigated before investing time getting an alternative OS up and running, along with the troubleshooting and training that comes with it. Upgrade to the latest CPU for the platform. For $25 you could gain an extra 1+ Ghz or more cores. Max out ram, for DDR2 systems this is usually 4GB - 8GB. 2GB sticks can easily be had for under $10 a stick. Replace hard drive with SSD. Especially if it'…

The SSD as a boot drive will require an OS reinstall anyway though.

Not really. I usually just image the boot drive.

Re: Raspberry Pi releases an OS to breathe new life into old PCs

#74

Post by abrowne »

Animats wrote: post #39
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #25

Lubuntu is worth mentioning as something that has been breathing life into old PCs while being noobie-friendly and with the access to current ubuntu software repos.

The next step above Lubuntu is Xubuntu. If it will fit, use it. I buy old ASUS subnotebooks on eBay for about $40 and put Xubuntu on them when I need a little machine for something. Drivers can be a problem. However, [UXL]buntu finally fixed the years-old bug where the cursor goes away on devices using built-in Intel graphics. (You could make the cursor come back with CTL-ALT-F1, CTL-ALT-F7, which switches the displa…

Ubuntu MATE is also a great option.

Re: Raspberry Pi releases an OS to breathe new life into old PCs

#75

Post by jlgaddis »

Klinky wrote: post #67
olegkikin wrote: post #36

SSDs are what breathe new life into old PCs. And they are quite cheap. My wife's laptop turned from extremely annoying to decent, almost pleasant to use.

This should definitely be investigated before investing time getting an alternative OS up and running, along with the troubleshooting and training that comes with it. Upgrade to the latest CPU for the platform. For $25 you could gain an extra 1+ Ghz or more cores. Max out ram, for DDR2 systems this is usually 4GB - 8GB. 2GB sticks can easily be had for under $10 a stick. Replace hard drive with SSD. Especially if it'…

There are a lot of very respectable laptops available (off-lease and such) for relatively cheap.

I picked up a ThinkPad T420 a few months ago on eBay for, IIRC, $180. For $250 all in, I had a nice i5 laptop w/ 16 GB of RAM and a 120 GB SSD. I didn't need it and don't really use it for anything but it's great when I need a spare or somebody else wants to use it. It could easily serve as a great primary machine for an average user (i.e. e-mail and Facebook / web browsing), though.

Re: Raspberry Pi releases an OS to breathe new life into old PCs

#76

Post by jlgaddis »

Animats wrote: post #39
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #25

Lubuntu is worth mentioning as something that has been breathing life into old PCs while being noobie-friendly and with the access to current ubuntu software repos.

The next step above Lubuntu is Xubuntu. If it will fit, use it. I buy old ASUS subnotebooks on eBay for about $40 and put Xubuntu on them when I need a little machine for something. Drivers can be a problem. However, [UXL]buntu finally fixed the years-old bug where the cursor goes away on devices using built-in Intel graphics. (You could make the cursor come back with CTL-ALT-F1, CTL-ALT-F7, which switches the displa…

It's not just for old machines either!

I've used XFCE for years and prefer it, even on my well-equipped machines (4-core laptop w/ 32 GB RAM and a new 16-core workstation w/ 128 GB RAM).

It looks "nice enough" and is still flexible enough that I can customize it exactly how I want. I really liked Gnome back in the "good ol' days" (2.x) but I can't stand to use it anymore.

Re: Raspberry Pi releases an OS to breathe new life into old PCs

#77

Post by anonbanker »

yuhong wrote: post #71
Klinky wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should definitely be investigated before investing time getting an alternative OS up and running, along with the troubleshooting and training that comes with it. Upgrade to the latest CPU for the platform. For $25 you could gain an extra 1+ Ghz or more cores. Max out ram, for DDR2 systems this is usually 4GB - 8GB. 2GB sticks can easily be had for under $10 a stick. Replace hard drive with SSD. Especially if it'…

The SSD as a boot drive will require an OS reinstall anyway though.

dd if=/dev/originaldevice of=/dev/newdevice

Unless the system is too old to contain new drivers, or you're switching from x86 to arm, you shouldn't have a problem. I've done this multiple times, including a gradual upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04 to 16.04.

Re: Raspberry Pi releases an OS to breathe new life into old PCs

#78

Post by illys »

bobajeff wrote: post #69
olegkikin wrote: post #36

SSDs are what breathe new life into old PCs. And they are quite cheap. My wife's laptop turned from extremely annoying to decent, almost pleasant to use.

That takes care of performance but not security.

I am actually more worried about security with modern Intel processors than with old ones. Intel Management Engine makes me very uncomfortable in trusting my machine.

Re: Raspberry Pi releases an OS to breathe new life into old PCs

#79

Post by dispose13432 »

jlgaddis wrote: post #76
Animats wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next step above Lubuntu is Xubuntu. If it will fit, use it. I buy old ASUS subnotebooks on eBay for about $40 and put Xubuntu on them when I need a little machine for something. Drivers can be a problem. However, [UXL]buntu finally fixed the years-old bug where the cursor goes away on devices using built-in Intel graphics. (You could make the cursor come back with CTL-ALT-F1, CTL-ALT-F7, which switches the displa…

It's not just for old machines either! I've used XFCE for years and prefer it, even on my well-equipped machines (4-core laptop w/ 32 GB RAM and a new 16-core workstation w/ 128 GB RAM). It looks "nice enough" and is still flexible enough that I can customize it exactly how I want. I really liked Gnome back in the "good ol' days" (2.x) but I can't stand to use it anymore.

MATE?

Re: Raspberry Pi releases an OS to breathe new life into old PCs

#80

Post by ZenoArrow »

dispose13432 wrote: post #47
johansch wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Yeah; I meant Broadcom, not Qualcomm.) No specific allegations. I just find it odd that Broadcom apparently still sell these chips at a low price only (?) to the RasPi foundation - just because of a personal relationship - someone who worked at Broadcom then created the RasPi foundation. What does Broadcom get out of this exclusive relationship? (Is it still exclusive?) It just smelled odd when I first heard about t…

Well, what _do_ you think Broadcom gets out of this? And more importantly, what do I (as a RPi user) lose out?

>"And more importantly, what do I (as a RPi user) lose out?"

If nothing else, you miss out from the benefits of stronger competition. The Odroid-W is one example of a product that appeared to be cancelled because of the Raspberry Pi Foundation's close ties with Broadcom:

https://liliputing.com/2014/08/hardkernels-raspberry-pi-like...

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