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Linux on Older Hardware: The Complete Revival Guide

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Re: Linux on Older Hardware: The Complete Revival Guide

#41

Post by anthk »

type0 wrote: post #18
pmontra wrote: post #16

The post is missing a section about video cards. My old laptop from 2006 has an ATI x1600. I remember that I lost v sync with kernels past 3.something so I had to put the kernel on hold while the other packages updated around it. That was around 2012. Maybe the issue is fixed by now but old graphic cards can make an old PC run only as a headless server. It's been years since I booted it.

I have one Nvdia system where it's locked to their drivers in BIOS meaning I can't use AMD. Now Ubuntu has dropped support for old GeForce it's essentially a brick, thanks Nvidia and Canonical.

Nouveau might handle it.

Re: Linux on Older Hardware: The Complete Revival Guide

#42

Post by anthk »

pmontra wrote: post #16

The post is missing a section about video cards. My old laptop from 2006 has an ATI x1600. I remember that I lost v sync with kernels past 3.something so I had to put the kernel on hold while the other packages updated around it. That was around 2012. Maybe the issue is fixed by now but old graphic cards can make an old PC run only as a headless server. It's been years since I booted it.

Gallium will support r300 Radeon cards perfectly fine. If any I have this for some MESA and Intel video cards at ~/.drirc.

Adapt it for your radeon driver. The device driver might be "ati", "radeon" or "radeonsi".

Re: Linux on Older Hardware: The Complete Revival Guide

#43

Post by joe_mamba »

tviertamo wrote: post #38

Great post. I just revived an old PC as well that was gathering dust by installing Linux on it. Also upgraded the hardware from a i3-6100 using iGPU + 8GB RAM to: - i5-6600K (€20 used) - ASUS STRIX RX 480 8GB (€20 used) - 16GB DDR4 (€50 used) €90 all in for an incredible Linux machine that still runs games great at 1080p. Probably even that amount of RAM was overkill, but it's 3200Mhz instead of the old 2133Mhz.

>€90 all in for an incredible Linux machine that still runs games great at 1080p.

That's 90 for just the upgrade, not the whole PC, and that Rx480 won't run recent AAA games on 1080p, maybe just older games.

Re: Linux on Older Hardware: The Complete Revival Guide

#44

Post by anthk »

haunter wrote: post #7

And you can go even smaller with TinyCore Linux [0] or the xwoaf-rebuild [1] 0, http://www.tinycorelinux.net/ 1, https://web.archive.org/web/20240901115514/https://pupngo.dk... Honestly it comes down to what do you mean by using Linux. In 2026, or well at least since the mid 2010s, the biggest hurdle will be the web browser. Do you need that? If yes then you are already in the higher system requirement pool. If not t…

Otter Browser it's uber light, but for proper support you might need to build it against the qtwebkit/qtwebengine plugin (I can't remember, but one of the two engines was the most modern one). If not, I have Dillo+MPV+ytdlp/streamlink for video sites. More than often if you works. Also, I have gemini://gemi.dev (Dillo plugin) for the news sites tunneled over Gemini and some nice Gopher sites such gopher://magical.fish and gopher://sdf.org

Re: Linux on Older Hardware: The Complete Revival Guide

#45

Post by joe_mamba »

Borg3 wrote: post #32
NoboruWataya wrote: post #30

I had a similar experience trying to use an old laptop with 2GB of RAM. I was surprised how much it struggled with basic tasks. I remember my first computer with 32MB of RAM. Obviously we live in a different world now but still, it's not like I was trying to do anything more ambitious than what I used to do on that PC.

Its a pathetic world.. and sad.. I have currently 2 browsers open and my memory commit is 370MB.. If I hear that Win11 uses 3GB of RAM idling, I really get shivers... WTF?! How is that even possible? Bloat is astronomical and yet.. Most people just does NOT care...

> I have currently 2 browsers open and my memory commit is 370MB..

In what context?

>If I hear that Win11 uses 3GB of RAM idling

Modern Gnome and KDE distros with batteries included also idea at around 2GB RAM which is a useless metric anyway as Windows 11 also preloads frequently used takes and apps on boot.

Re: Linux on Older Hardware: The Complete Revival Guide

#47

Post by ValdikSS »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #30

I had a similar experience trying to use an old laptop with 2GB of RAM. I was surprised how much it struggled with basic tasks. I remember my first computer with 32MB of RAM. Obviously we live in a different world now but still, it's not like I was trying to do anything more ambitious than what I used to do on that PC.

See my comment above.

Re: Linux on Older Hardware: The Complete Revival Guide

#48

Post by johnvaluk »

pansa2 wrote: post #31

What’s a good small laptop that’ll run a recent Linux distro? I’d like to get one to have an ultra-portable machine for doing lightweight development work - I don’t need much more than a text editor and a C compiler. Would a second-hand 11” MacBook Air or 12” MacBook be a good choice?

The older Intel-based Dell XPS 13 machines have the same footprint as some 11 inch Chromebooks. Some models have thermal quirks that cause a shutdown, which is easily addressed by lowering the CPU frequency. Battery life is pretty good (but I replaced the batteries before I realized the CPU issue was the culprit).

Re: Linux on Older Hardware: The Complete Revival Guide

#49

Post by rmnclmnt »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #9

I use Pop_OS! on my old 2014 Macbook Pro (16 GB LPDDR3, i5-4278U with 4 cores). It runs superbly with Gnome3. Given that it is 12 years old now and the latest supported macOS version with opencore legacy patcher was stuttering and unusably slow, there is a second life now for the machine. I mostly use it as a headless home server, the built in battery serves as UPS, keyboard and trackpad make it easier to setup and d…

Same been running Debian 13 Gnome on MBP 2015 13’. Works great, in a triple boot setting using OCLP

For instance visio calls are unusable on Sequoia (OCLP) but rather smooth on Debian

Re: Linux on Older Hardware: The Complete Revival Guide

#50

Post by windowsrookie »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #28

The reason this advice is bizarre is that old memory isn't actually that dear. The machines that would have had 2GB of RAM or less would be from the Core 2 Duo era or so, taking DDR2 or DDR3, and typically supported 8-16GB. 8GB of DDR3 is currently in the ballpark of $10 and the machines that take it can be found by the pallet in the "free e-waste" pile, so who is going to suffer <2GB instead of 8GB over $10?

With laptops of this era you only have two sodimm slots and DDR2 4GB RAM modules were quite expensive when they were new. So even still today they are more expensive than you would think. I sold mine for $25/each a few weeks ago.

Also some laptops of this era didn't support more than 4-6GB of RAM in the firmware. I know there are several models of early intel macbooks that you can physically install 8GB of RAM but they will not recognize it.

On the other hand, I have a 2010 iMac with all 4 DDR3 sodimm slots full giving it 32GB of RAM. It was a "just for fun" project before the AI prices. Those era iMacs are fully upgradeable (CPU, RAM, and GPU). Swapped in an i7 CPU, AMD m4000 GPU, and an SSD. Runs linux mint great.

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