Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

[Pentium4]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

Sorry, did not log on for a LONG time. I went with Zorin OS Lite. Nice and clean layout and pretty quick actually. Deployed the computer the weekend before Christmas. It's been running 24/7 since and doing great! Playing 480p videos, the 1.5GHz P4 averages about 55% usage. Not bad

[lti]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

I remembered this morning that Tiny Core has S3 Chrome and SiS video drivers. I think there are some other drivers as well, but there is no S3 Savage/Twister driver for that old laptop.

I'm wrong again. There is no SiS video driver listed in the app browser.

In Lubuntu, installing build-essentials allowed the guest additions to install. With guest additions, scrolling now works properly. There is still a really annoying fault with the file manager. If I click on any program (causing a confirmation dialog to appear), then clicking on any button in that dialog box causes drag-to-select mode to start with the blue selection box between the executable icon and the current position of the cursor.

I think that's enough (slightly) off-topic stuff from me. I'll let Pentium4 respond again once he gets Linux running on that computer.

[lti]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

In Tiny Core, the free -m command shows 147MB of RAM being used, while Conky shows 61MB used. I'll have to look at the Conky configuration.

[lti]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

I remembered this morning that Tiny Core has S3 Chrome and SiS video drivers. I think there are some other drivers as well, but there is no S3 Savage/Twister driver for that old laptop.

One area where Windows XP absolutely outshines Linux is wifi driver support. The driver for RT25xx wifi is absolutely terrible. With the same card, same machine and same settings, the XP driver ran for 4+ years without any drops, disconnects and slowness.

Once I moved to Linux with same machine and same wifi card, the RT25xx wifi driver would drop, disconnect and get less than 100kb/s throughput when it worked. I tried many versions of the kernel and many distributions and just came to the conclusion that whoever supported the RT25xx driver stop caring back in 2009.

Linksys wifi cards used a lot of RT25xx chipsets. Not working with the #1 marketshare wifi adapter is an epic fail.

I probably spent 2 weeks trying to get the driver to work, including look at the source code, but just gave up and used a different solution.

That particular adapter was a Netgear WNA1100, which uses the Atheros AR9271 chip. That adapter may be defective, and the ath9k driver in Puppy and Tiny Core can somehow tolerate it while the Windows and Lubuntu drivers can't.

Yes, well know potential problem.

http://puppylinux.com/technical/root.htm

I knew about Spot, but I didn't know about Fido.

edit: Some the recently disclosed Linux vulnerabilities like Turla don't require root access to do some damage. This is why I limit myself to running actively maintained distributions where security updates are available usually within 24 hours.

http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/81460.html

That's why I was considering Debian. I've also been thinking about trying Lubuntu on that old laptop I mentioned above. I have 1GB of PC133 RAM, but I want to limit the RAM to 512MB so I can see how it would perform on a computer that only supports 512MB of RAM.

Did you try installing it?

sudo apt-get install build-essential

I thought it would already be installed. I'll try it later.

[goontron]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

Tinycore!

[cheapie]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

I can't install VirtualBox guest additions because make is missing.

Did you try installing it?

sudo apt-get install build-essential

[retiredcaps]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

BTW, running a lightweight OS is not just for older computers. I have a duo core and a quad core at home, but they both run Lubuntu with 2GB DRAM. The linux kernel even sets my duo core at 1000Mhz to save power and I don't notice any slowdowns or delays.

I have extra DRAM so they can both go to 4GB, but I find that my everday usage barely goes over 1.5GB with multiple browser windows, vlc watching youtube videos, terminal window, etc.

With lightweight DRAM applications, almost everything sits in Linux's disk cache so I rarely need to access my old 2005 ish mechanical disk drives.

Using hibernate also helps reduce the boot time. On my quad core, I can power on and get to a working desktop in about 15 seconds. Obviously a SSD will help any OS boot quicker, but I learned to do something else for about 20 to 30 seconds while my computer is coming out of hibernate.

[retiredcaps]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

It wouldn't install (probably due to the lack of RAM), and I would randomly get disconnected from the wireless network (which also happens with the USB wireless network adapter I was using in Windows XP, but not in Puppy or Tiny Core).

One area where Windows XP absolutely outshines Linux is wifi driver support. The driver for RT25xx wifi is absolutely terrible. With the same card, same machine and same settings, the XP driver ran for 4+ years without any drops, disconnects and slowness.

Once I moved to Linux with same machine and same wifi card, the RT25xx wifi driver would drop, disconnect and get less than 100kb/s throughput when it worked. I tried many versions of the kernel and many distributions and just came to the conclusion that whoever supported the RT25xx driver stop caring back in 2009.

Linksys wifi cards used a lot of RT25xx chipsets. Not working with the #1 marketshare wifi adapter is an epic fail.

I probably spent 2 weeks trying to get the driver to work, including look at the source code, but just gave up and used a different solution.

The Lubuntu 14.04 virtual machine has some serious issues.

I don't use VMs so it is quite possible Lubuntu 14.04 has problems. I'm old school and will haul out a real P4.

Linux Mint might be the next distribution to test, but I've heard that its RAM usage is pretty high

Yes, DRAM usage will be significantly higher with the Mint distributions. They add a lot of software to make the Linux desktop more friendly to newbies at the expense of DRAM. Running Mint on a 512MB may result in a lot of disk swapping. For people with at least 1GB, Mint should provide a good experience.

One thing I did notice about Mint is that when clicking on the start menu, the menus don't appear as fast as Lubuntu. There is a noticeable delay so slower P4s may not do as well either?

If anyone tries Puppy Linux, be aware that you are logged in as root by default. I don't know if there is any way to change that.

Yes, well know potential problem.

http://puppylinux.com/technical/root.htm

edit: Some the recently disclosed Linux vulnerabilities like Turla don't require root access to do some damage. This is why I limit myself to running actively maintained distributions where security updates are available usually within 24 hours.

http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/81460.html

[lti]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

I didn't get a chance to post when this thread was active, so I'll revive it now.

I have tried a lot of light weight OS like Puppy, Damn Small Linux, Tiny Core, Slitaz, etc.

While they work on older machines, the biggest problem with the above mentioned OS is that they don't get updated very often with security patches or the latest applications.

The developers for the above are very small teams (sometimes one person) and understandably, they have a job, life, etc so maintenance of their distributions is a best effort basis.

I noticed that. That was why I was asking about lightweight distributions. I've had Tiny Core installed on an old computer for a while, and I didn't like the poor video performance (no driver for that computer's video hardware) and lack of software and updates. It doesn't use a lot of RAM, so it would probably run well on a computer with a GPU from Intel, AMD, or Nvidia.

I use "free -m" to show the DRAM usage. By default, linux uses any free memory has a disk cache. So the 350MB DRAM you saw is probably 150MB DRAM for Lubuntu and close to 200MB DRAM disk cached information/files. Linux automatically will purge stuff from the disk cache as needed.

See

http://www.linuxatemyram.com/

I thought the extra RAM might be used for a disk cache. The Lubuntu virtual machine I have uses 118MB of RAM with no programs running, and the rest is the cache. Puppy Linux uses 95MB, but the cache and buffers are only an extra 13MB (108MB total).

This is what I have installed Puppy and Tiny Core on:
AMD Athlon XP-M 1400+
512MB PC133 RAM (16MB used for video, 496MB available to the OS)
VIA KN133 chipset (VT8231 southbridge, S3 Twister K graphics)

I tried Lubuntu 12.04 on that computer (before 14.04 was released), and it ran okay. It wouldn't install (probably due to the lack of RAM), and I would randomly get disconnected from the wireless network (which also happens with the USB wireless network adapter I was using in Windows XP, but not in Puppy or Tiny Core).

The Lubuntu 14.04 virtual machine has some serious issues. Pages only scroll up most of the time when I try to use the scroll wheel on the mouse. Also, there are some missing files. I can't install VirtualBox guest additions because make is missing. That might be caused by me using the alternate installer to install 14.04 over 12.04 without formatting.

Linux Mint might be the next distribution to test, but I've heard that its RAM usage is pretty high. Also, I really don't like downloading large files.

If anyone tries Puppy Linux, be aware that you are logged in as root by default. I don't know if there is any way to change that.

[Wester547]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

Okay, recapped the PSU. Once all the hardware is "fresh" I'll get to start experimenting The video card has some 100uF 16V Evercon caps to replace too but that shouldn't take too long.

Delta, always making nice equipment. This thing got a lot of use. Either Delta's designs really are incredible, or Ltec has slipped since the early 2000's. Every single Ltec LZG was in spec....very well in spec. The 1500uF 10V and 470uF 10V Ltec LZG on the 5VSB read 1488uF 0.06Ω, and 469uF 0.15Ω respectively. The others were in 3% as well. All the little Taicon caps were fine too, but ESR was starting to rise. I also saw a value I've never seen before in a PSU, 56uF 35V LZG

I recollect you saying that you serviced a Dell that had 29,000 hours of use (hard drive failure) 2.5 years ago and all the LTEC LZG (with 2007 date codes?) in the unit were fine (though, in saying that, even the KZJs on that motherboard looked okay from what I could see), and that was a Delta/Newton with a fan at the intake (back) so not the best design. Actually, according to the datasheet, a 10x20 or 10x23 1500uF 10V LZG is supposed to have an ESR reading of 0.042 ohms and a 8x11.5 470uF 10V LZG 0.13 ohms. BUT, those are still impressive and totally understandable readings for LTECs as it is natural for ESR to rise slightly over time even for good brands, even on the shelf...

How many hours did your machine have? Even the LTEC TK were fine (if present)? I just think LTEC LZG is probably LTEC's best series but even they do not have a good track record overall, being made by LTEC... also, it appears that your unit linear regulates +3.3V (DC-DC conversion), and linear regulation means extremely clean power on the +3.3V rail (very low ripple).

[Pentium4]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

Okay, recapped the PSU. Once all the hardware is "fresh" I'll get to start experimenting The video card has some 100uF 16V Evercon caps to replace too but that shouldn't take too long.

Delta, always making nice equipment. This thing got a lot of use. Either Delta's designs really are incredible, or Ltec has slipped since the early 2000's. Every single Ltec LZG was in spec....very well in spec. The 1500uF 10V and 470uF 10V Ltec LZG on the 5VSB read 1488uF 0.06Ω, and 469uF 0.15Ω respectively. The others were in 3% as well. All the little Taicon caps were fine too, but ESR was starting to rise. I also saw a value I've never seen before in a PSU, 56uF 35V LZG

[retiredcaps]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

PS. I don't have time today, but I will try to get some screenshots showing the 50MB DRAM usage on bootup as proof.

Screenshots of Debian 7.7 + xorg + lxde.

One shows 51MB DRAM usage after bootup. 51 used + 435 free = 486 MB DRAM. This machine has 512MB DRAM, but uses some memory for shared memory + video.

The other shows the latest version of chrome 39.0.2171.71 + adobe flash 15.0.0.239 enabled.

PS. Note lxterminal consumes about 9 to 10MB when open, so I'm assuming real DRAM usage after bootup is around 40MB.

[goontron]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

and here i use SUSE and Slackware!

[c_hegge]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

Sounds like the oxide layer is just about gone. It's a pretty common failure mode it seems. I've found that with some Teapos I pulled from an FSP recently. All of the 4700uF caps tested at around 6600uF.

[retiredcaps]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

That's very characteristic of failed HMs, HNs, and HZs. But the fact that they read so high in terms of capacitance and so low in terms of ESR very likely means they developed high internal leakage which means they were fooling the ESR/capacitance meter.

I desoldered 8 Nichicon HM(M)2200uF 6.3V H0226 (26th week 2002) off a Dell motherboard about 3 weeks ago. None of the 8 were bulged and I thought I had some working caps.

I don't have an ESR meter, but every capacitor measured significantly higher than 2200uF. 2 of them were more than 10000uF. Sure enough, I applied voltage to those 2 and they were leaky. The other 6 held their voltage a little bit longer, but all 8 will probably end up in the junk pile.

[retiredcaps]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

my problem is that i can't install Ubuntu restricted-extras,that contains the flash player and other good stuff,i tried to install flash player by itself but no avail,
it seems to me one has to pay flash player to be installed in Debian wheezy.

Generally Ubuntu 14.04 LTS uses the "unstable" Debian branch (Sid) so it is no surprise that the Ubuntu restricted-extras don't work with Debian stable (Wheezy).

I'm going to upgrade as you say and hope i can install flash player, if not i'll keep xubuntu 14.04, that's not a bad distro and has everything you need .
but Debian is lighter.

I tried Xubuntu and I like XCFE, but I settled on LXDE just to save a few more MB of DRAM.

If you list your services via

sudo service --status-all

you can remove alot of stuff that probably isn't too important. For example, I remove

sudo apt-get purge ppp bluez whoopsie apport modemmanager

and a few more that I can't remember right now. Removing those daemons reduces DRAM up to 25 to 50MB.

Debian, has been generally known not to be newbie user friendly and Ubuntu filled that void and thus its rise to popularity for a number of years. Linux Mint refines Ubuntu even more by adding codecs, etc and thus is popular.

Thus, I started with the ?buntus and then moved onto Debian as I got more expertise. I tried Arch via Manjaro and Bridge, but for my purposes, I prefer a stable LTS distro versus a rolling distro.

That is the good thing about having so many choices in Linux distros. For the newbie, however, the choices can be overwhelming.

[stj]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

you wont get 1-2gig in pc133, even 512meg sticks are like fucking unicorn-horns both in availability and price.

[goontron]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

should have read your system specs, i have put LMDE MATE on about 100 of those, with the ram bumped to 1 to 2gb dependant on the passmark score (yours would be 2gb), nice and fast.

[Wester547]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

Their ESR ranged from 0.08-0.12 but all of them read over 6,000uF ranging from 6,076uF-6676uF. Seems typical of suspect HM caps.

That's very characteristic of failed HMs, HNs, and HZs. But the fact that they read so high in terms of capacitance and so low in terms of ESR very likely means they developed high internal leakage which means they were fooling the ESR/capacitance meter. They were likely more out of spec than that.

But the VRM high caps were fine, even being so close to the heat sink. The 1000uF caps were within 5% spec on capacitance and the 1800uF was within 15% spec on capacitance.

That is because the higher voltage (+12V) of the VRM input preserves the oxide layer (keeps it thicker) much faster than the lower voltage of the VRM output (1.7V for that Pentium 4 1.5 GHz Willamette?). That is another reason why crap brands that don't do well on motherboards hold up alright in well cooled and ventilated power supplies. Compare the very low voltage of the VRM output to the higher voltages found in PSUs (+3.3V, +5V, +12V, etc), and it makes sense. That being said, the capacitors in the VRM input do handle ripple directly from the power supply (either the +5V or +12V rail), so it doesn't hurt to make sure they're of decent quality.

Replaced 9/12 with polymers. It looks good now Interesting, the board was made by Foxconn but the VRM daughterboard was made by Delta. Pretty cool. PSU was made by Delta, more pics to come.

I believe those older boards were designed by Foxconn but that they were actually manufactured by Flextronics for the most part. To the best of my knowledge, Foxconn doesn't actually manufacture all their motherboards. They are a vast original design manufacturer, and despite the fact that they do own certain motherboard assets, they themselves don't quite have the capacity to fulfill and manufacture the huge volume that Dell, Gateway, Intel, etc, often mandated, so they used other manufactures such as Flextronics, Celestica, and Winstron (sometimes even Pegatron?) to manufacture their motherboards (particularly the Xbox 360 motherboards, but Foxconn does have the say on the final design and component assembly). The motherboards you see from Foxconn, sold at retail and by their lonesome, on the other hand, are manufactured by Foxconn themselves. I say these are probably Flextronics boards because they are littered with 85*C capacitors most of the time (the original Xbox motherboard also had a very similar design and those boards were also manufactured by Flextronics). Your board has a daughterboard made by Delta so the manufacture of this one might (emphasize the might) actually be Delta, though, given the lack of 85*C capacitors (if I'm not mistaken).

I also got rid of the shitty bubble-gum thermal paste on the CPU and NB heatsink.

If they didn't use that, they would use very appalling thermal tape between the CPU's heatspreader and heatsink that would not be very good at transferring heat.

[Pentium4]

Re: Need light Linux OS for OLD computer

Yeah they're only 330uF. I really wanted to use 820uF 2.5V Fujitsu but the lead spacing was a little much for them, so I used those. I know the capacitance is a lot lower than originally, but I've seen 4 or 5 470uF polymers be used to filter the VRM low for Pentium D's. This one has a pretty low TDP for a Pentium 4