Scheduled Maintenance: We are aware of an issue with Google, AOL, and Yahoo services as email providers which are blocking new registrations. We are trying to fix the issue and we have several internal and external support tickets in process to resolve the issue. Please see: viewtopic.php?t=158230

 

 

 

Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

Off-Topic discussions about science, technology, and non Debian specific topics.
Message
Author
Funkygoby
Posts: 68
Joined: 2009-08-13 09:25

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#16 Post by Funkygoby »

It was the case for the X61 too. 8GB max.
For me 4GB is really more than enough. 2GB was ok until I started using VMs.
I will need a new Motherboard/CPU/GPU before I need 8GB ram

arzgi
Posts: 1183
Joined: 2008-02-21 17:03
Location: Finland
Been thanked: 31 times

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#17 Post by arzgi »

Lysander wrote:
You and I are running extremely similar hardware. I am using the N110: the NC10's sister computer. It's almost exactly the same as yours. I use it for web browsing, YouTube, and the odd bit of academic research. I use qpdfview for annotating PDFs and Abiword instead of LibreOffice Writer - both are low resource.

For surfing the web, you may want to try Qupzilla instead of Firefox. It's much lighter and renders most webpages well, unless they're quite heavy [and I don't tend to stay on such sites anyway - I care about content rather than design].
Thanks for the hint! Net search for 'light browser linux' gives tons of options. Midori was my favorite long time, but now it renders wrong too many pages I often use. Qupzilla seems promising.

I can verify also that libreoffice is a bit too much for this 'beast', so Gnumeric and Abiword installed. For PDFs I use Atril.

Quite often I design things using cad, low resources and small screen are not best combination, so quite soon I'll boot the pc, debian 9.4 and xfce also there, naturally.

User avatar
Lysander
Posts: 643
Joined: 2017-02-23 10:07
Location: London
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#18 Post by Lysander »

arzgi wrote:
Lysander wrote:
You and I are running extremely similar hardware. I am using the N110: the NC10's sister computer. It's almost exactly the same as yours. I use it for web browsing, YouTube, and the odd bit of academic research. I use qpdfview for annotating PDFs and Abiword instead of LibreOffice Writer - both are low resource.

For surfing the web, you may want to try Qupzilla instead of Firefox. It's much lighter and renders most webpages well, unless they're quite heavy [and I don't tend to stay on such sites anyway - I care about content rather than design].
Thanks for the hint! Net search for 'light browser linux' gives tons of options. Midori was my favorite long time, but now it renders wrong too many pages I often use. Qupzilla seems promising.

I can verify also that libreoffice is a bit too much for this 'beast', so Gnumeric and Abiword installed. For PDFs I use Atril.

Quite often I design things using cad, low resources and small screen are not best combination, so quite soon I'll boot the pc, debian 9.4 and xfce also there, naturally.
Gnumeric is a good idea, thanks for that, I didn't think of it.

You may want to try qmplay2 to watch Youtube videos on your NC10. This is a dedicated client which dispenses with the need to watch videos in your browser. This is not in the main repos but Steve added it to his:

https://software.opensuse.org/download. ... ge=qmplay2

Original thread:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=127574
Last edited by Lysander on 2018-04-27 12:12, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
Hallvor
Global Moderator
Global Moderator
Posts: 2020
Joined: 2009-04-16 18:35
Location: Kristiansand, Norway
Has thanked: 138 times
Been thanked: 204 times

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#19 Post by Hallvor »

I own an ASUS Eee PC R101D - 10.1" - Atom N455 - 1 GB RAM - 320 GB HDD, running Debian Stretch and Trinity Desktop Environment. It was first installed with Debian Wheezy (testing) and LXDE a little more than five years ago.
[HowTo] Install and configure Debian bookworm
Debian 12 | KDE Plasma | ThinkPad T440s | 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-4600U CPU @ 2.10GHz | 12 GiB RAM | Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 4400 | 1 TB SSD

User avatar
oswaldkelso
df -h | grep > 20TiB
df -h | grep > 20TiB
Posts: 1486
Joined: 2005-07-26 23:20
Location: UK
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 55 times

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#20 Post by oswaldkelso »

My older stuff I actually use

Dell Inspiron 6400 core2 T5600 1833MHz 1GB ram 2006 running Hyperbola (TBD = openbox, tint2, fittstool)
Lenovo X60T L2500 1833MHz 2GB ram 2006 running EXE Gnu/Linux Trinity and linux-libre
Samsung NC10 1.6 2GB ram 2008 running Dragora, windowlab as the default desktop
Dell Inspiron 530 Intel Core2 Duo E6550 3GB 2007 ram. Saved from the scrap heap about 5 years ago. My main machine running Dragora (TBD = openbox, tint2, fittstool)

I have a lot of other light WMs installed with the ones I sometimes boot in to when I'm bored being:
echinus, euclid-wm, evilwm, frankenwm, fvwm, goowmwm, icewm, notion, nwm, pwm, ratpoison, snapwm, wind, windowlab, and wmaker. Very little lag in any of them. Even the nc10 starts libre office fine, about 9 seconds cold and 3 subsequently. The only time I notice any sort of lag is browsing. Basically shitty js sites. A vast performance improvement is gained by running Ublock origin, and cookie exterminator. I use Seamonkey as my big browser.

edit: Distros n dates
Free Software Matters
Ash init durbatulûk, ash init gimbatul,
Ash init thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
My oldest used PC: 1999 imac 333Mhz 256MB PPC abandoned by Debian

User avatar
debiman
Posts: 3063
Joined: 2013-03-12 07:18

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#21 Post by debiman »

my server is a 10 year old laptop running debian, yay! put a 1TB drive into it so it can continue to serve files for a long while yet.
my desktop is NOT a laptop, and I had to replace the mobo 2 years back, and the processor and RAM with it (which makes it fairly new in my book), but the hard drives are fiendishly old. and the case... let's not talk about its ugliness, it's hidden under the table.

arzgi
Posts: 1183
Joined: 2008-02-21 17:03
Location: Finland
Been thanked: 31 times

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#22 Post by arzgi »

Lysander wrote:

You may want to try qmplay2 to watch Youtube videos on your NC10. This is a dedicated client which dispenses with the need to watch videos in your browser. This is not in the main repos but Steve added it to his:

https://software.opensuse.org/download. ... ge=qmplay2

Original thread:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=127574
Last time I was about 2 years ago so bored, that could not think anything else to do, so I opened youtube app in my phone :shock:

But I must admit there are also very useful youtube videos, for example one solved the white sceeen problem of this NC10, and another howto reset page counter of my brother printer.

User avatar
acewiza
Posts: 357
Joined: 2013-05-28 12:38
Location: Out West

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#23 Post by acewiza »

An 8-year-old HP DV7 has been the Snort machine, monitoring my home LAN 100Mb cable modem link 24/7 for the past 3 years. It's on it's 3rd battery and will run on the power supply alone when that gives up the ghost. Should be interesting to see how long it will last in this role, but I wouldn't try using it for anything else at this point.
Nobody would ever ask questions If everyone possessed encyclopedic knowledge of the man pages.

Mikelos
Posts: 9
Joined: 2018-02-28 13:57

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#24 Post by Mikelos »

Debian Stretch with Xfce on Lenovo ThinkPad X200s. This is just marvelous. I bought a new 9-cell battery for this laptop and now it takes pretty long time to discharge. I was inspired by Dr. Richard Stallman. He uses a different model of ThinkPad, but also the old one.

emariz
Posts: 2901
Joined: 2008-10-17 07:59

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#25 Post by emariz »

My work terminal is a 2011 Sony Vaio with a Sandy Bridge i3 processor. It however was not 'resurrected' but only maintained by Debian, for it has always been running Debian since day one.

I added some RAM, replaced the battery last year and moved from a hard drive to an SSD, but the operating system has always been Debian (starting with Squeeze, which was used for as long as I could, and then Testing.) It runs so well that I have been constantly delaying the purchase of a new laptop. Hell!, I got a 2017 ThinkPad earlier this year and I have yet to migrate. This Vaio with Debian is awesome; no need to change.

In the past couple of years, some co-workers have expressed their interest in buying my laptop because they were surprised how long it has worked flawlessly. They have no idea what Linux is, but they do love the idea of never requiring a service or facing a system halt, and so on.

kevinthefixer
Posts: 190
Joined: 2018-05-05 22:30

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#26 Post by kevinthefixer »

It was only a few years ago, maybe 5, that I retired my HP laptop from 1998. Can't remember the model now, I call it "the paver" because when closed it strongly resembles a gray cinderblock. About the same weight too. It had (still does, it's out in the storage shed somewhere) Puppy Linux on it, just about the only OS that ever made it useful. It lacks the horsepower to run Windows 98 well.

I still have a couple Atom-powered netbooks too, both shipped with Win7Starter (what a joke! Microsoft added code to the OS to prevent users changing the desktop wallpaper, just to encourage them to pony up for the upgrade). Both are currently running Debian Stretch with the Raspberry Pi desktop, which makes them useful computers, even more so than Puppy Linux. The RPi Foundation's devs took LXDE and modified it to run on the lightest hardware possible, even a Raspberry Pi. Then they ported it back to x86 architecture (RPi is ARMhf), and if you have an underpowered system it's the distro I recommend. After all it costs nothing to try it (or use it), it can even be run as live boot with persistence. You can do that with Puppy Linux also, IMHO Debian with RPi is better.

And my Nu2u toy is a Dell Latitude E4300, ca. 2010, core2duo @ 2.6GHz, 4GB RAM and Stretch-XFCE on a 240GB SSD. I prefer lighter DEs anyway and I like the XFCE utilities and such. But I've never before owned a full computer that will go from power-off to working desktop in under 20 seconds, only a Chromebook; this one will. It loads a full browser (Seamonkey) in roughly a second and a half also. It will edit audio with an editor designed to run on Win98, CoolEdit2000, under WINE. It will watch OTA TV with a Hauppage stick. It will do anything my big desktops will do except store terabytes of data, and I don't need all the data I've ever collected in my portables; most of it can stay at home until I need it. At this point I have roughly US$250 invested; for that money you can buy a Chromebook new. Sorry but I'm not impressed with the CBs, although now they can run Android apps, and I just read a CNET article that says they will soon be able to run Linux distros, including Debian. So I may dust mine off yet.

hairyelbows
Posts: 2
Joined: 2018-07-18 08:12

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#27 Post by hairyelbows »

i use debian testing
many laptops, many for friends. nine I think
a 7 year old dell
a asus
two more which I cannot remember
many with nvidia which only works with 4.9 kernel or earlier.
two asus i5
a asus i7 converted to a 7inch by 9 inch by 2 inch desktop unit
Most of these were used by windows users who felt compelled to upgrade and cost me from $35 to $200.
the i7 was $90 because of a broken power socket which cost me $1
i put ssd in most
most of these are the homes media centre. the i3 with intel graphics plays blu-ray, anything less does not
all of them are used for internet.

User avatar
esp7
Posts: 177
Joined: 2013-06-23 20:31
Has thanked: 2 times
Been thanked: 4 times

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#28 Post by esp7 »

Hallvor wrote:I own an ASUS Eee PC R101D - 10.1" - Atom N455 - 1 GB RAM - 320 GB HDD, running Debian Stretch and Trinity Desktop Environment. It was first installed with Debian Wheezy (testing) and LXDE a little more than five years ago.
I have as well one, eeepc 1000HE. I am working a lot in shitty remote areas and its my number 1 companion running on debian stable. But trust me, install an SSD and upgrade RAM to 2GB (should be the maximum). Your experience will be way more nice. The bottleneck however is the shitty atom cpu, but the machine itself is very solid and robust. Was indeed a good investment 6 years ago :D
ThinkPad X220: i5-2520M CPU 2.5GHz - 8GB RAM 1333 MHz - SSD 860 EVO 250GB - Debian - ME_cleaned
ThinkPad X230: i5-3320M CPU 3.3GHz - 8GB RAM 1600 MHz - SSD 860 EVO 500GB - Debian - ME_cleaned

Peppe
Posts: 177
Joined: 2007-01-01 13:16
Location: Sweden , Stockholm

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#29 Post by Peppe »

Using a Thinkpad X220 as my main laptop - Debian Stretch with lxde and running with a 256gb ssd and 6gb ram.
Got the laptop last year on a very neat price, and I like the black finish and high quality build on the laptop.


If anyone want to run Debian on a laptop, I highly recommend Thinkpad and replacing the harddrive to a an ssd.
Simply love that you don't have to buy the latest to have a snappy fast laptop.
Running Debian Squeeze with xfce4 on a Fujitsu P7120 and a Asus ITX HTPC with Debian Squeeze with xfce4 . Debian just keeps getting better and better .

User avatar
Head_on_a_Stick
Posts: 14114
Joined: 2014-06-01 17:46
Location: London, England
Has thanked: 81 times
Been thanked: 132 times

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#30 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

This X201 won't run Win10, that's for sure :mrgreen:

I prefer Alpine Linux because the musl libc base is noticeably lighter than the bloated GNU libc variant (as used by Debian) on this old dinosaur and OpenBSD's libc seems to work even better again.
deadbang

kevinthefixer
Posts: 190
Joined: 2018-05-05 22:30

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#31 Post by kevinthefixer »

Haven't heard of Alpine before. Unfortunately I don't have time to play right now.

User avatar
Head_on_a_Stick
Posts: 14114
Joined: 2014-06-01 17:46
Location: London, England
Has thanked: 81 times
Been thanked: 132 times

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#32 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

If you do find the time I have a webpage with some notes on using Alpine Linux for the desktop:

https://head-on-a-stick.github.io/

It really is Linux Done Right:)
deadbang

kevinthefixer
Posts: 190
Joined: 2018-05-05 22:30

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#33 Post by kevinthefixer »

Bookmarked for its time. Right now I'm having too much fun with Stretch (and getting some work done too). Storm last week took out my main desktop, not just the power supply unfortunately although it tested bad, new one tests good but computer is still completely unresponsive. Lot of work to set up a mainframe with all the multimedia, samba and all, and as I'm sure you're well aware, most of the documentation is woefully out of date. Info can be found but it's not as simple as looking in the wiki. Thanks for the info!

n_hologram
Posts: 459
Joined: 2013-06-16 00:10

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#34 Post by n_hologram »

I have a toy project based on minimal devuan, but I'm sure much of it would translate to debian minimal, too. It started rough but is mostly stable now. It's really just a bunch of under-the-hood tweaks to a minimal base, and is meant to be used with a simple window manager, like dwm or the boxes. The different configs and scripts accomplish the same tasks as other managers (wifi, power, etc) without the overhead of a GUI and with more flexibility for automation and customization.
https://github.com/souperdoupe/crunkbong
Head_on_a_Stick wrote:the musl libc base is noticeably lighter than the bloated GNU libc variant (as used by Debian)
noob question, but how are you measuring this?
bester69 wrote:There is nothing to install in linux, from time to time i go to google searching for something fresh to install in linux, but, there is nothing
the crunkbong project: scripts, operating system, the list goes on...

User avatar
Head_on_a_Stick
Posts: 14114
Joined: 2014-06-01 17:46
Location: London, England
Has thanked: 81 times
Been thanked: 132 times

Re: Who is using old laptops, thanks to linux?

#35 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

I love that project, it is awesome :cool:
n_hologram wrote:
Head_on_a_Stick wrote:the musl libc base is noticeably lighter than the bloated GNU libc variant (as used by Debian)
noob question, but how are you measuring this?
I have a readout of the load average of the system over the last minute displaying in the status bar of my desktop:

Code: Select all

while sleep 1;do xsetroot -name "$(uptime|awk '{gsub(",","");print $9}')  •  $(apm|awk '/Battery/{print $4}')  •  $(date +'%F  •  %T')";done&
^ That's for OpenBSD, for Linux I awk /proc/loadavg directly.

I also like to check memory usage at a bare desktop and I think Alpine Linux holds the record at the moment (~32MiB used in a 64-bit system with 4GiB total RAM) but OpenBSD only uses slightly more memory with a slightly lower load average so... *shrugs*

EDIT: I would claim a subjective benefit in respect of how snappy the system feels but this is probably just my imagination:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Benchmarks ftw! :mrgreen:
deadbang

Post Reply