• Easy Distro for websurfing with old laptop. Possible?

    From Aragorn@21:1/5 to All on Sun Nov 10 18:26:19 2019
    On 10.11.2019 at 08:37, MaxTheFast scribbled:

    I've got an old acer tm notebook with 32bit 1.6 ghz centrino cpu and
    1.25gb ram (I guess DDR1 270mhz but I can be wrong). I still use it
    sometimes just as an "emergency" machine, eg. as an addition backup
    space for my storage, if I want to write something with old office
    within win xp environment and to run other old sw, but I can't use it
    to surf the web because I cannot install any AV else win xp would
    freeze. I could upgrade ram from 1.25gb to 2gb but I don't want to
    spend extra money for it and it would take me about 2h to change the
    256mb inner ram (the outside ram has aldready been upgraded).

    I've been using only this machine from its "creation" until about 1
    year ago and I solved the websurfing problem using PaleMoon browser
    and some plugin like adblock to avoid loading the "heavy" content of
    today web pages. It was a situation full of limitations because I
    couldn't open more than 2-3 pages at the same time -and dangerous too
    due to no AV and the obsolete OS- but it was good enough for me. Now
    I'd like to use sometimes this old acer to surf the web, so I'm
    thinking to get a linux OS to avoid AV and a web browser with right
    plugins able to load only the fundamental content of the web pages, I
    mean avoiding to load flash content and everything the would freeze
    the 1.25gb ram.

    My level of knowledge of linux is "dummy" because I've only been
    using ubuntu 18.04 from 1 year so I'm used to work almost with GUI
    and not with the terminal. Therefore my goal is to get a low ram
    usage linux distro that is "easy" too :)

    1.25 GiB is really tight, man. You could always try Damn Small Linux
    (DSL), but to the best of my knowledge, 2 GiB is about the lowest
    requirement for a 32-bit distro these days, and you'll probably be
    swapping like hell.


    --
    With respect,
    = Aragorn =

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Roger Blake@21:1/5 to Aragorn on Sun Nov 10 18:16:55 2019
    On 2019-11-10, Aragorn <thorongil@telenet.be> wrote:
    1.25 GiB is really tight, man. You could always try Damn Small Linux
    (DSL), but to the best of my knowledge, 2 GiB is about the lowest
    requirement for a 32-bit distro these days, and you'll probably be
    swapping like hell.

    Yes, things will go much better with 2GB. I'm running 32-bit Lubuntu
    18.04 on an old Acer Centrino-based laptop upgraded to 2GB memory and a
    small (30GB) SSD I had laying around, and it works fine. (Fortunately on
    mine the memory upgrade was easy.)

    -- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Roger Blake (Posts from Google Groups killfiled due to excess spam.)

    NSA sedition and treason -- http://www.DeathToNSAthugs.com
    Don't talk to cops! -- http://www.DontTalkToCops.com
    Badges don't grant extra rights -- http://www.CopBlock.org -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Carlos E.R.@21:1/5 to Roger Blake on Sun Nov 10 20:25:14 2019
    XPost: alt.linux, alt.os.linux

    Multipost :-(
    Added the other groups.

    On 10/11/2019 19.16, Roger Blake wrote:
    On 2019-11-10, Aragorn <thorongil@telenet.be> wrote:
    On 10/11/2019 17.37, MaxTheFast wrote:
    1.25 GiB is really tight, man. You could always try Damn Small Linux
    (DSL), but to the best of my knowledge, 2 GiB is about the lowest
    requirement for a 32-bit distro these days, and you'll probably be
    swapping like hell.

    Yes, things will go much better with 2GB. I'm running 32-bit Lubuntu
    18.04 on an old Acer Centrino-based laptop upgraded to 2GB memory and a
    small (30GB) SSD I had laying around, and it works fine. (Fortunately on
    mine the memory upgrade was easy.)


    Got other replies on alt.linux and alt.os.linux

    --
    Cheers, Carlos.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From David W. Hodgins@21:1/5 to Roger Blake on Sun Nov 10 18:24:31 2019
    On Sun, 10 Nov 2019 13:16:55 -0500, Roger Blake <rogblake@iname.invalid> wrote:

    On 2019-11-10, Aragorn <thorongil@telenet.be> wrote:
    1.25 GiB is really tight, man. You could always try Damn Small Linux
    (DSL), but to the best of my knowledge, 2 GiB is about the lowest
    requirement for a 32-bit distro these days, and you'll probably be
    swapping like hell.

    Yes, things will go much better with 2GB. I'm running 32-bit Lubuntu
    18.04 on an old Acer Centrino-based laptop upgraded to 2GB memory and a
    small (30GB) SSD I had laying around, and it works fine. (Fortunately on
    mine the memory upgrade was easy.)

    The distro doesn't really matter. What matters most is which desktop environment
    and what system services are enabled.

    I'm running Mageia 7 x86_64 with the xfce de on a system with just under 1GB
    of ram.

    Part of the lshw output ...
    description: Motherboard
    product: Portable PC
    vendor: TOSHIBA
    *-firmware
    description: BIOS
    vendor: TOSHIBA
    version: Version 3.70
    date: 12/10/2007
    size: 128KiB
    capacity: 960KiB
    capabilities: isa pci pcmcia pnp upgrade shadowing vesa cdboot bootselect edd int13floppytoshiba int13floppy720 int5printscreen int9keyboard int14serial int17printer acpi usb biosbootspecification netboot
    *-cpu
    description: CPU
    product: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T5500 @ 1.66GHz

    I've had to disable most services to make it even slightly usable, but I use it to run konversation 24/7, so I can continue using irc when I'm rebooting other systems I have. I've also been able to view some sites using lynx while still running konversation.

    With 2GB of ram I think it would be possible to use a lightweight gui web browser,
    depending on what sites are being viewed. It wouldn't be enough for something like watching a video, but should be enough for web searches and viewing mostly text web sites. It would also require an adblocker

    Blocking the following sites speeds up a lot of other sites by stopping javascript routines used only for ads or tracking ...
    # grep -e facebook -e google -e twitter adblock.conf|sort
    zone "ads.ak.facebook.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; };
    zone "connect.facebook.net" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; }; zone "facebook.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; };
    zone "googleadservices.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; }; zone "google-analytics.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; }; zone "googlesyndication.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; }; zone "pagead2.googlesyndication.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; };
    zone "pagead.l.google.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; };
    zone "twitter.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; };
    zone "video-stats.video.google.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; };
    zone "wintricksbanner.googlepages.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; };
    zone "www.facebook.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; };
    zone "www-google-analytics.l.google.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; };

    Regards, Dave Hodgins

    --
    Change dwhodgins@nomail.afraid.org to davidwhodgins@teksavvy.com for
    email replies.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From TJ@21:1/5 to David W. Hodgins on Sun Nov 10 19:43:01 2019
    XPost: alt.linux, alt.os.linux

    On 11/10/19 6:24 PM, David W. Hodgins wrote:
    On Sun, 10 Nov 2019 13:16:55 -0500, Roger Blake <rogblake@iname.invalid> wrote:

    On 2019-11-10, Aragorn <thorongil@telenet.be> wrote:
    1.25 GiB is really tight, man.  You could always try Damn Small Linux
    (DSL), but to the best of my knowledge, 2 GiB is about the lowest
    requirement for a 32-bit distro these days, and you'll probably be
    swapping like hell.

    Yes, things will go much better with 2GB. I'm running 32-bit Lubuntu
    18.04 on an old Acer Centrino-based laptop upgraded to 2GB memory and a
    small (30GB) SSD I had laying around, and it works fine. (Fortunately on
    mine the memory upgrade was easy.)

    The distro doesn't really matter. What matters most is which desktop environment
    and what system services are enabled.

    I'm running Mageia 7 x86_64 with the xfce de on a system with just under
    1GB
    of ram.

    Part of the lshw output ...
           description: Motherboard
           product: Portable PC
           vendor: TOSHIBA
         *-firmware
              description: BIOS
              vendor: TOSHIBA
              version: Version 3.70
              date: 12/10/2007
              size: 128KiB
              capacity: 960KiB
              capabilities: isa pci pcmcia pnp upgrade shadowing vesa cdboot bootselect edd int13floppytoshiba int13floppy720 int5printscreen int9keyboard int14serial int17printer acpi usb biosbootspecification
    netboot
         *-cpu
              description: CPU
              product: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU         T5500  @ 1.66GHz

    I've had to disable most services to make it even slightly usable, but I
    use it
    to run konversation 24/7, so I can continue using irc when I'm rebooting other
    systems I have. I've also been able to view some sites using lynx while
    still
    running konversation.

    With 2GB of ram I think it would be possible to use a lightweight gui
    web browser,
    depending on what sites are being viewed. It wouldn't be enough for
    something
    like watching a video, but should be enough for web searches and viewing mostly
    text web sites. It would also require an adblocker

    Blocking the following sites speeds up a lot of other sites by stopping javascript routines used only for ads or tracking ...
    # grep -e facebook -e google -e twitter adblock.conf|sort
    zone "ads.ak.facebook.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; }; zone "connect.facebook.net" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; }; zone "facebook.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; };
    zone "googleadservices.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; }; zone "google-analytics.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; }; zone "googlesyndication.com" { type master; notify no; file
    "db.adblock"; };
    zone "pagead2.googlesyndication.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; };
    zone "pagead.l.google.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; }; zone "twitter.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; };
    zone "video-stats.video.google.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; };
    zone "wintricksbanner.googlepages.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; };
    zone "www.facebook.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; };
    zone "www-google-analytics.l.google.com" { type master; notify no; file "db.adblock"; };

    Regards, Dave Hodgins

    The OP didn't identify his video hardware, and that can make a
    difference, too.

    I have an old 32-bit Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop with a P4 and 2GB of RAM,
    and like Dave I run Mageia 7 Xfce on it. It uses an old Radeon RV200
    GPU, which works fine with Xfce but doesn't have the ability to use an
    OpenGL high enough to run Mageia's Plasma 5. The same is true of older
    nvidia GPUs.

    BTW, Mageia does have a 32-bit Live XFCE iso available for download at https://www.mageia.org/en/downloads/ In fact, it is the only 32-bit Live
    media offered by Mageia.

    I use my old Dell for 32-bit testing of updates for Mageia. I have used
    it to do some minimal surfing with Firefox, but don't do so regularly
    because I have other, much faster hardware readily available for that. I
    HAVE been able to play Youtube videos on this hardware in Firefox with
    no problem.

    But the OP's hard drive concerns me, too. He mentioned on one of the
    newsgroups that he plans to dual-boot with XP, leaving only 8GB of hard
    drive space for Linux. That's REALLY tight if you are going to do
    anything useful, if you ask me.

    The IDE hard drive in my Dell was bad when I got it, and I bought a used
    40GB replacement on eBay for less than $10US. It took maybe 15 minutes
    to install. That gives me plenty of room, as I haven't dual-booted in
    many years. If the OP doesn't have enough unused space on his XP install
    to give more than 8GB to Linux, I'd recommend he visit eBay and look for
    a bigger drive.

    TJ

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Carlos E.R.@21:1/5 to David W. Hodgins on Mon Nov 11 14:27:30 2019
    On 11/11/2019 00.24, David W. Hodgins wrote:
    With 2GB of ram I think it would be possible to use a lightweight
    gui web browser, depending on what sites are being viewed. It
    wouldn't be enough for something like watching a video, but should be
    enough for web searches and viewing mostly text web sites. It would
    also require an adblocker

    Careful. With an addblocker it may result you need even more ram. There
    is a technical explanation for it. And some pages may load slower
    (because it breaks parallel loading, because elements have to be
    analyzed before permitting to load the next element).

    --
    Cheers, Carlos.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From MaxThe Fast@21:1/5 to All on Mon Nov 11 07:27:33 2019
    Sorry for cross/multi/whatever-posting. We can continue @ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.os.linux/3jkPsp-Bg_Q

    But the OP's hard drive concerns me, too
    I need a linux distro that 1) uses very few ram, 2) supports 32bit and will support for very long time, 3) is good for noob, 4) requires no more than 8gb after hdd installation with a "proper" web browser, 5) [optional] comes with IT language version/
    package.
    I got only 2 distros with those specs untils now: puppy xenial and knoppix lxde. Anyway please post your ideas and replies to alt.os.linux :)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Roger Blake@21:1/5 to Carlos E.R. on Mon Nov 11 16:29:35 2019
    On 2019-11-11, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    Careful. With an addblocker it may result you need even more ram. There
    is a technical explanation for it. And some pages may load slower
    (because it breaks parallel loading, because elements have to be
    analyzed before permitting to load the next element).

    I have had no problems running Firefox with an adblocker and a few other
    addons on my old 2GB laptop. SD videos play OK, but HD playback can get
    choppy.

    -- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Roger Blake (Posts from Google Groups killfiled due to excess spam.)

    NSA sedition and treason -- http://www.DeathToNSAthugs.com
    Don't talk to cops! -- http://www.DontTalkToCops.com
    Badges don't grant extra rights -- http://www.CopBlock.org -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Carlos E.R.@21:1/5 to Roger Blake on Mon Nov 11 23:02:34 2019
    On 11/11/2019 17.29, Roger Blake wrote:
    On 2019-11-11, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    Careful. With an addblocker it may result you need even more ram. There
    is a technical explanation for it. And some pages may load slower
    (because it breaks parallel loading, because elements have to be
    analyzed before permitting to load the next element).

    I have had no problems running Firefox with an adblocker and a few other addons on my old 2GB laptop. SD videos play OK, but HD playback can get choppy.

    Video may play better outside of the browser, directly with a player
    such as VLC.


    --
    Cheers, Carlos.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Roger Blake@21:1/5 to Carlos E.R. on Mon Nov 11 23:22:43 2019
    On 2019-11-11, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    Video may play better outside of the browser, directly with a player
    such as VLC.

    Yes, I've found that is the case. Youtube playback can be choppy in HD
    mode, but playing an mp4 file locally with VLC works well.

    Overall considering how limited the hardware is by today's standards I'm
    happy with the way Lubuntu is running on this old laptop. I certainly
    won't be doing any video editing or conversion on it but for general
    use it's fine.

    -- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Roger Blake (Posts from Google Groups killfiled due to excess spam.)

    NSA sedition and treason -- http://www.DeathToNSAthugs.com
    Don't talk to cops! -- http://www.DontTalkToCops.com
    Badges don't grant extra rights -- http://www.CopBlock.org -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Charlie+@21:1/5 to gipsy.shadow.84@gmail.com on Tue Nov 12 07:36:22 2019
    On Mon, 11 Nov 2019 07:27:33 -0800 (PST), MaxThe Fast <gipsy.shadow.84@gmail.com> wrote as underneath :

    Sorry for cross/multi/whatever-posting. We can continue @ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.os.linux/3jkPsp-Bg_Q

    But the OP's hard drive concerns me, too
    I need a linux distro that 1) uses very few ram, 2) supports 32bit and will support for very long time, 3) is good for noob, 4) requires no more than 8gb after hdd installation with a "proper" web browser, 5) [optional] comes with IT language version/
    package.
    I got only 2 distros with those specs untils now: puppy xenial and knoppix lxde. Anyway please post your ideas and replies to alt.os.linux :)

    Take a look at Q4OS (Debian based). C+

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From David Brown@21:1/5 to MaxThe Fast on Tue Nov 12 10:38:43 2019
    On 11/11/2019 16:27, MaxThe Fast wrote:
    Sorry for cross/multi/whatever-posting. We can continue @ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.os.linux/3jkPsp-Bg_Q

    But the OP's hard drive concerns me, too
    I need a linux distro that 1) uses very few ram, 2) supports 32bit and will support for very long time, 3) is good for noob, 4) requires no more than 8gb after hdd installation with a "proper" web browser, 5) [optional] comes with IT language version/
    package.
    I got only 2 distros with those specs untils now: puppy xenial and knoppix lxde. Anyway please post your ideas and replies to alt.os.linux :)


    It is not going to happen - not if by "proper" web browser you mean
    current versions of Firefox, Chrome or Chromium. These are now 64-bit
    only, or they are moving that way fast. And they require /lots/ of ram.

    You'll be able to get a system that can handle simpler websites, but not
    if you are expecting to use Facebook, Netflix, Google docs, MS Office
    365, Google maps, online games, etc.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Carlos E.R.@21:1/5 to David Brown on Tue Nov 12 12:15:19 2019
    On 12/11/2019 10.38, David Brown wrote:
    On 11/11/2019 16:27, MaxThe Fast wrote:
    Sorry for cross/multi/whatever-posting. We can continue @ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.os.linux/3jkPsp-Bg_Q

    But the OP's hard drive concerns me, too
    I need a linux distro that 1) uses very few ram, 2) supports 32bit and will support for very long time, 3) is good for noob, 4) requires no more than 8gb after hdd installation with a "proper" web browser, 5) [optional] comes with IT language version/
    package.
    I got only 2 distros with those specs untils now: puppy xenial and knoppix lxde. Anyway please post your ideas and replies to alt.os.linux :)


    It is not going to happen - not if by "proper" web browser you mean
    current versions of Firefox, Chrome or Chromium. These are now 64-bit
    only, or they are moving that way fast. And they require /lots/ of ram.

    You'll be able to get a system that can handle simpler websites, but not
    if you are expecting to use Facebook, Netflix, Google docs, MS Office
    365, Google maps, online games, etc.

    Hum! Perhaps requesting the mobile version of such pages: phones and
    tablets do not have lots of cpu power or RAM.


    --
    Cheers, Carlos.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From David Brown@21:1/5 to Carlos E.R. on Tue Nov 12 12:39:51 2019
    On 12/11/2019 12:15, Carlos E.R. wrote:
    On 12/11/2019 10.38, David Brown wrote:
    On 11/11/2019 16:27, MaxThe Fast wrote:
    Sorry for cross/multi/whatever-posting. We can continue @ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.os.linux/3jkPsp-Bg_Q

    But the OP's hard drive concerns me, too
    I need a linux distro that 1) uses very few ram, 2) supports 32bit and will support for very long time, 3) is good for noob, 4) requires no more than 8gb after hdd installation with a "proper" web browser, 5) [optional] comes with IT language version/
    package.
    I got only 2 distros with those specs untils now: puppy xenial and knoppix lxde. Anyway please post your ideas and replies to alt.os.linux :)


    It is not going to happen - not if by "proper" web browser you mean
    current versions of Firefox, Chrome or Chromium. These are now 64-bit
    only, or they are moving that way fast. And they require /lots/ of ram.

    You'll be able to get a system that can handle simpler websites, but not
    if you are expecting to use Facebook, Netflix, Google docs, MS Office
    365, Google maps, online games, etc.

    Hum! Perhaps requesting the mobile version of such pages: phones and
    tablets do not have lots of cpu power or RAM.


    Any tablet or smartphone you buy now, baring the very low end devices,
    will have more cpu power and ram than this guy's laptop. It's not hard
    to find a new tablet with 2 GB ram for $100.

    And look on e-bay - people can't give away laptops with the spec's he has.

    (I'm not saying it is a good thing that a machine that is working
    perfectly well is now worthless. But that is the reality.)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From MaxTheFast@21:1/5 to All on Tue Nov 12 04:45:26 2019
    1st I get the right linux distro then the *proper* web browser :) Of course proper mean 32b compatible, with low ram usage and I'll use it only for "basic" surfing, I mean no youtube, no socials and so on.
    I'd like to use this old machine instead of getting a 100$ device and I'm just wondering what's the *max* I can get from it, no miracles of course :)

    I don't want to bore you anymore but the most interesting "place" where this topic is discussed is @ alt.os.linux, anyway we can go on here if some of you prefer :) My next step is going to run a pyppy linux live session and posting some commands related
    to acer's graphics as some of the other users required.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Roger Blake@21:1/5 to David Brown on Tue Nov 12 17:55:53 2019
    On 2019-11-12, David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:
    (I'm not saying it is a good thing that a machine that is working
    perfectly well is now worthless. But that is the reality.)

    "Worthless" is in the eye of the beholder. I'm using an old 32-bit
    Centrino laptop with 2GB of RAM and it works fine for anything I want to
    do. I don't really have any interest in Facebook, Netflix, Google docs,
    MS Office 365, Google maps, or online games. (For grins though I just
    pulled up Google Maps in Firefox to see what would happen and and it
    worked fine, brought up a map and directions in just a few seconds with
    no apparent problems.)

    -- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Roger Blake (Posts from Google Groups killfiled due to excess spam.)

    NSA sedition and treason -- http://www.DeathToNSAthugs.com
    Don't talk to cops! -- http://www.DontTalkToCops.com
    Badges don't grant extra rights -- http://www.CopBlock.org -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From TJ@21:1/5 to Roger Blake on Wed Nov 13 11:18:07 2019
    On 11/12/19 12:55 PM, Roger Blake wrote:
    On 2019-11-12, David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:
    (I'm not saying it is a good thing that a machine that is working
    perfectly well is now worthless. But that is the reality.)

    "Worthless" is in the eye of the beholder. I'm using an old 32-bit
    Centrino laptop with 2GB of RAM and it works fine for anything I want to
    do. I don't really have any interest in Facebook, Netflix, Google docs,
    MS Office 365, Google maps, or online games. (For grins though I just
    pulled up Google Maps in Firefox to see what would happen and and it
    worked fine, brought up a map and directions in just a few seconds with
    no apparent problems.)


    Agreed, Roger. I just did a little checking with my old Dell Inspiron
    5100, with a P4 and 2GB of RAM, using Mageia 7. I installed Adblocker
    Ultimate, and logged onto Facebook. It came up fine, though it took a
    very long time when compared to my newer i3 and i5 machines. Xfce's task manager showed 44-46% RAM usage at that time, or less than 1GB, and of
    course zero swap.

    Moving over to Youtube, videos are definitely choppy, but I don't think
    that's due to the low RAM, as the task manager showed even lower RAM
    usage than Facebook, at 40%. Rather, I believe the choppiness is coming
    from the limitations of the old Radeon 7500 (RV200) video card, using
    the open source "radeon" driver.

    Videos played offline in Xfce's parole media player are fine.

    TJ

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Roger Blake@21:1/5 to TJ@noneofyour.business on Wed Nov 13 18:52:18 2019
    On 2019-11-13, TJ <TJ@noneofyour.business> wrote:
    Agreed, Roger. I just did a little checking with my old Dell Inspiron
    5100, with a P4 and 2GB of RAM, using Mageia 7. I installed Adblocker Ultimate, and logged onto Facebook. It came up fine, though it took a
    very long time when compared to my newer i3 and i5 machines. Xfce's task manager showed 44-46% RAM usage at that time, or less than 1GB, and of
    course zero swap.

    I checked memory utilization while Firefox was running Google Maps
    and it was about 570MB. Still very comfortable on a 2GB machine.
    Bootup and launch time are pretty good due to the SSD. (Also LXDE is
    pretty lightweight.)

    Moving over to Youtube, videos are definitely choppy, but I don't think that's due to the low RAM, as the task manager showed even lower RAM
    usage than Facebook, at 40%. Rather, I believe the choppiness is coming
    from the limitations of the old Radeon 7500 (RV200) video card, using
    the open source "radeon" driver.

    Sounds likely - mine has whatever Intel video was current for Centrino
    based systems at the time (around 2005) and SD youtube plays with no
    problems, HD gets choppy. Though as mentioned VLC plays HD (720 due to
    screen res) quite well locally.

    It's a very functional 15-year-old machine with an up-to-date OS that
    would have been trashed long ago if stuck with Windows. Seems all good to me.

    -- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Roger Blake (Posts from Google Groups killfiled due to excess spam.)

    NSA sedition and treason -- http://www.DeathToNSAthugs.com
    Don't talk to cops! -- http://www.DontTalkToCops.com
    Badges don't grant extra rights -- http://www.CopBlock.org -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From TJ@21:1/5 to Roger Blake on Thu Nov 14 13:03:19 2019
    On 11/13/19 1:52 PM, Roger Blake wrote:

    It's a very functional 15-year-old machine with an up-to-date OS that
    would have been trashed long ago if stuck with Windows. Seems all good to me.


    Mine is older, from around 2002. I found it at a church sale, priced at
    $10, completely dead, with no power supply to use to check it out. A
    sensible person would have turned and walked away, but I bought it for
    the challenge.

    I bought a power supply first, pretty cheap on eBay. That allowed me to
    boot into the BIOS and see that the display wasn't bad for something so
    aged. That was about the only encouraging thing I saw. The battery was
    bad, so bad it had to be pulled out. The keyboard had several
    non-functioning keys, and the IDE hard drive and optical drive were both
    toast.

    Again, a sensible person would have cut his losses, but not me. I added
    a wireless keyboard/mouse set to one usb port, and rigged the other up
    to a powered usb hub with an external ssd and a Mageia Classic Installer
    on a flash drive. I was able to boot up the installer, install Mageia on
    the ssd, and use it. Clunky, but it worked.

    So of course I couldn't stop there. Back to eBay, where I found a new
    battery, a used keyboard, and a used IDE hard drive. I didn't bother
    with the optical drive, as I rarely use them any more. The battery was
    the most expensive, but I wanted to stay away from used on that one. The
    used stuff was all very cheap, as these things go.

    When finished, I too had a functional machine, with an up-to-date OS.
    But with only 1GB of RAM, it wasn't as functional as it could be, so a
    couple of months later I upgraded to 2GB.

    By rights the machine I bought should have been sent to a recycler, but
    now, not so much. And best of all, I had a great deal of fun bringing it
    back to usable condition. Well worth it for that alone.

    TJ

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Roger Blake@21:1/5 to TJ@noneofyour.business on Thu Nov 14 22:02:59 2019
    On 2019-11-14, TJ <TJ@noneofyour.business> wrote:
    Mine is older, from around 2002. I found it at a church sale, priced at
    $10, completely dead, with no power supply to use to check it out. A sensible person would have turned and walked away, but I bought it for
    the challenge.
    ...

    Cool, I always love reviving old hardware. I also have an old Dell 8500
    (an early wide-screen model) that hails from 2003, equipped with a
    Pentium-4M and 1.25GB memory. It's running an old, no longer supported
    version of Ubuntu. I think it should be able to run Lubuntu 18.04 like my "newer" one, will have to try it. No SSD though, it has the old-style
    parallel ATA drive interface. So it's slow, but looks like memory will
    be adequate for Lubuntu and Firefox.

    -- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Roger Blake (Posts from Google Groups killfiled due to excess spam.)

    NSA sedition and treason -- http://www.DeathToNSAthugs.com
    Don't talk to cops! -- http://www.DontTalkToCops.com
    Badges don't grant extra rights -- http://www.CopBlock.org -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From MaxTheFast@21:1/5 to All on Thu Nov 14 16:05:17 2019
    Mhhh... I don't think the last Lubuntu will run on your Dell due to its few ram. My acer has 1.25gb ram too and a pata hdd @5400rpm and I'm trying distros as puppy xenial and bionic and their live sessions run quite good. Just look at minimum lubuntu 18.
    04 requirements and you'll understand you're in my same situation :) If you want to bring your dell back to life you've to look at very low usage ram distros. My constrains are many more than that because I need a friendly distro (I'm very noob) and I
    need to be able to surf the web, that's the goal of this topic.

    As said my goal is to use this acer to surf the web, of course a "basic" surfing, therefore is fundamental for me that my usb huawei dongle works and here my troubles begin. Consider I've ONLY this usb device to connect to internet, I mean no wireless,
    no router, etc, just the dongle. I want to use this acer as an "emergency" device so I want to get a distro that allows me to access the internet out-of-the-box. I know it's a pain to make usb internet dongles work so I've this idea: 1) trying distro
    lives until I get the one that let my huawei work out of the box or 2) pointing to a distro with a persistent installation and work on it to enable my huawei and get internet connection, then save the "job" and turn the modified distro into a new iso so
    I'll get an "emergency" distro with internet connection ready-to-use. What do you suggest to me? I've just tried puppy bionic but it can't see my huawei.
    By the way, with puppy bionic running live and with nothing else than task manager opened my ram usage was 100/1233MB while after opening "light" (default web browser) it became 204/1233MB, @David W. Hodgins what about ram usage with your mageia 7 + xfce?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jim Jackson@21:1/5 to Roger Blake on Fri Nov 15 11:52:17 2019
    On 2019-11-14, Roger Blake <rogblake@iname.invalid> wrote:
    On 2019-11-14, TJ <TJ@noneofyour.business> wrote:
    Mine is older, from around 2002. I found it at a church sale, priced at
    $10, completely dead, with no power supply to use to check it out. A
    sensible person would have turned and walked away, but I bought it for
    the challenge.
    ...

    Cool, I always love reviving old hardware. I also have an old Dell 8500
    (an early wide-screen model) that hails from 2003, equipped with a
    Pentium-4M and 1.25GB memory. It's running an old, no longer supported version of Ubuntu. I think it should be able to run Lubuntu 18.04 like my "newer" one, will have to try it. No SSD though, it has the old-style parallel ATA drive interface. So it's slow, but looks like memory will
    be adequate for Lubuntu and Firefox.

    Ok I have a 2005 IBM thinkpad Laptop 0.75GB ram 40G laptop with Devuan
    ASCII loaded on... after a boot and login with just 2 xterms running...

    jj@actinium:~$ free
    total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 703192 81664 419848 1296 201680 515452 Swap: 1951892 0 1951892

    with libreoffice open with a 35 slide presentation loaded and firefox
    running with just a single google page open ....

    jj@actinium:~$ free
    total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 703192 281232 59316 13096 362644 303868 Swap: 1951892 200 1951692

    with as above but firefox having 2 sales sites, 2 forums, 1 weather, and 1 streetmap site open ...

    jj@actinium:~$ free
    total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 703192 468996 65036 22992 169160 107380 Swap: 1951892 37336 1914556

    It's usable for simple work. I could really try and upgrade the ram I
    think. I use it for lugging around when I do presentations, or for showing pictures etc. Battery only lasts an hour though.

    Jim

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From TJ@21:1/5 to MaxTheFast on Fri Nov 15 12:12:13 2019
    On 11/14/19 7:05 PM, MaxTheFast wrote:
    Mhhh... I don't think the last Lubuntu will run on your Dell due to its few ram. My acer has 1.25gb ram too and a pata hdd @5400rpm and I'm trying distros as puppy xenial and bionic and their live sessions run quite good. Just look at minimum lubuntu
    18.04 requirements and you'll understand you're in my same situation :) If you want to bring your dell back to life you've to look at very low usage ram distros. My constrains are many more than that because I need a friendly distro (I'm very noob) and I
    need to be able to surf the web, that's the goal of this topic.

    Often those published requirements are based on what is needed to
    install the system, as opposed to actually running it once installed.
    This depends on the design of the installer, which varies from distro to distro. Also, for an experienced user like Roger, there are often ways
    to reduce those requirements that would only cause trouble for an
    inexperienced user.

    As said my goal is to use this acer to surf the web, of course a "basic" surfing, therefore is fundamental for me that my usb huawei dongle works and here my troubles begin. Consider I've ONLY this usb device to connect to internet, I mean no wireless,
    no router, etc, just the dongle. I want to use this acer as an "emergency" device so I want to get a distro that allows me to access the internet out-of-the-box. I know it's a pain to make usb internet dongles work so I've this idea: 1) trying distro
    lives until I get the one that let my huawei work out of the box or 2) pointing to a distro with a persistent installation and work on it to enable my huawei and get internet connection, then save the "job" and turn the modified distro into a new iso so
    I'll get an "emergency" distro with internet connection ready-to-use. What do you suggest to me? I've just tried puppy bionic but it can't see my huawei.
    By the way, with puppy bionic running live and with nothing else than task manager opened my ram usage was 100/1233MB while after opening "light" (default web browser) it became 204/1233MB, @David W. Hodgins what about ram usage with your mageia 7 +
    xfce?

    Ram usage of a live distro would be different from that of the same
    distro if installed on a hard drive. It depends on the design of the
    live version just how much of it is RAM-based vs. device-based. More on
    the device reduces RAM requirements, but is MUCH slower than RAM-based.

    Again, I don't believe lack of RAM is your biggest hurdle to achieve
    your goal. I would put it at third or fourth, at best. IMO, the lack of
    hard drive space, assuming you eventually want to install it on a hard
    drive, is a much bigger problem.

    Your other problem, of almost equal difficulty, is your requirement of a newbie-friendly distro coupled with the need to use your dongle to
    connect with the Internet. Wireless connectivity has always been a sore
    spot with Linux, though things are better for wifi now than they used to
    be. But cellular dongles, being less popular, haven't seen the same
    attention. I have heard of experienced users getting them to work, but
    only after jumping through hoops that would block the average newbie.

    Often, the problem for Linux is lack of support from the hardware
    manufacturer, not allowing the distribution of proprietary firmware that
    may be needed for the device to function. Microsoft, being what it is,
    doesn't have that problem.

    TJ

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)