If Mint won't work my legacy HW, what are next best distros?
 

Have spent much time searching (LQ and Google) for the reason that my legacy ABIT TH-7 MB with MSI/NVIDIA 128mb GeForce MX 4000 4X AGP card will install Mint 17.3/cinnamon only via Compatibility Mode - & on launch still produces unreadable graphics. Those searches have not been very productive.

What do you think would be the next best GUI-friendly distro for limited legacy HW after Mint?

Is the issue the amount of VRAM on the card? Does Mint need lots more? - there's some dispute about this depending on who's talking...

Thank you.

You're not very likely to be able to run a big modern desktop like cinnamon on a legacy machine. However simple window-manager-based desktops run quite adequately on this type of hardware. Several distros specialise in old machines; the best known is probably AntiX but there is also MX which is highly spoken of by its user base. I'm more familiar with AntiX, which offers a choice of fluxbox or icewm.

Window managers by themselves don't give you icons or drag and drop, but they do run fast.

Thank you. Are you saying that your distro suggestions are only command-driven?

Xfce is less demanding than Cinnamon I believe.
wrt: "unreadable graphics",
Did you run Driver Manager to install the recommended driver for your card,
after the install?

Did you read https://linuxmint.com/rel_rosa_cinnamon.php for possible clues, tips, or suggestions?

You could skip the desktop environment and go with a raw window manager if you still want a graphical user interface. fvwm and oroborus are two light weight ones. The applications are still going to be heavy, though. Nothing is going to make Firefox less of a hog, for example. The window managers can look quite plain and unattractive if you don't customize them. Customization will mean editing some text files.

If you are looking for pre-customized distros, then Lubuntu is an ok choice and so is Puppy.

antiX is a full lightweight environment based on a window manager (icwem, jwm, or fluxbox) along with software managing the desktop. it runs in about 78 mb at idle on fresh boot with the 32 bit version. it is certainly not commandline only, and there are a lot of gui methods of set settings (the antix control center helps with that).

here'a video on the last releaese, antiX-15. antiX-16 is due out this summer (northern hemisphere summer!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRO-meyYGWg

the OP didn't mention how much ram and such that machine has. It may be perfectly fine running xfce (try mx-15) or even MATE.

Hi...

If your system has at least 2 GB's of memory, you could also give Lubuntu a try. :)

I think that plays a definite part but at the same time, I don't believe Cinnamon was made with older systems in mind. ;)

Regards...

cinnamon uses a compositing window manager, and your card might not be capable enough if cinnamon requires opengl 2 and up. I have no idea, but the nouvaeu drivers for your card only support up to opengl 1.2.

I would bet a xfce based distro would be a good place to start. or lxde as recommended above (lubuntu).

Doesn't sound that bad of a system. Maybe some other issue going on? However, the above posts may be correct that almost any distro running a more simple or older window manager will work.

rickim,

I would suggest that you try using Linux Mint Xfce.

The latter has been used successfully on a very similar GeForce MX 440 AGP card (post #6):
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2208523

martaz2 used the nouveau driver and then modified the /etc/default/grub file.

More info here:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/37569.../395431#395431

This computer has graphics provided by the SiS Northbridge with 128 MB reserved memory, and it will display any desktop that doesn't need hardware graphics acceleration. Try the Mate version of Mint and if you still have trouble it could be poor support for the chip: try forcing it into VESA mode.

It's the DE, not the distro, that's the problem. Any distro's XFCE, LXDE, or Mate DE should work for you.

Xfce is lighter on resources.

Good stuff on mint at https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/Home

If you insist on a full desktop with icons, graphical configuration and drag-and-drop, then xfce or lxde. If you just want to run graphical apps and you don't mind using menus to launch them, fluxbox or icewm.

I'll say it buy a Pi if this isn't just a "for fun" install

You could try Bunsenlabs and see if it'll work Open Box and Debian so it should be small enough and light enough to make a 16 year old off network computer OK