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My uncle had an old computer that I was tired of fixing so I put Linux on it (Kubuntu I believe) with mostly no problems, then he asked me to do the same for an even older one.
I wanted to try something else so I tried Zorin lite, had some troubles before getting the graphics drivers installed, but no matter what I couldn't get flash/Youtube working properly.
So I tried an Ubuntu live CD to see if it would work, and it did... but performance was horrid. I understand that if I actually installed it, performance would be better, and there might be driver things I could do. But would it be a significant enough improvement that it would be worth installing the OS?
The Athlon XP CPU in that machine does not have the SSE2 extension, which is a requirement for Flash 11 and newer. You will have to use an older version of Flash to get that going, of course with all the security problems implied with using an unsupported version.
Last edited by TobiSGD; 07-11-2015 at 01:37 PM.
Reason: fixed typo
Distribution: Mainly Devuan with some Tiny Core, Fatdog, Haiku, & BSD thrown in.
Posts: 5,443
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I think you might like AntiX MX, it is a live/installable distro with XFCE desktop but still lightweight in use of ram, well documented, & should run on an Athlon OK. http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
The Atlon XP CPU in that machine does not have the SSE2 extension, which is a requirement for Flash 11 and newer. You will have to use an older version of Flash to get that going, of course with all the security problems implied with using an unsupported version.
I ended up trying a LiveCD of Kubuntu yesterday and performance was splendid (no issues with Youtube either), I expected performance between Ubuntu and Kubuntu to be pretty similar, but I wasn't going to complain that one ran pretty good.
So then I installed the Kubuntu, and although the performance was still good (and even better after I updated drivers), Youtube wasn't working with the OS installed the HDD... strange. After tinkering around with flash for a bit, (pepper and stuff) I realized I could make youtube use html5, and although it does work, the video quality/smoothness was pretty bad.
Antix seems interesting, but unless I randomly have a bunch of spare time I'm ready to just give it back to him with stuttery html5 youtube. E
Youtube can do html5 now. But for h.264 encoded videos, you basically have to use flash. Except that you can download the videos and watch them locally without flash with youtube-dl and minitube and other things.
TBH though, the newer stuff is a lot more power efficient and will pay for themselves if you use them in the power bill and A/C usage alone. I recently switched from an old desktop x2 dual core to an atom based laptop of roughly the same specs, which has lowered the power bill $50-ish a month. And my room is 10F cooler too. There's also some virtualization extras in the newer CPUs that opens up some modern options.
The T23 is a old P3 hold on for testing purposes for the distro team I am a member of.
It is not a daily driver anymore and is only broke out for ironing out hardware requirements for the distro
we make that advertises low spec computer compatibility.
I sold off all my other old gear. But some folks in this world think a IBM T23 would be a great asset to have because
of location, location, location. Or that is all they have in life.
I live next to Mexico, so I know the mind set first hand.
My daily burners are more powerful and use less power than the T23.
Touchscreens and Atom processors and such.
Flash is unsupported on Linux anyway, so security is a moot point. Difference between 10 and 11 in terms of things that it runs might be more relevant.
Likely will run acceptably with XFCE.
That particular CPU is very inefficient IIRC, so the arguments about chucking it out deserve consideration.
Pogo Altura Workstation
Athlon-XP 2400+ (2.0 Ghz) 266 Mhz FSB Processor
Asus A7V8X KT-400 Chipset Motherboard
1024 MB PC2700 DDR333 Memory (2 X 512 MB)
(2) Maxtor 120 GB UDMA-133 7200 hard drives
NEC 40X / 10X / 40X IDE CD-RW drive
Gainward GeForce4 Ti-4200 64 MB AGP video adapter
Creative SoundBlaster Live Value
Intel EtherExpress Pro 100+ adapter
82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller
I downloaded MX-14 to create a live CD. The machine booted OK, accessed the internet, and ran iceweasel. Most but not all videos, some from Youtube, played OK. MX is based on Debian Stable and the Xfce desktop. I did not attempt an install.
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