Hi, I'm new to Suse. I have an old laptop which is very limited - the cooling system doesn't work properly and all I can install on it are a few old Linux distros. Now it is Suse 10.1, which works nicely and lets me surf the web.

The trouble is, I'd like to install P2P programs too. Have tried Ktorrent, which was included in the CD, but cannot make it work. So far, it's been impossible to use Deluge, Vuze...

What can I do?

one answer is get it repaired
another is repair yourself

the question is. is that cost effective?

another answer is buy a new laptop. ( or a new old laptop )
does it need to be a laptop?


cannot make ktorrent work?
what are you doing to make it work?
what did it do? did it give you any feedback? an error message perhaps?

same goes for the other torrent applications

It's a bad idea to install a system that's totally unsupported, major security risk right there - no security patches/updates for it.

You'd be far better off with a "lightweight" distribution, there's at least a few of them around. AntiX, MX Linux spring to mind, and you'll get updates for them. You'll also be able to surf the web, download torrents, etc too.

I've tried lightweight distros, such as Puppy, but to no avail. The computer is around 15 years old.

The laptop is empty, except for the installed distro. I would never store anything important in it - I just want to use the internet in a neighbourhood that has a public, unprotected wifi system, and download one or two things in case I need them.

It's more about the challenge than anything else, actually. Won't be using P2P programs all the time. The laptop wouldn't bear it, I guess.

So, is it possible to use P2P programs on this old Suse?

Well, that's the thing, a totally unsupported distro means it's not going to be easy installing packages. I know with openSUSE they remove the online repo's after a certain period of time once said version becomes unsupported. So that makes installing software very difficult, and means either compiling from source, or going hunting for rpm packages for both what you wish to install, as well as whatever libraries you need that aren't already present on your system. And obviously in the case of installing things from source, then you may also have to build some dependencies for what you want to install - so you'll need the relevant devel packages installed too.

Among the security issues I touched on before, then this is why I suggest you try and find a supported distro to install. Again, AntiX and MX Linux are designed for older machines.

Just how OLD are we talking is what I'd like to know. Old doesn't always mean the same thing to all people, just this weekend someone was posting about their "old" hardware and he was referring to a 7th generation i5 laptop!!

right now I would be more concerned with the "cooling" not working properly.

it might be the fan is clogged up with fluff and dust.
Clearing that up may greatly improve the performance with up-to-date distros

That's more or less solved right now. I'm using a fan tray. the laptop won't be totally cool, but it's much better.

I'd like to repair the original fan, but I cannot take it out.

yeah, laptops can be a pain to disassemble and even more so to reassemble.

i'll try Antix, finally. I've read you can install it on computers over 20 years old. As I said, my laptop is around 15. Centrino, 72 GB HD, and enough RAM, I think... Thanks, people

Seconded. I have an old Dell Inspiron laptop (Celeron-based) from around 2010 that's running Tumbleweed pretty nicely though I'm not using it for any gaming or things like that. It was a freebie and I did increase the memory (when there was a special sale), replaced the hard disk (w/ a larger one), and, eventually replaced the battery. Mostly remote access to my desktop for editing/development/compiling/testing or browsing/email. Works just fine though updates are a bit pokey but running those while doing other things is not the awful experience you might think it would be. It'll suffice for my modest laptop needs until 32-bit Linuxes disappear.

The suggestion to clean out the fan was a good one. My Inspiron had a bunch of dust in the fan that was impacting the airflow. Canned air and a vacuum cleaner -- with the crevice tool to concentrate the air flow -- made short work of the dust. No disassembly required. (YMMV)

Old isn't necessarily bad.

Actually what it means is the installation's repos need to be reconfigured to include the string discontinued. Several openSUSE mirrors keep old releases around apparently indefinitely. When I looked just now, I found all releases available, including the first, openSUSE 10.2:

My point was that discontinued/unsupported releases are removed from the original URL's that their repolist is pointing to. Also, library versions that any mirrors have likely aren't going to be current for what the OP tries to install - particularly trying to install stuff that isn't in the official repo's for an unsupported release. So again, it makes their life very difficult when they could just install a supported distro and avoid such problems.

Not to mention the security risk of using an unsupported distro/release, even if they don't have any personal data on the system - it's still a bad idea unless that system is never going to be connected to any network, particularly the Internet (which is what the OP wants to do). So it's not very good to be encouraging the OP to use an unsupported distro/release.

Antix works fine on my old laptop I haven't tried the P2P program it includes - that is to say, Transmission. I'd like to try amule or some similar program, too. dunno if it's supported.