Thanks for the answers, will start trying these soon.

Hmm.

Y'know, the elderly Compaq desktop I'm posting from at this very moment in time (first-gen dual-core Athlon64 X2) was on the market some months before the very first ever Ubuntu release, 4.10 ('Warty Warthog'). That was in October 2004. Yet this is fully capable of running the newest Puppies, based on the current Ubuntu LTS release, Bionic Beaver. Amongst many others (Puppies are somewhat addictive!), I run both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Bionic.....and these are running (in the case of the 64-bit one) the newest Chrome 73 and FF Quantum 66. The 32-bit one goes with Quantum 66, SRWare's Iron 69 browser, and Flashpeak's Slimjet 21 (based on Chromium 70).

What are your hardware specs? I cannot believe you need to stick with an elderly version of Ubuntu that hasn't had support for almost 6 years. Don't you want to be able to use a newer version of the GIMP? Most Pups will run 2.8, and the recent 64-bit releases will happily run GIMP 3 from an AppImage.

Let me know your hardware specs, and I'll soon tell you what it'll be capable of, Puppy-wise. Are you especially RAM-challenged, or stuck with a really old, slow CPU? Pup's motto has always been, right from day one, to keep elderly hardware useful and productive. I'm no 'green warrior', but I fail to see the point in tossing stuff into the trash that still functions 100%. There's always folks who just have to have the latest all-singing, all-dancing gadget the instant it hits the shelves, but I don't count myself amongst their number. Rather, I go to the other extreme; I love seeing just what really old warhorses are still capable of..!

I've a fair bit of experience with elderly hardware. My own 'senior citizen' is an old Dell Inspiron laptop that's over 17 yrs old.....and even that will run the Puppy 'spin' on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, 'Xenial Xerus'. Not fast, mind you - a Pentium 4 does have limits! - but it will run. Certainly well enough to let you use a modern web-browser.....


Mike.

Tried this pilpo, does not work, keep complaining about the lack of ssl support. Except that I did enable it at the configure stage. Anyway, the last version is of 2015, so likely not worth the effort that I already expended. Moving on to the next. So lucky as I am, a vital website stopped working yesterday with Palemoon.

Mike_Walsh, as I explained before I CANNOT move to any other distro, first because I simply do not have the physical resources to do so.

Mike, I personally couldn't care less about the Gimp version. I am a "light user". Any version is the same. My mother however is a heavy user. She tested Gimp 2.8 and found a gigantic piece of trash. The selection tool is different (and much worst), does not work nearly as well for her. My custom made brushes stopped working. There is the annoying "export" feature. Basically, it sucks. So even if I had the hardware resources, the gimp 2.6 dependency would keep force me to keep using it (besides a possible window manager limitation). Still will keep trying to compile it, but I do not have enough time at the moment, besides it is utterly irrelevant while the hardware limitations keep existing

you seem to be more interested in complaining than in actually solving a problem.

distros for old & ancient hardware exist. browsers that run lighter than, say, firefox or chromium, also exist.
the only limitation in "physical resources" i can see now is that you don't have a spare USB stick or CD to boot from. is that what you are refering to?

i don't know how many different ways we can tell you that you cannot install software on ubuntu 10.04 anymore, and actually shouldn't connect it to the internet at all.

That seems to contradict the dozens or even hundred the hours that I spended in the last months.

That and the Gimp 2.6 and possible interface limitations. Which I have to say is quite obvious, since I mentioned it two or three times already.

That's not correct, since I can install software and do it all the time. Neither I see why I actually shouldn't connect it to the internet.

sorry, i meant software from the repositories.
oh i'm sure it was explained two or three times already.

1 members found this post helpful.

Mm.

So, from what I can understand, you believe you have no means of even trying out another distro, because you don't have either spare optical disks or USB sticks, and because of that you want an updated, lighter-weight browser that has to work with nine-year old dependencies, etc.....

Even the SSE-only version of Palemoon that I mentioned needs, so I believe, at least the glibc/libstdc++ from around Precise (12.04).

Well, I've got a surprise for you. You can install Puppy on your machine as it is; you won't even need to re-partition the existing disk set-up, because Puppy can run actually from INSIDE another Linux distro. And before the selection of usual head-scratching/sarcastic responses ensues, listen to me. I have done this myself in the past. So I know it can work.

The only thing you'll need to do is to download a Puppy ISO from ibiblio.org. Even an out-of-date browser will do that, because ibiblio is NOT stringent or fussy about connections. And then all you'll need to do is to mount the ISO, so you can see the contents of it.

a) Download ISO.
b) Mount ISO.
c) Create a directory at the root of your Ubuntu system FOR Puppy.
d) Copy the contents of the mounted ISO into that directory.
e) Create a boot entry for it.

And that.....is all there is to it. You'll end up with a boot Menu giving you the choice of either Ubuntu 10.04, or whatever Puppy you end up using. It's so simple even a complete beginner can do it.....and you don't come across as one of those (not if you're compiling stuff).

If even the idea of that doesn't appeal, then all I can say is 'Pardon me for trying to help'..... I can guarantee you, that without installing a different distro of some kind, you will not find a remotely modern web browser that won't turn its nose up at a lot of sites. The stubbornness of sticking with an out-of-date operating system when one can be installed with next to no effort and no additional resources is foolhardy in the extreme.

But if you should decide to try this out, I'll be more than willing to talk you through the install and help out where I can. I cannot say fairer than that.


Mike.

Mike, I had no idea one can run it from inside another distro. That definitely puts it on the map. I will try it as soon as I can. I am currently working on several fronts at once. Wine to run a Windows version of some browser, qemu to are also other options that I may invest my time on.

I am currently trying to use Virtualbox to run a more modern distro, trying to compile flatpak from the source to run flatpak's Ephiphany package, trying to compile Konqueror from the source. I have the other browsers that were listed here to go after. There is also snap packages. So many possibilities and far less available time than I would like.

The Palemoon version that you mentioned is the 27.9.4SSE? If so, I am already running it as I mentioned in a previous post.

@ coltson:-

What I will need from you is hardware specs - CPU, amount of RAM, HDD, GPU, etc. This'll help me to recommend the best Puppy for your use-case. It might sound like an odd request, but there are hundreds and hundreds of Puppies out there.....

Just out of curiosity, why are you compiling everything? The days when that was almost mandatory for Linux users are LONG gone. There's so much pre-compiled stuff out there it's ridiculous. Debs, RPMs, Flatpaks, Snaps, AppImages (these are like Windows 'portables').....the list just goes on, and on.....

How are you accessing LQ ATM?


Mike.

[QUOTE=Mike_Walsh;5983750]@ coltson:-

I have a core 2 7500 underclocked from 2.93Ghz to 2Ghz, 2GB, 40hdd (with 4GB of free space distributed in two different partitions), integrated intel gpu

1)There is no package available to my system since around 2013, at least in the main repositories, so there is no choice in many cases

2)I love it.

3)Doing that I have a bunch of possible portable programs that I can use in any distro the day I will be able and willing to change.

4)Perhaps some performance gains in some performance bound software. Doubtful as my compiler is obsolete, but perhaps cpu specific optimizations are enough to make it a win.

Palemoon 27.9.4SSE