Thread
Intel iMac from work...
Other than one very specific semi-exception based on a bug in the silicon, which I've actually run into with my old Dell D600, most CPUs going all the way back to the mid-late 1990s are technically capable of running a modern Linux distribution (assuming you have sufficient RAM and other resources, obviously). It's de rigueur these days to compile with flags that require 686/PAE or later, so yes, if your computer dates before the latest 1990's it *might* be a minor hassle to run something that still gets updates, but there are exceptions; some of the "lightweight" distributions like vanilla Debian and Slackware will still install on a 486. Only if you have an original, genuine, 80386DX/SX or a really oddball/ancient clone chip are you genuinely out of luck. (The latest versions of GCC dropped 386 code generation a while ago, and Linux 3.8 has expunged support for those first 32 bit chips from the kernel tree; apparently restricting to the 486 and later removes the need for a bunch of special-case cruft.)
So "my computer is too old" is a pretty lousy excuse. Is the real problem your "limited broadband" makes you afraid to spend your bandwidth quota on downloading an iso and applying security updates? (With some broadband quotas that almost qualifies as a "legitimate" worry in a "wow, there's no way to win" sort of way.)
So "my computer is too old" is a pretty lousy excuse. Is the real problem your "limited broadband" makes you afraid to spend your bandwidth quota on downloading an iso and applying security updates? (With some broadband quotas that almost qualifies as a "legitimate" worry in a "wow, there's no way to win" sort of way.)
The real problem is this:
I am using an old PC from around 2002 with a 300-something MHz processor and 225 MB of RAM. It came with XP SP1 on it.
In addition, I'm trying to cram a Wubi installation onto an already-packed 38 GB hard drive.
That is the problem.
I am using an old PC from around 2002 with a 300-something MHz processor and 225 MB of RAM. It came with XP SP1 on it.
In addition, I'm trying to cram a Wubi installation onto an already-packed 38 GB hard drive.
That is the problem.
You have too many problems:
300 Mhz? In 2002? The Mhz race was on by then, you would have had a P3/P4 with 1 Ghz+. (The P4 would have had it for inflated numbers, but it'd be fastish.) That's P2 level Mhz.
Wubi? No, no, no. Get rid of that and install a MODERN (8.04 left LTS) Linux distro. Debian does fine on my machines with ~500 Mhz and 512 MB RAM. (Upgrade that RAM too. DDR isn't as common, but it is easy to find.)
If you expect to be able to use that machine though, you're on crack. Any browser you can reasonably use for the modern web will bring ANY P4 class to it's knees as soon as you touch any JS-using site.
tl;dr: holy heck get that iMac, it's better than the junker you have
This. Could you even buy a 300Mhz CPU in 2002? That's not just PII level Mhz, that's *first generation* (late 1997 through 1998) 66mhz FSB PII. Even the lowly Celeron was over the 1Ghz mark by 2002. What precisely is the CPU in your box?
I second this as well. It's harder to install than Ubuntu but it still works "acceptably" on a 200mhz Pentium with 128MB of *slooow* RAM. (based on fairly recent experience. Note of course that's booting up and displaying basic pages in Firefox with "NoScript" installed. You ain't watching YouTubes on it.) Or, heck, if you insist Lubuntu will probably work better than an old version of Xubuntu running from Wubi.
Really though, back to the bigger issue: I have no idea what the used computer market is like in the UK, but I've tossed a number of computers more powerful than what you claim to have into electronic waste recycling over the last few years, and sold others (laptops) at garage sales for $10-$20 each. (Essentially charity there, it was totally not worth my time slapping Xubuntu on them but hopefully the buyers got some use out of the systems.) Do you need someone to give you a nickel?
That and they basically give away P4s by now - if you're lucky, you might get a Prescott, and while a bit slow, it's still capable and runs 64-bit OSes fine.
Replace the PC with the Mac. Its an Intel machine, meaning if you wanted, you could run Windows on it via Boot Camp or a VM. Depending on the graphics card, you might even be able to run Windows 8.
Not much left to say except that IPalindromeI and Gorgonops are completely correct. Debian will do well on a low-reosurce system, and if you were looking to increase your linux leetness anyway, just run it console only. You'll save desk space by getting rid of a mouse and using screen will let you tile your applications, or just run them one at a time in separate panes that you switch between. (Sort of like iOS or System 6.)
In addition, using a very simple text processing application like vi or nano/pico might be even better for your writing, and then later on you can connect to the machine using ftp, samba, or preferably sftp to pull the text file off and put it into a graphical application on any other computer you own.
Other nice things you can do with debian include installing telnetd or sshd so you can remotely access it from a Mac or another computer and then run the whole thing headless, if you want. (Although sometimes sitting down at the console of a console-only machine is exciting, and since you are the resident hipster of the site, it's certainly worth noting that this is an experience you might find valuable.)
You can do e-mail with alpine, twitter with perl and ttytter, you could go to m.facebook.com in links or lynx2 (or was it links2 and lynx? I can never remember, I'm sure somebody will fill in this detail with correct information, and I thank them in advance) and read RSS feeds with canto and use finch for instant messaging.
Console computing is actually really exciting and to be honest, is one of the biggest and most exciting reasons (for me) to use something other than a Macintosh with Mac OS X or a Windows PC with Windows 7/8.
As it was said above, in some places it basically rains better computers. I'll mirror what gorgonops said and mention that I have myself (and I routinely see people do even today) given away much more powerful computers than the one you've listed. I gave a friend a 2.8GHz P4 Northwood with at least a gig or two of ram and a new hard disk, as well as a monitor/keyboard/mouse, and another friend a Core2 E7400 system with a discrete graphics card and dual mirrored hard disks (on the Mac side of things, this would be a system that qualifies to run Mavericks by the way, I think 2009 is the equivalent model-year iMac to this system) along with a few laptops and of course some of my oldest ThinkPads routinely get brought to the local electronics recycling places if I can't find a use or justify having them around.
If you looked, you'd be able to find better hardware, and really, if even gorgonops is telling you that you need better hardware, then it's advice that you should probably not take lightly. Computing tasks change over time and unfortunately today that means sometimes operating systems, web browsers, and other everyday things get bigger as well. To put it simply, a computer like the one you describe (which really, I'll reiterate it again, sounds like a decked system from about 1996 or 1997, nearly twenty years old) just can't keep up.
This isn't cars where efficiency and performance progress peaked industrywide in the 1960s or 1970s and the only new things are safety features. This is computers where you can now outperform entire '90s datacenters in a single laptop.
The good news is that BeOS/Zeta/Haiku or even something like OpenSTEP might run on that 300MHz machine as a toy machine if you should pick up better hardware for your daily use.
In addition, using a very simple text processing application like vi or nano/pico might be even better for your writing, and then later on you can connect to the machine using ftp, samba, or preferably sftp to pull the text file off and put it into a graphical application on any other computer you own.
Other nice things you can do with debian include installing telnetd or sshd so you can remotely access it from a Mac or another computer and then run the whole thing headless, if you want. (Although sometimes sitting down at the console of a console-only machine is exciting, and since you are the resident hipster of the site, it's certainly worth noting that this is an experience you might find valuable.)
You can do e-mail with alpine, twitter with perl and ttytter, you could go to m.facebook.com in links or lynx2 (or was it links2 and lynx? I can never remember, I'm sure somebody will fill in this detail with correct information, and I thank them in advance) and read RSS feeds with canto and use finch for instant messaging.
Console computing is actually really exciting and to be honest, is one of the biggest and most exciting reasons (for me) to use something other than a Macintosh with Mac OS X or a Windows PC with Windows 7/8.
As it was said above, in some places it basically rains better computers. I'll mirror what gorgonops said and mention that I have myself (and I routinely see people do even today) given away much more powerful computers than the one you've listed. I gave a friend a 2.8GHz P4 Northwood with at least a gig or two of ram and a new hard disk, as well as a monitor/keyboard/mouse, and another friend a Core2 E7400 system with a discrete graphics card and dual mirrored hard disks (on the Mac side of things, this would be a system that qualifies to run Mavericks by the way, I think 2009 is the equivalent model-year iMac to this system) along with a few laptops and of course some of my oldest ThinkPads routinely get brought to the local electronics recycling places if I can't find a use or justify having them around.
If you looked, you'd be able to find better hardware, and really, if even gorgonops is telling you that you need better hardware, then it's advice that you should probably not take lightly. Computing tasks change over time and unfortunately today that means sometimes operating systems, web browsers, and other everyday things get bigger as well. To put it simply, a computer like the one you describe (which really, I'll reiterate it again, sounds like a decked system from about 1996 or 1997, nearly twenty years old) just can't keep up.
This isn't cars where efficiency and performance progress peaked industrywide in the 1960s or 1970s and the only new things are safety features. This is computers where you can now outperform entire '90s datacenters in a single laptop.
The good news is that BeOS/Zeta/Haiku or even something like OpenSTEP might run on that 300MHz machine as a toy machine if you should pick up better hardware for your daily use.
When I drop down to a terminal, this is what I use:
So yeah, those are great. Also heard good about hnb, etc.
- elinks: Most robust modern console browser. Some people like w3m better, and links2, while older does framebuffer graphics!
- vim: Emacs must die. (Actually, I'm cool with it, but it's bloaty and too complex, so I use mg for the emacs times)
- tmux: Windowing system that's nice - also does detachment! You have no excuses to run screen.
- cmus: Good easy to use music player.
- smuxi: spoilers, I contributed code to this, so I use this instead of irssi. A lot like Quassel.
- mutt: Alpine feels clunky.
- mcabber: A bit clunky, but adequate and does OTR!
So yeah, those are great. Also heard good about hnb, etc.
You can detach from Screen by using ctrl+A,then-d, or just closing your ssh session and using screen -raAd (or whatever particular set of switches you prefer) on your next system.
I have heard a lot of people like tmux a lot though.
Console is definitely like graphical in that there are a lot of choices available.
One other thing that the OP may consider to maximise the performance of a 300MHz system is to compile gentoo: http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/where.xml
I have heard a lot of people like tmux a lot though.
Console is definitely like graphical in that there are a lot of choices available.
One other thing that the OP may consider to maximise the performance of a 300MHz system is to compile gentoo: http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/where.xml
He'll be waiting a bit though, especially if he wants anything that matters! I build the kernel on my Pentium D and it took 30 minutes, with barely any modules. I can't see that on 300 Mhz. Personally, I'd suggest OpenBSD - it's small, fast, and secure - well suited if he wants to learn servering.
You can do the same in tmux: Ctrl+B (instead of A) and d, and then tmux attach.
You can do the same in tmux: Ctrl+B (instead of A) and d, and then tmux attach.
I have two P4 systems of about that caliber that are sitting in the garage waiting either for a garage sale or to be carted down to Weirdstuff just to get them out of my life, and a third that I'll probably hold onto for a little longer because it's a really nice machine (A small form-factor Optiplex GX280 with a 915 chipset and a nice quiet cooling system) and I sort of hate to just toss it. (But see below for the "test" as to why I'm not actually using it; it failed to meet that criteria when the thing expected of it was to play flash games on pbskids.org. Just a wee bit too slow.)
The thing that really needs to be understood by the OP here is that from a corporate accounting standpoint it's pretty typical for a computer to be "worthless", IE, it's on the books with an asset value of "Zero", after only three or four years. That's how people end up with these things for free, or nearly so. And:
Heh. As much as I defend the right of someone to use an oddball or ancient computer because it's their hobby, (and occasionally express some ire with a certain company which has this tendency to be a bit aggressive when it comes to "forced obsolescence"), I also acknowledge that if you want/need a computer to just do its job without forcing the user to jump through hoops then you have to draw some realistic lines in the sand as to what caliber of a machine will suffice. Where exactly that line lies is certainly subjective, but assuming using the web is a priority at all and we're talking about x86 hardware running "mainstream" applications (IE, a heavyweight HTML5 browser like Firefox/Chrome/IE/Safari with the option of Flash support and capable of video playback with today's common codecs) the bottom end of acceptable is squarely in the fastest Pentium 4/Pentium M - early Core Duo ballpark; IE, a mainstream (not bottom-end) 2005 to 2008-ish machine. That's just the way it is. You can get by with less, but my criteria is based on this idea:
You're putting together a computer for someone to browse the web with. You don't know exactly what that person will be doing, but you can guess that they'll be doing the usual FaceFriend/YabberTube/FarmVole-type-web-and-Flash-games rigmarole. (And that they probably *won't* be playing 3D games or production-grade Photoshopping.) And, here's the critical part, you don't want them to be constantly calling you and asking you why their computer fell over when they just clicked on something.
Pick a computer that fits that description for your production non-hobby machine. Life it too short not to, and it's not like it's hard to achieve it. Doing a quick search of "sold listings" on ebay.co.uk shows it's pretty trivial to get a Core Duo 2 Dell Optiplex. a good corporate-grade computer that will probably continue to pass the "minimum acceptable" bar for a couple more years, for 40-50 pounds. (Probably *from* someone that got it for free, or nearly so, from a big corporation.)
Feh. I guess the OP's "Oh, pity me, I'll never be able to afford a new floppy drive for my Mac, let alone a computer" act is getting a little old. If he's genuinely destitute I'm sorry, but it sort of reads more to me like there's a prioritization problem at work here.
Bleah.
Processor: AMD Athlon XP.Speed: The new one from 2004 just makes it to the 1 GHz mark.
Wubi: Because I wanted to keep Windows without repartitioning.
Try again. The first desktop Athlons marketed as "Athlon XP" debuted in late 2001 with a 1.33Ghz clocked version, the "1500+", as the slowest model. The last Windows gaming PC I ever built I put together sometime around May 2001 with the 1.33Ghz version of the XP's "Thunderbird" predecessor... and thus I know exactly how fast a machine like that is, and if that's what you have I don't actually pity you that much. You could use more RAM but a 1.33Ghz Athlon is still way faster than a 2008 NetBook and should navigate the web semi-competently. Seriously, where did this "300mhz" come from? If your machine is from 2004 and using an Athlon XP it would be pretty likely to have a "3000+" model number, which would be clocked over 2Ghz. (And would compare pretty well with a late Pentium M/Core Solo-equipped computer.)
If you really did have an AMD machine with a 300Mhz CPU it'd have to be a K6 or K6-2 from late 1998-1999.
Repartitioning is not hard - it takes a minute to do.
Also, regular Ubuntu will NOT run too terribly well on that machine anyways. Either install Ubuntu from the mini.iso/Server or get Debian and install a small desktop like Xfce/install without a desktop and built from the bottom up
Also, regular Ubuntu will NOT run too terribly well on that machine anyways. Either install Ubuntu from the mini.iso/Server or get Debian and install a small desktop like Xfce/install without a desktop and built from the bottom up
I second that. My mom had an HP Pavilion tower that came equipped with an AMD Athlon processor (labelled 3000+ on the front label). Here's a picture of the tower with the specs up front:
A friend had a computer that looked exactly like that, but it had a Pentium 4 instead clocked at 3GHz.
Just to add, if you really do have an AMD machine from almost 2005, it shouldn't be too hard to add like a gig of ram to that thing and put in a not-dying hard disk(1) and have regular, modern Ubuntu or Xubuntu perform pretty well on there. I don't know if I'd put so much money into a machine like that as to get a SATA card if you don't already have one, but that's just because you can get late Pentium4s and Ds and early-mid generation Core2 desktops for not much more and those will be faster in every single way by probably a factor of two or so.
I absolutely second the suggestion that you look for an old OptiPlex 520/620 or 745 or greater. The 280 was a nice machine but the 520/620 and netburst-based 745s have better cooling. The 745 in particular can also run a Core2Quad q6600/6700 and up to eight gigs of ram. You can also put current PCI Express graphics cards in them. That particular config is a reasonably good base for the next few years if you're really into the "computing on the absolute lowest budget possible" thing.
(1) Just statistically, after eight years there's a pretty good chance the disk is dead or that even if it's not dead, replacing it with a new one will improve performance a whole heck of a lot.
I absolutely second the suggestion that you look for an old OptiPlex 520/620 or 745 or greater. The 280 was a nice machine but the 520/620 and netburst-based 745s have better cooling. The 745 in particular can also run a Core2Quad q6600/6700 and up to eight gigs of ram. You can also put current PCI Express graphics cards in them. That particular config is a reasonably good base for the next few years if you're really into the "computing on the absolute lowest budget possible" thing.
(1) Just statistically, after eight years there's a pretty good chance the disk is dead or that even if it's not dead, replacing it with a new one will improve performance a whole heck of a lot.