- This topic has 12 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated Apr 24-12:35 pm by BobC.
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dedotated
SUMMARY: I have many IBM labled Thinkpad laptops that I am re-purposing, they all got 1 gig of ram and 1.5GHz Intel CPUs.
After some research I concluded this distro would be the best suited for these, tried LMDE5 and without launching anything about half the RAM was already being used, browser would freeze up on launch.
I installed AntiX (interesting name, where can I read more about this interpretation of fascism?) on 2 of these, some odd things to note..
Laptop 1 the “Files” and “Help” folders were present on fresh install, but no folders at all on laptop 2.. Laptop 1’s browser crashed from PID 2423 failing everytime I launched it (I think is hardware issue), so I went onto only use laptop 2.
I made a text file and tried to drag it onto the desktop screen from the file manager where the file was already saved on “desktop”, dragging it onto desktop just made it spring back into the folder, nothing appearing on the desktop environment. Also the Conky like widget on the Desktop screen is nice, but when connected to internet, both Laptop #1 & #2 dont display the full “Wlan 0 down” portion, only the top of the text, the graph box seems cut off at the top.
I got internet, and sudo apt update, sudo apt upgrade, during upgrade it got very slow for some reason while updating some language packages, so I exited out, and tried again to get an error saying the cache was locked due to PID 8056 I think, so I killed 8056 and sudo dpkg –configure -a , and then sudo apt upgrade , it seemed to upgrade nothing (problem?)..
Youtube seems to be able to play videos up to 340p, when 480p the video freezes and lags.CONCLUSION: Best RAM utilization out of all the distros I used, and snappiest, GUI feels like a throwback, appreciate it is Debian and not Ubuntu based, feels good man.
Whats with the folder thing, could my USB installation be corrupted? Fix the conky widget? Should I be concerned about the upgrade fail? Any tips on how to improve the speed for getting to 480p on youtube? How is the “X” removed from this system?Great distro, surprised there are not more like this one.
dedotated
Also is there hibernation?
sybok
1) Files on desktop:
I don’t use that so I do not know.2) Slow while upgrading language packages:
Re-generating locales takes time.
If the upgrade was incomplete, try running
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
again and if an issue is reported
sudo apt install --fix-broken3) YouTube videos:
Discussed elsewhere in the forum; suggested to play using ‘mpv’ or more light-weight browser, use lighter youtube alternatives such as ‘hooktube.com’ etc.4) Hibernation:
Not present by default, only suspend.
Discussed elsewhere in the forum; I believe that it was possible to enable it by installing ‘xfce4-power-manager’ but I am not 100% sure.
Search for hibernation on the forum.
Be aware that a lot people reported issues with Linux and hibernation in general in the past.5) Laptop #1: browser crash
Try to start the browser from terminal, e.g.
firefox-esr &
and examine the crash report.6) How is the ‘X’ removed from this system:
What is “the ‘X'”? X11 server? Some other ‘X’?7) Could installation get corrupted:
Yes, it may sometimes happen.
I know of another incident when running another live USB Linux froze during resizing partitions; my then-resized Windows never recovered from that.If you are interested in more help or help from more experienced members, please provide output of ‘inxi -Fxz’ for your hardware.
BobC
No, hibernaion is not included. Lots of machines have problems with hibernating or waking up.
Anonymous
hi dedotated,
On the web browser crashing, you may have to use the non-sse2 version of palemoon browser.
Some of the celeron-M and pentium-M cpus in laptops lack pae and sse2. I also recommend sticking with the
4.9 kernels on that old of hardware. Also is this with antiX 19 or 21?
punranger
Just my two cents: Storing files on the desktop doesn’t work on my installs either. I think it may have to do with antiX using a window manager instead of a full desktop environment (to keep the system lean). I recommend storing all files in the Home directory anyway.
Modern web pages are notorious for being RAM and processor hogs, especially streaming sites. The limitation is actually in the hardware, not so much you can do about it, except as suggested to use some YouTube alternatives, for example. (If the system is 32-bit, you’ll also have problems playing DRM videos, such as Netflix.)
antiX linux: The best way to revive an old computer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCTaUAP6sSg
“Desktop” means different things to different file managers.
Myself, I like it where “Desktop” refers to a /home/username/Desktop folder. zzzFM uses a desktop like that. Rox-filer does not. Since you have old/slow hardware, I would suggest trying the IceWM desktop with your file manager default changed to zzzFM.
caprea
I also recommend sticking with the
4.9 kernels on that old of hardwareCompletely agree with this.
For your information, on antiX21 full the 4.9 kernel is used during the live sessions, but after the installation to internal drive the 5.10 kernel is used.The 4.9 kernel is still installed as fallback. You can boot into it by using the advanced options on the bootscreen.
Brian Masinick
hi dedotated,
On the web browser crashing, you may have to use the non-sse version of palemoon browser.
I also recommend sticking with the
4.9 kernels on that old of hardware. Also is this with antiX 19 or 21?I agree with this 100%. For one thing, Palemoon behaves similarly to Firefox, minus the overhead of recent versions.
Regarding multimedia, if you look at the antiX multimedia applications, as suggested earlier, these are also helpful, particularly on systems that are old and have limited resources available. All of these suggestions together should allow you to have a successful experience. If you continue to experience difficulties, please let us know which of the suggestions you have tried and provide details on the areas with continued issues and we’ll try to assist in finding a resolution.
- This reply was modified 1 year ago by Brian Masinick.
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Brian Masinickhi Brian,
I had to correct my post …. It’s sse2 for the name on the Palemoon package not pae,
non-pae is the kernel for the old cpus.PPC
On the desktop icons – I don’t use them, but I tested and, if you use a zzz-* desktop (example zzz-icewm) you can drag and drop icons to your “Desktop” folder (using zzzfm file manager) and they’ll appear instantly on your desktop…
P.
caprea
Yes, you have to use a zzz-* or Rox-* desktop for desktop icons.
But with only 1 gb of memory and slow CPU, you might want to save memory and CPU by running the icewm desktop. You can access the Desktop folder (files or programs or links to them, sub-folders, etc) directly from the menu system using IceWM itself, without loading a file manager.
PS: You can also create your own toolbar icons to run things you use frequently.
- This reply was modified 1 year ago by BobC.
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