Questions around AntiX using and old Atom CPU

[Member Empty Handed]

Hello everyone.

Im running AntiX on an old netbook with Intel Atom N270 with 2GB RAM. Runs very good with very low CPU and RAM usage. Of course it cant load pages very fast but seems to do the work.Are there any tips that i can do to speed up things a little? Or remove unwanted stuff? Also any recommendations for terminal apps?
I already asked a question about how to install a package thats only on Sid and testing.
Should i remove swap?(Will decrease performance)How to do this? Also i encrypt the whole disk will this a performance loss as well?
Thanks for your wonderful job!

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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The best way to improve performance is to improve hardware performance.

On my 6-7 year old Dell Inspiron laptop, for instance, I replaced the physical hard drive with a solid state drive (SSD). That gave me a significant performance improvement.

Installing faster memory, a faster CPU, etc. are other things that you can do. Using antiX is already a method of taking full advantage of old hardware; replacement of hardware components with faster hardware is the best way to improve performance.

I’ve never seen a more effective and efficient way to use old hardware than antiX; even Puppy Linux and Absolute Linux,two efficient distributions, have similar performance; I personally prefer antiX though these are legitimate alternatives.

• This reply was modified 8 months ago by Brian Masinick.

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Brian Masinick

[Member oops]

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Hi,
Here I use Palemoon (+ Nojavascript + HTML5 Media tuner + Lull the tabs pluggins) instead Firefox
I have a swap partition, Roxterm is fine, and I use zswap (2GB of RAM here too)

(added into grub: zswap.enabled=1 zswap.compressor=zstd zswap.max_pool_percent=45 zswap.zpool=z3fold)

• This reply was modified 8 months ago by oops.
• This reply was modified 8 months ago by oops.

[Member astronut]

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Hello! I have Antix running on an Acer AspireOne D255E with Atom N455 (1.66GHz. 512KB cache) and 2GB ram and it seems to do well for me so far.

AntiX, Lilidog, PCLinuxOS, Mabox, SparkyLinux, Bodhi

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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Palemoon works well; we have a pretty current version available in our package installer tool.
I was running Seamonkey the other day; incidentally I have a resource setting I can add to either Palemoon or Seamonkey that allows them to behave similarly to Firefox and Chrome when using tools such as Yahoo Mail, which will probably result in a similar appearance for the majority of commonly used applications; both Palemoon and Seamonkey are somewhat more resource efficient than Firefox; both are available in package installer.

I’ve NOT seen any difficulty in antiX working on any of the systems I’ve used this year, dating back to systems built in the 2007-2008 timeframe (and that’s just using the standard tools; we have media tools that can be used to be extra careful with memory if the mainstream browsers consume too many resources; we also have browser alternatives that have more limited capabilities, but they would be a help for those who can’t make good use of full-featured browsers because they consume too many memory resources. – this includes dillo, lynx, etc. Where there’s a will, if you can compromise the fancy features, our distro can provide those resource conservative tools.

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Brian Masinick

[Member Vincent17]

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I use a netbook with that processor for reading books and for travel. It has 2GB memory, 1GB swap file, 16GB flash drive, no hard drive. I’ve never noticed any swap usage indicated in conky. Browsing is a little slow but reliable with firefox + ublock-origin. Always hoping for a miracle, I have tried various linuxes and BSDs on that computer, but I always come back to antiX.

Regarding browsers, I had high cpu usage with libbyapp.com book reader, so I experimented with several light browsers before concluding libby was the problem. I tried surf, netsurf, midori, seamonkey, palemoon, ungoogled chromium, otter, falkon, epiphany, but for me none had any advantage over firefox. 32-bit support for palemoon and chromium seems shaky and epiphany won’t run in firejail.

MSI Wind U100, Atom N270 32-bit 1.6GHz single core, Antix-21 base, full-featured encrypted installation with live-usb-maker. jwm-rox, firefox, firejail, protonvpn-cli, qpdf, leafpad, mtpaint; nothing heavy like office, gimp, etc. I don’t think encryption slows anything down other than a small delay after entering the passphrase.

[Member blur13]

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cmus for music (mp3), spotify tui and spotifyd for spotify, Alpine for email, Links2 for browsing, Micro text editor, sc for spreadsheets, nnn file manager, we-get for searching torrents, rtorrent for bittorrent client, castnow for chromecast, gcalcli for google calendar.

The above programs run in a terminal and makes my netbook with similar specs perform many “modern” tasks with no effort.

For a modern browser I recommend Chrome. Performance is simply better than Firefox on old machines. It uses about 100-150 Mbit less RAM. And most of the modern web is optimized for Chrome. There are of course privacy concerns and its closed source.

[Member ModdIt]

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Hi all, chrome uses less ram but watch cache size, it is also the most anti privacy option you can use.
UngoogledChromium and LibreWolf are way better options.
Neither can remove the tracking tricks which are internet related, both offer an excellent user experience.

On ungoogled uBlock origin can be installed without play store. Posted how to recently.

[Member oops]

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… I have to try Chrome (never tried into Linux).
Otter-Browser is fine too for an old PC/eepc.

[Member Empty Handed]

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Thank you all!
Happens to own MSI Wind U100 as well! Im aware this CPU cant handle much.Laptop runs very hot.(waiting for cold days)
Im using Pale Moon for a while and seems to run decent.
I got excited with the Newsroom app.
Also Poor Man’s Radio Player is very good i wish i could set my favorite radios from links.
I managed to set up Retro Arch and be able to play some DOS , MAME , and even GBA games . Tried to play PSP and PS1 but i suppose CPU with IGPU cant handle.Im wondering if it would be lighter to play them directly from their Emulator or RetroArch app is OK?
Finally im also looking for a note taking app but with Calendar features if possible.

[Member Empty Handed]

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I upgraded to sid packages and my package did install!
I ended up using Firefox-ESR , seems more resources hungry but with u block and javascript disabled makes the job fine.
Are there any about:config entries i should change to increase performance a bit?

AntiX makes this netbook usable. Really thanks!

[Member marcelocripe]

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Hello Empty Handed.

Welcome to antiX Linux and the forum.

I don’t know how to write in English and I send my texts translated by the internet translator. I hope you can understand everything, if your native language is not English, please translate my original Brazilian Portuguese text directly into your language with the help of internet translators.

Regardless of your level of knowledge about GNU/Linux, I recommend you read these excellent tutorials created by @PPC:

What is antiX and how to try it out or install it.
Short essential how-to list for the complete Linux newbie.
How-to install applications – 2020 version.
How to: correctly use antiX forum.

When I first started using antiX, I read the tutorials that PPC created, these readings saved me a lot of time and I think it saves time for any new antiX user. Your time will not be wasted with these readings, everything will seem to be much easier than you could imagine. You won’t waste your time searching the internet or even creating new topics, on the contrary, you will gain a lot of time with these readings.

I recommend you try out desktops that have “zzz” in their name. I usually use zzz-IceWM or zzz-JWM or zzz-Fluxbox (each of these desktops has its own characteristics and consumes more or less resources), zzzFM will be the default file manager for your desktop, it it is very similar to the other file managers of other GNU/Linux distributions and Windows XP. To access other antiX workspaces, click on Menu, Desktop, Other Desktops and click on the workspace name, instantly the workspace will be loaded.

Whenever you need to ask for help or technical support in this forum, please explain in detail what is happening, don’t mince words, be thorough when writing, tell your computer characteristics such as make and model. If possible, post the result of the command $ inxi -Fxz from the terminal, copy and paste here in the message of the topic that you are going to create in this forum.

When you start a topic or participate with a post, remember to check the option “Notify me of follow-up replies via email”, by checking this option, you will receive a message in your email box whenever there are replies from topic in question.

Are there any about:config entries i should change to increase performance a bit?

Workspaces that have “Minimal” in their name are the least resource-intensive in antiX.

marcelocripe
(Original text in Brazilian Portuguese language)

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Olá Empty Handed.

Seja bem-vindo(a) ao antiX Linux e ao fórum.

Eu não sei escrever em idioma Inglês e envio os meus textos traduzidos pelo tradutor da internet. Eu espero que você consiga compreender tudo, caso o seu idioma nativo não seja o Inglês, por favor, traduza o meu texto original em idioma Português do Brasil diretamente para o seu idioma com a ajuda dos tradutores da internet.

Independentemente do seu nível de conhecimento sobre GNU/Linux, eu recomendo você ler estes excelentes tutoriais criados pelo @PPC:

What is antiX and how to try it out or install it.
Short essential how-to list for the complete Linux newbie.
How-to install applications – 2020 version.
How to: correctly use antiX forum.

Quando eu comecei a utilizar o antiX, eu li os tutoriais que o PPC criou, estas leituras me pouparam muito do meu tempo e acho que poupa o tempo de qualquer novo usuário do antiX. O seu tempo não será perdido com estas leituras, tudo parecerá ser muito mais fácil do que você poderia imaginar. Você não perderá o seu tempo com pesquisas na internet ou até mesmo em criar novos tópicos, ao contrário, você ganhará muito tempo com estas leituras.

Eu recomendo você experimentar as áreas de trabalho que possuem “zzz” em seu nome. Eu costumo utilizar o zzz-IceWM ou zzz-JWM ou zzz-Fluxbox (cada uma destas áreas de trabalho possuem características próprias e consomem mais ou menos recursos), o zzzFM será o gerenciador de arquivos padrão da sua área de trabalho, ele é muito semelhante aos outros gerenciadores de arquivos das outras distribuições GNU/Linux e do Windows XP. Para acessar as outras áreas de trabalho do antiX, clique no Menu, Área de Trabalho, Alternar Entre as Áreas de Trabalho e clique sobre o nome da área de trabalho, instantaneamente a área de trabalho será carregada.

Sempre que você precisar solicitar ajuda ou suporte técnico neste fórum, explique com detalhes o que está acontecendo, não economize as palavras, seja minucioso ao escrever, informe as características do seu computador, como a marca e o modelo. Se for possível, poste o resultado do comando $ inxi -Fxz do terminal, copie e cole aqui na mensagem do tópico que você for criar neste fórum.

Quando você iniciar algum tópico ou participar com alguma postagem, lembre-se de marcar a opção “Notify me of follow-up replies via email”, marcando esta opção, você receberá uma mensagem na sua caixa de e-mail sempre que houver respostas do tópico em questão.

Are there any about:config entries i should change to increase performance a bit?

As áreas de trabalho que possuem “Minimal” em seu nome são as que consomem menos recursos no antiX.

marcelocripe
(Texto original em idioma Português do Brasil)

[Member Empty Handed]

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Thanks again!
I have an old Intel Atom N270 netbook with 2gb of RAM only 32bit supported.
On browser conversation i;ve almost tried them all .
Falkon seemed pretty good supports add-ons. With Pale Moon i didnt manage to get addons at all. I’ve got the message that i had to upgrade. Firefox ESR runs too slow to be honest. Slower than Falkon or SeaMonkey.

Sticked with Minimal IceWM. Is it better than zzz? Also could i just remove fluxbox and jwm to make menu less confusing?
Its crazy how CPU stays at 1% usage with AntiX.

[Member Empty Handed]

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I made a mistake and Sound wont appears at bottom taskbar. How did i that? Only checked if there is another sound card on netbook.
Also im experiencing a weird bug with Streamtuner2 that i cant pause/stop a station and there are a lot of connections and radio stations playing together. Adding a lot of CPU usage and at the end crashing.

[Member seaken64]

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I used to use Streamtuner2. It still works, but I mostly use Audacious now. I save links to my radio stations in a folder and start the radio stations by opening the folder and selecting the link (an .m3u file). Very low on memory and I can listen to music while browsing with no issues.

Welcome to antiX.

Seaken64

[Author]

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