Old/crappy pc/laptop users, come chat and share here!

[raul_]

Hey!

All of you who own one of those pc's or laptops that came with a sticker saying "Designed for Windows 95", (ok that's pushing it, mine says Windows 98 ) this is the place for you!

I actually own a pretty recent Desktop (two years) that supports Beryl and such..but the darn monitor died on me, and I had to run for my until now hobby 8 year old laptop. I started recovering it for the fun of it, I actually spent a little too much money on it buying a new battery and RAM chip (you wouldn't believe how expensive old parts can be) and right now it's running surprisingly fast!

I can do all of the basic stuff, I can even play media from my ipod! (My music is stuck in my desktop) Of course that doesn't make much sense, since I can use my headphones...Anyway, the only thing this baby can't do well is watching videos (Youtube videos get choppy) but I even got to enable some transparency for show off it's only for the screenshots though...

Here are my specs:

8 year old Toshiba Satellite 4060CDT
128MB RAM
333Mhz
3,7GB HD
Trident Graphics card
Ubuntu Feisty Server running Fluxbox (i had 3 WM installed at once, last week )

This is supposed to be a place where we share applications/solutions meant to be light and responsive on an old computer. This is one of the many reasons why I love Linux: your computer doesn't have to be top notch to run a fully up to date system.

You can also share Window Managers, Distributions, anything you want


Right now I'm using Galeon/Seamonkey as the Web Browser, and they are really responsive. Galeon spends a little more RAM, but it renders pages much faster, and it's very responsive, and it uses my GTK theme, so that's a bonus.

As a file manager I chose PCManFM, and I just love it. It's very very responsive, and the interface is very intuitive, it's a bit like Thunar.

MSN Client: Pidgin. It's hard to find light graphical MSN clients. Now or then I use centericq though, but I actually don't need to. Since i trim down in everything else, at least I can spend something in my messenger, and Pidgin is not a hog at all.

Media Player: every once in a while someone will send me videos in msn, and I use xine to watch them (xine-ui package), and I use XMMS for my music, but I don't use them much.

Right now, conky marks 57% RAM used with a web browser, a file manager, and a messenger client running, and my system is not laggy at all!


Cheers

[fyllekajan]

I have an old 286 laptop with 1024K ram and 30M hdd with no math processor but a monochrome screen with the colors brown and orange even more so than ubuntu itself. It's capable of running Windows 3.0 with the right drivers, but only has dos. It's capable of formatting floppy disks. It's also heavy so maybe it could be used as a weapon if someone breaks into my home.

[raul_]

It's capable of formatting floppy disks.

aha! you hold on to that one!

[Golyadkin]

I ran xubuntu on a pentium 350MHz with 64MB of RAM and an ATi Rage Pro 8MB graphics card (w0000t). It actually was really responsive once booted, and worked fine. I gave the computer away though to some kid I know, who could use it more than I can.

[dizee]

Just wondering - are you on dialup on these old computers cos I have one which could be used for the internet but it lacks a lan connector. Wireless USB is an option but the support for that isn't great in linux.

Other than that it should do well with xubuntu by the sounds of it, it's a pII 350 mHz with 128 MB RAM and a whopping 6 GB of hard drive space

[raul_]

I bought an Ethernet pcmcia card and it worked out of the box

Depending on your USB adapter, you could get it working with ndiswrapper. I have a ralink based USB adapter that works fine with WEP, but i still couldn't get it to connect with 802.11 wpa authentication

[arashiko28]

Just wondering - are you on dialup on these old computers cos I have one which could be used for the internet but it lacks a lan connector. Wireless USB is an option but the support for that isn't great in linux.

Other than that it should do well with xubuntu by the sounds of it, it's a pII 350 mHz with 128 MB RAM and a whopping 6 GB of hard drive space

I installed and ethernet card to mine and solved.

[magmon]

I got an old compaq armada m300 from my dad to rebuild the other day. Im not sure, but I think it has about 256 mb of ram, and it has a 12 gig hd. Im considering puppy linux, but it sounds like xubuntu will work fine.

[Statia]

EDIT: never mind, responded to a post to old to be relevant.

[defenestratos]

I have an old 286 laptop with 1024K ram and 30M hdd with no math processor but a monochrome screen with the colors brown and orange even more so than ubuntu itself. It's capable of running Windows 3.0 with the right drivers, but only has dos. It's capable of formatting floppy disks. It's also heavy so maybe it could be used as a weapon if someone breaks into my home.

When I was nine I used to go round to Christopher and Richards house and they had an XT!! They had a 1068...Downstairs they had a 386DX with a cirrus Logic video card with 1mb video ram. They had Windows 3 on there as well but mostly just used Norton Tree or Dosshell. I'll never forget seeing 1026x768 256 colour images for the first time. One night I was at home and in came Chris pushing a huge monitor box. My parents had told them to bring our first computer round and present it by surprise. Never forget that night. Rockford and Civilisation till bedtime! 386sx, 256 kb trident video card, 2mb RAM and 80 megs. State of the art! Later it ran Doom jerkily.

Man I would do a lot to get my hands on those systems again.