Old hardware brought back to life

[Youngblood52]

After successfully loading Kubuntu (32bit) on an old desktop system (3.06Ghz P4 + 2GB dual-boot with Win7x86) and checking it out, I decided to replace the Xubuntu Installs on my old 1GB RAM, 2.4GHz Pentium4-M CPU, WinXPx86 Dell Latitude C640s.

The first laptop sports an upgraded 1400x1050 panel. The Install, apparently, completed smoothly. After creating the .bin file and altering the boot.ini for dual-boot with the WinXP, I rebooted and selected Kubuntu in the menu and all looked fine ... until the screen switched to white with a moveable mouse cursor (before reaching the login screen).

That was all. When I eventually pressed the power button to bailout, a KUBUNTU screen displayed for a few seconds prior to shutdown.

Thinking the upgraded panel may be (part of) the issue, I then installed Kubuntu on another C640 with a standard 1024x768 panel. Same result.

The graphics on these old laptops is provided by ATI Mobile Radeon 7500s with only 32MB. I am left wondering if the tiny bit of graphics RAM may be the Issue.

Anyway ...

Prior to giving up on running Kubuntu on these laptops and reinstalling another flavor, I decided to take a few days to see if someone here had experience with this specific Issue ... and, possibly, a corrective cfg file workaround.

Thanks for taking the time to read my post.

[sudodus]

I am not sure but I suspect that Kubuntu (as well as standard Ubuntu) wants 3D capability of the graphics hardware. I know that standard Ubuntu can emulate it (I think it is called 'llvmpipe') and it works but very slowly with old hardware.

I don't know the details about Kubuntu, but I am rather sure that you have better luck with a medium light desktop environment, Xubuntu that you have used, or Ubuntu MATE, or the ultra light desktop environment of Lubuntu.

[Youngblood52]

I am not sure but I suspect that Kubuntu (as well as standard Ubuntu) wants 3D capability of the graphics hardware. ...

Thank you for the fast response, sudodus!

Yeah ... I am suspicious of the capability (or lack thereof) of the old RV200 DirectX7 vidcard in these laptops.

If it turns out that Kubuntu is a no-go for these laptops, at least I already know that they can easily handle Xubuntu.

That brief time I spent working with Kubuntu on the old desktop system convinced me that I would prefer it ... if only it and my old laptops played well together.

[Youngblood52]

After giving the system plenty of time to get to the Login, I typed the password ... and the screen went black with a white-outlined black X cursor.

Within a minute (I could see by the HDD activity LED that files were being loaded) a fault notification window appeared, titled Plasma.

"We are sorry, Plasma closed unexpectedly." ...

Above the 4 buttons at the bottom:

Details:
Executable: plasmashell PID: 2650 Signal: Aborted(6) Time: 2/17/17 20:26:29

The buttons are marked:
Report a Bug Debug Restart Application Close

Two tabs at the top:

General Developer Information


As time goes by the title changes from Plasma to Plasma<1> to Plasma<2> to Plasma<3> and so on as restarts apparently fail.

When I have it generate debug info, after it does so it tells me,

"The generated crash information is probably not useful."

Ayup ... it appears to me that Plasma and my first-generation ATI Mobility Radeon VidCard are just not playing well together.

[mörgæs]

In original post, top part, there is a link showing memory consumption in various Buntus. With this 'in memory' I am not surprised that Kubuntu and Plasma are too much of a workload for the old C640.

Distrohopping is a good thing but I recommend that you try a selection of the light ones.

[Youngblood52]

G'morning, mörgæs!

Yes, I saw that memory comparison (just prior to happily whiling away a chunk of afternoon reading the info contained in this Thread ) .

It left me with a tiny hope that I might be able to install & boot Kubuntu so that I could then checkout how proggies actually functioned.

Going into it, I figured that the 2 possible tripping points were the 1GB of RAM limitation and the antique graphics capabilities.

Schade ... I will have to be satisfied with Xubuntu on my C640s and Kubuntu on my old, rarely-used desktop.

Actually, I am considering replacing the Ubuntu on my primary laptop with Kubuntu.

Thanks for sharing your insight & advice!

[mörgæs]

You're welcome. If you while experimenting find some advice that is useful to others please post and I shall add it to the original post.

[hennmann]

Perhaps this is not the place to request advice on what version I should or should not use or perhaps it is. After being turned off from having to use the command line and being away from Linux for a number of years I decided to give it another try with "older hardware" that isn't being brought to life, but is always in use with Windows XP32/64.7 32/64, and Limping along on Windows 10/32 Professional making me reconsider the command line saga
This is what I'm currently using:
MSI K8T Neo2-F Motherboard(originally designed for the socket 939 AMD 64 bit processor now being picked on by Windows 8.1 and 10, 64 bit versions) with the only issues of Dinosaur VGA and temperamental with RAM
AMD Athlon 64 x2 4800+ 2.4GHz Toledo dual core
MSI FX5700LE TD128 VGA ( Nvidia G-Farce FX) Dual monitor
DDR PC3200/400 RAM @4GB
Silicon Image 3114 SATA PCI card (4 SATA ports)
Aiwa TD-AS10 10GB IDE TR3 Tape Drive (Identical to the Sony SuperStation)
And essential goodies such as a floppy drive which is still used.

Would the latest and greatest Ubuntu work fine with this or am I possibly going to run into driver issues? The last version of Ubuntu I stumbled around with was 5.10/64 bit and it is obviously no longer supported even though its from 2006

[JKyleOKC]

With only 4 GB of RAM you may have problems with the current mainstream Ubuntu and all its included eye candy, but the Xubuntu variation (which differs only in having less eye candy and a less-bloated window manager) should work for you (I have run older version of this in as little as 256 MB of RAM. but it crawled rather than ran). None of the current releases require use of the command line, although many of the replies here in the forum tend to imply otherwise. The reason for the prevalence of command-line responses is that they are MUCH easier to describe visually, and are not subject to wild variations depending on exactly which video chip or text editor one uses.

I doubt that you'll run into driver issues although not all the older Nvidia hardware is still supported properly. And I have no experience with tape drives, having stopped using them when the Q80 format became obsolete some 10 to 20 years ago. You WILL need a DVD player to install any current version, since they have all grown too bloated to fit onto a CD, and USB 2.0 support will also be extremely helpful.

I would recommend, though, that you try the LTS versions, the latest of which is 16.04.2, rather than the "latest and greatest." The LTS versions are for "long term support" while the three that come between each of them are essentially beta tests for new ideas, so have quite a few more bugs plus shorter support lives!

[sudodus]

@hennmann,

'+1' I would also suggest that you try the LTS versions, and would add Lubuntu and Ubuntu MATE to Xubuntu as good candidates. I have a computer with AMD Athlon 64 x2 4400+ and old nvidia graphics (not the same chip as yours), and all these flavours with light desktop environments work well without any tweaking at all.

See this link for details, Try Ubuntu (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, ...) before installing it