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

[zmjjmz]

Toshiba 3480CT laptop

Pentium III 600 mhz
192 mb of ram
80 gb hd split for windows and linux

Currently running Vector Linux Lite and it runs pretty smoothly, although don't know what I should do to make it smoother. Usually I just run Dillo browser and Pidgin IM client. I alternate between IceWM and Fluxbox for a window manager. And with FluxBox, I have transparent windows just to say I can

Try AYTTM instead of Pidgin.

[duanedesign]

have you tried any alternatives for your adobe?

I have GIMP and Inkscape.

Inkscape's pen tool is a lot different than Illustrator. It is really taking some getting used too. Layers would be nice. When using the gradient tool it is not readily apparent how to set multiple stops. I was impressed with Inkscapes ability to do most of the pathfinder features found in Illustrator.

I like GIMP a little better. It has no support for CMYK though.

I have joined the Ubuntu-art launchpad team and Ubuntu-art mailing list and I have been very impressed with some of the art produced. So the capability is their I think their is just a little improvement to be made with the user friendliness.

Dh

[wilgeman]

I love reincarnating old machines that were thrown in the garbage! I used to be a garbage man and one customer threw away a perfectly good laptop, a NEC Versa 486SL 33Mhz 4MB of RAM. The battery was dead and windows 3.1 would not boot, but I was able to install Basic Linux, muLinux, and FreeDOS on the hard drive by installing it in a external laptop drive enclosure and installing the floppy distros through through qemu. I could not get XVesa working because the ram is so little, but everything in command line works great! I also found a HP Pavilion Laptop (850 Duron, 512 MB RAM, and 6x DVD rom) in the trash with a broken hard drive controller, but I use Puppy Linux with a flash drive and live cd to serve as a MP3 and print server. I also was given a WYSE 50 terminal client with no hard drive 300MHz and 64MB of flash Memory and I can get Puppy Linux to boot nicely on it but hangs when doing web browsing.

There is no such thing as an useless computer, Linux can revive 15 year old hardware to be used for something!

[somnambulant]

Running NetBSD on an IBM/Cyrix 6x86L PR200+ 150mhz w/256mb ram. Runs X sufficiently w/fluxbox or awesomewm, but I like it better in console. It sits under the living room couch end table w/the monitor on top and pretty much just runs irssi.

[Mizzou_Engineer]

I currently have a:

Socket 370 - 800mhz Celeron
320mb SDRAM - 256mb Kingston, 64mb Hyundai
Western Digital - 20gb HDD
Trigem Cognac Mobo - 119920 COGNAC 20010412 Rev H.

I've tried installing ubuntu as well as xubuntu, but for some reason it is very slow. I was actually surprised to see that a copy of TinyXP was more responsive on this old computer than xubuntu. Can anyone give me some clues about what is bottlenecking this computer up with ubuntu?

I don't know. I run a socket 370 900 MHz Celeron with 256 MB RAM and it handles Debian Lenny XFCE just fine, so it ought to handle Xubuntu well too- and yours even has more RAM.

[Frak]

PowerMac
Orig:
256MB SDRAM
ATi RAGE 64MB
400MHz Motorola PowerPC
20GB PATA HD

Upgraded:
1GB SDRAM
GeForce 5200 FX
Dual 1.8GHz Sonnettech (Freescale) PowerPC with a fairly large L2 and L3 (256KB and 1MB respectively) and AltiVec support.
250GB PATA w/ firmware hack and 40GB PATA for Linux
137GB SCSI w/ SCSI PCI-X controller @ 10000 RPM

Runs great, especially for a computer made in 1999 that now runs at speed with its Intel counterpart.

[inxygnuu]

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.

how much does it weigh?

i have a computer "built for windows 98" that runs XP, because 98 is completely obsolete. I has a 447 Mz processor, and 128 MB of RAM. I just upgraded the graphics card, but i do not know what kind of card it is. My dad bought it for $2000.

[zmjjmz]

how much does it weigh?

i have a computer "built for windows 98" that runs XP, because 98 is completely obsolete. I has a 447 Mz processor, and 128 MB of RAM. I just upgraded the graphics card, but i do not know what kind of card it is. My dad bought it for $2000.

XP must be pretty slow on that.

[00b00nt00]

Atari STe. 8Mhz 68000 processor, 4MB RAM, up to 4MB shared video memory, 2D graphics accelleration (blitter & hardscrolling). How do I get Ubuntu running on this?

[zmjjmz]

Atari STe. 8Mhz 68000 processor, 4MB RAM, up to 4MB shared video memory, 2D graphics accelleration (blitter & hardscrolling). How do I get Ubuntu running on this?

You don't.

In fact you might as well give up on putting Linux on it.
Maybe OpenBSD?