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Linux for a 2006 Asus laptop (lemmy.zip)

submitted 1 month ago by kekmacska@lemmy.zip to c/linux4noobs@programming.dev

32 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I digged out my dad's old business laptop from 2006. This Asus rust is almost as old as me. But it booted up a horribly slow Windows 7 Home Premium that is totally unusable. Takes 30-40 minutes to open Chrome. Here are the specs: 40 gb old hard drive that is suprisingly healthy (96℅ according to HDDsentinel, more than 1000 days left) 1.73 ghz Intel Celeron M single core cpu that wasn't exactly the fastest even in 2006 1.25 gb of terribly slow RAM American Megatrends BIOS from 2006 I know Linux can't do miracles, but are there any still supported distro i could install that would actually run better than this shitty windows stuff?

I found puppy slitaz antix tahrpup ArchBang Slax Delicate Damn Small Linux Absolute FunOS LegacyOS exe gnu/linux Do you know others? Or from these which you recommend if my goal is to create a relatively useable, faster computer, preferably while it doesn't look that awful (the desktop or wm). So usability>speed>looks But all these are very important, just in this order. Also recommend a desktop enviroment or a window manager that runs well, but doesn't look that awful and can be installed on these distros

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[–] brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

40 gb old hard drive that is suprisingly healthy (96℅ according to HDDsentinel, more than 1000 days left)

Healthy yes, but if you end up using this daily you'll want to consider swapping in a SATA SSD into it and at least gain some sort of speed.

1.25 gb of terribly slow RAM

Yeah that's low. Is that correct, no corrupt RAM sticks or anything like that to throw the number off?

Do you definitely need Linux with a GUI/desktop environment? I'd expect any flavor of Linux server minus GUI would work fine. Think of it as a little server you spin up and run a few programs maybe for your network or some other hobby.

PS - I think I have a Asus laptop from that era and it had 4GB RAM default, can't tell if yours was just spec'd badly since first purchased.

[+] kekmacska@lemmy.zip -8 points 1 month ago (3 children)

sata is not supported. let alone ssds. do you know even the slightest thing about hardware??? and yes, i need a gui. Also, 4gb ram back then was a lot, like 64 gb today

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

you know even the slightest thing about hardware???

Don't be snotty. Perhaps it's you who doesn't know? Read on. I've gone the distance in refurbishing old laptops. This project is likely to be $100, maybe less depending on what we find. If you can't spend anything, whew, going to be hell.

I've put a SATA drive in a 486SX from 1999. Adapters exist. No, you won't get top speed, but it beats hell out of an HDD.

Update the BIOS first! That can make or break upgrades. Never had an ASUS, worked on plenty, they seem pretty solid on that count.

Look up "max RAM" for that exact model. That can be a real limitation, but I'd bet you could cram at least 4GB, if not 8GB. And remember, manufacturer specs can often be exceeded. Check ASUS, then see what people have said in forums. I've doubled what the maker says is possible many, many times.

Can't speak to a distro, but you need to get an SSD in there and boost the RAM before even bothering.

BTW, any chance that CPU is socketed, removable? I've had great success replacing CPUs in old laptops. Upgrades can be hilariously cheap on eBay. Cheap as in, $10 for a far better chip. Send me the exact model and we'll look.

While we're at it, a new battery is probably cheap, like $20. But that goes in last.

[–] kekmacska@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 month ago

cpu is not removeable. only a few slots are unscrewable on the laptop, propably the battery, ram, storage slots. but i can't find a working screwdriver rn. I meant that you don't know my hardware, it is worse than you think. I had bad luck with adapters, even my 2019 gamer laptop couldn't boot from a hdd using usb-sata adapter, it doesn't even worth to try on a cheap 2006 laptop. Only thing i could get is a bigger pata/ide drive. I looked some up on hardverapro.hu (basically craigslist in hungary), they are rare and doesn't worth the money. Only ram could worth it to upgrade, but first i need a screwdriver

[–] brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

sata is not supported. let alone ssds. do you know even the slightest thing about hardware???

It's just a guess, you never did tell us what specific model Asus you have there.

Not that you're curious but the model I have here is a Asus F8S which seems to be closer to 2008 era e.g. https://www.newegg.com/black-asus-f8-series-f8sn-d1/p/N82E16834220331?srsltid=AfmBOorI8VyoX35T6xRUD0e-Mbg1Q6IFui9Xgy6RlsB2sLLhfuFvIePr

In 2008 laptops did have SATA connections. I have in fact plugged in SATA SSDs into old laptops and desktops from that era and earlier. I doubt 3 years is too much difference but again, no idea on the specific hardware you're looking at so maybe your specific laptop is one of the last generation that was ATA only, not SATA (?)

Also, 4gb ram back then was a lot, like 64 gb today

Yes granted 3 years earlier 4GB would have cost more for sure. 1GB RAM is the bare minimum for Windows 7 Home 32-bit so I guess this thing you have was already at the bare minimum.

The rest of my comment still stands, it will work perfectly fine as a Linux server with CLI only though that's not quite the answer you want.

1.73 ghz Intel Celeron M

EDIT: The CPU you've got is 64-bit capable I believe https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/29733/intel-celeron-m-processor-530-1m-cache-1-73-ghz-533-mhz-fsb-socket-m/specifications.html

So the laptop should have been spec'd for 2GB RAM minimum normally. Thinking you're not reading the full RAM correctly e.g. if in Windows maybe run CPU-Z or similar to actually see what the full RAM and individual RAM sticks claim to have.

[–] averyminya@beehaw.org 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think it's likely that the 1.2gb is usage RAM, with 2GB being total size

[–] kekmacska@lemmy.zip -2 points 1 month ago

1.25 is the total installed. Do you really think i'm so dumb?

[–] kekmacska@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago

the sole reason i didn't tell which laptop is this that i even don't know myself. something asus, from late 2006.

not the F8S. mine is older and weaker and thicker. yes, 3 years is a big difference.

it came with windows xp, but we installed win7 in 2014. even then, security was more important, but it really didn't serve the hardware's intrest. it has 64 bit ein7 home premium, totally unusable, freezes every minute for 10 minutes at least. Yes, the cpu is 64 bit capable, i didn't think about installing a 32 bit system, these are rolled out nowadays. If 64 bit is possible, i have to go with that. I ran msinfo32, i doubt that would report false info. 1.25 gb ram. I could imagine that in late 2006, for a midrange consumer laptop

[–] Hawk@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

SATA started rolling out in drive around 2003/2004, it's possible. My 08 laptop had a Sata ssd.

Just throw Arch/ Alpine on it with sway. If you need a full DE, LXQT is pretty light weight but even plasma is not too expensive tbh.

[–] kekmacska@lemmy.zip -3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

i'd rather burn it than install ANY kde on that. Arch can get into consideration, maybe. Alpine not because i don't hate myself enough to use non-gnu linux. This is a 2006 laptop, and not a high-end one. 40 gb hdd. I'm sure as hell it isn't sata. Sata only started appearing around 2010 in systems that were affordable for a mortal human

[–] Hawk@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

SATA was definitely around before 2010 in consumer hardware. Nonetheless, Alpine is a great distribution and gnu software is packaged for it and freely available. I believe it is busybox by default.

It is musl, but in my experience that's not much of an issue.

Have you had problems with KDE in the past? I typically use i3 but the QT framework is great.

[–] kekmacska@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 month ago

kde is not a problem on high-end hardware. But recommending for this laptop is batshit insane. The fact that you use i3 explains a lot. That's much more lightweight than kde

[–] michael_palmer@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What's wrong with non-GNU Linux? I'm using Alpine with Gnome DE on my old laptop (3rd generation Core i3, 4GB RAM). It feels much faster than Linux Mint Cinnamon.

[–] kekmacska@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago

extremely hard to use. I could install netBSD and Arch, used Tumbleweed, but any non-gnu Linux is beyond me

[–] jared@mander.xyz 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 4 points 1 month ago

Any distro would run better than windows but I wouldn't bother. That laptop is not usable.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Given the age of the thing, your battery is probably going to be pretty much hosed at this point, so you're probably going to be stuck using it plugged in, basically as a desktop.

Also recommend a desktop enviroment or a window manager that runs well, but doesn’t look that awful and can be installed on these distros

Well, at 1.25GB of memory, I probably wouldn't be running a desktop environment at all if possible; just a window manager. If you're willing to use Xorg, which is on its way out in favor of Wayland, I'd probably use that and just a window manager on top of it. Maybe fluxbox as that window manager, which is pretty lightweight. twm might be even lighter, though you may or may not like that.

I think that the memory is going to be pretty tight for some important modern desktop graphical apps, like a web browser, as you've noticed. I mean, you can run it, as long as you're willing to go into swap, but it's going to degrade performance more.

I'd probably make a reasonable server for a lot of uses, if you don't care about running graphical apps.

Not what you asked, but broader-perspective take:

I don't know what your budget is, but I've thrown out a number of computers that are a lot more powerful than that. Given that the thing's battery isn't gonna be in great shape and it sounds like it's going to be limited to desktop-like use, if you want a desktop machine, and unless you specifically want a challenge, if you at all can, I'd probably try to get a used desktop that has at least considerably more memory. The work that you're going to put into your dad's old laptop and the tradeoffs that you'd need to make are ones that I wouldn't consider worthwhile for the savings, myself.

hits Craigslist

Like, this probably isn't near you, but as an example, here's some guy selling, among other things, a used desktop with 16GB of RAM for $30:

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/sys/d/san-jose-dell-office-computers/7813689611.html

That's over an order of magnitude more memory and is going to be far more practical as a desktop. Doesn't have a monitor, have to rustle one of those up, but with something like that, you're going to wind up with a machine that is going to be a lot more usable as a desktop machine.

[–] kekmacska@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

my goal is not a daily driver with this, but only something nostalgic and the idea to run a computer until it really dies and becomes totally unusable (like core components get damaged) anything craigslist is out of the picture, i'm european. I heard about fluxbox, but there are openbox and jwm, icewm, i3 too. Are those any good?

[–] tal@lemmy.today 2 points 1 month ago

my goal is not a daily driver with this, but only something nostalgic and the idea to run a computer until it really dies and becomes totally unusable

Aight, as long as you're moderating your expectations and interested in it from that aspect. Just don't want you to spend a lot of time on it and to be disappointed -- like, no matter what the OS does, some modern graphical applications are going to have heavy RAM usage relative to what's in that machine.

anything craigslist is out of the picture, i’m european

Sure, but I can't believe that the global market for used computers is wildly different. If it were, someone would just get into the business of bulk-moving them across international lines, arbitraging them. I'm sure that Europe has analogous services.

kagis

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/15tqw98/what_is_your_countrys_equivalent_of_craigslist/

There are some there.

Are those any good?

I mean, it's all relative. There are certainly people who like them enough to use them.

Fluxbox (and blackbox, and openbox) looked kind of similar the last time I was comparing them, which was a long time ago. They look and work more like a conventional Windows windowing environment. They're older and fairly lightweight.

I've used i3 myself for some time (and use sway now, which is an i3-alike for Wayland), so I don't have any criticisms of it, but it may or may not be what you want, if you're not familiar with a tiling windowing environment. It probably wouldn't be the first thing I'd recommend to someone getting their feet wet with Linux off Windows, as it's one more thing to become familiar with, and you're probably going to be doing a fair bit of that already.

I don't recall using jwm, and the last time I used icewm was so long ago that I can't recall anything about it.

[–] DeltaWingDragon@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

The distro itself doesn't matter that much for performance. Pick whatever you want, and use XFCE or IceWM for the desktop (or even go CLI only).

I recommend Debian or OpenSUSE for an easy install, and Arch, Artix, or Void if you're more experienced.

PS: Windows 7 is one of the best versions of Windows and it's not distributed anymore, that's a piece of history! Don't overwrite it, even if it does suck.

[–] kekmacska@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

i want to have an usable computer, not something that freezes in every minute and fries itself. Because of this, windows 7, Debian, openSUSE is not taken into consideration. Just like Arch and Artix, since it is a 32bit computer, artix, arch doesn't have 32bit builds. Void can work, though

[–] DeltaWingDragon@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Another recommendation: Peppermint Linux, a lightweight Debian-based distro with XFCE as the desktop. Designed for older computers, and has a 32-bit version. Not to be confused with Linux Mint.

Safety info: Do not use Damn Small Linux, it is unmaintained and will not receive any security fixes.

About Debian, OpenSUSE not taken into consideration: Linux under-the-hood (not the desktop components) are fast even on old hardware. If you use a light DE/WM like XFCE or IceWM it will run quite smoothly. I have installed Debian on an old computer (2GB RAM, single core Celeron CPU, spinning HDD) and I have not noticed any significant slowdowns.

About Windows 7: I know it's absolutely unusable, I just don't want to see it destroyed. Like a rusted-out undriveable classic car that I don't want to see in a junkyard. Maybe copy the HDD image or something?

[–] kekmacska@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I installed antix meanwhile, now can't connect to wifi

[–] DeltaWingDragon@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Do you have NetworkManager installed?
Do you have the right network driver?
Does this machine even have a wifi card?

[–] kekmacska@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It has a wifi card, it worked on windows. Network Manager is not installed. No way to install it without internet. Idk the network driver. Now i run a web server from it, using an ethernet cable

[–] DeltaWingDragon@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

If your ethernet works, then you can connect and then install NetworkManager using apt.

If it doesn't work, try booting into the Live ISO, downloading the package onto the hard drive without installing, then rebooting into the normal environment and installing from the file.

[–] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Gentoo

[–] kekmacska@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

i don't like source based stuff too much. There is no point for compiling, especially on such a low-spec device

[–] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Arch?

[–] kekmacska@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 month ago

maybe. But something like ArchBang then, something more lightweight by default

[–] R3D4CT3D@midwest.social -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

check out mx linux w kde, instead of xcfe.

[–] kekmacska@lemmy.zip -3 points 1 month ago

are you alright? even xfce won't run well on this computer. And kde doesn't even run on my gamer laptop fluently. My goal is to make an useable laptop, not to blow it up