raymac46 Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 Since I'm locked down for the present time I decided that today was a good day to upgrade MX-Linux on my oldest desktop system from MX-18 to MX-19. This is always a painful experience. I have to totally reinstall MX-Linux as there is no in place upgrade procedure. It's a fugly old machine so I don't bother keeping a separate /home partition. 325 GB SATA2 drive. DDR2 RAM. The BIOS doesn't allow USB booting, so I have to burn an ISO image to a DVD and install via an old ATA optical drive. After that I have to reinstall my favorite programs such as Spotify and Rhythmbox. Then I have to copy over my MP3 data. The USB is 2.0 and frightfully slow - about 1 MB/sec. It takes about 2 hours for 8 GB of music, but because it is so slow it is very reliable. As far as video goes, I have a decent enough discrete card in there, but I just use Nouveau. It gives a decent desktop, some 3D effects and nobody in their right mind would try gaming with an Athlon 64 X2 4600. Honestly this is probably the last time I'll install Linux on this machine, which was actually designed to run Vista back in the day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 I got a headache just reading that. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 Yeah, considering that you can get i5 laptops and desktops for under $200 from ebay. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted April 10, 2020 Author Share Posted April 10, 2020 Well at least I don't have to worry about UEFI. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted April 10, 2020 Share Posted April 10, 2020 You do not have to on brand new computers if you do not want to. They all have legacy or uefi. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted April 11, 2020 Share Posted April 11, 2020 I've been considering an upgrade from Kubuntu 19.10 to the 20.04 beta release, since I have time on my hands. But I keep hesitating; "Eoan" has been excellent here, and the EOL isn't until July. I've been having good luck with the "in-between" releases as well as with the LTS releases. Still, I may get too bored and go ahead and install the beta before the official 20.04 LTS release in a couple of weeks. It shouldn't be a painful upgrade, whether I do an in-place upgrade or a fresh installation. Ubuntu gets a lot of criticism, and it isn't perfect, but to me it seems like they've got a good thing gong, with the "Ubuntu Flavours" and all. Plenty of good installation options, good repos and documentation, stable (in my experience). I've been sticking with Kubuntu but I'd like to take a look at Lubuntu 20.04, too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted April 11, 2020 Share Posted April 11, 2020 (edited) 9 hours ago, raymac46 said: nobody in their right mind would try gaming with an Athlon 64 X2 4600. Whilst you may not be able to play todays AAA games nicely on that cpu you can play many games very well on it. https://youtu.be/Cwm9ZskpqnU https://youtu.be/gHARECZ02Hc https://youtu.be/32fcftmNtZc Just a thought but you have a 325 GB drive so why not make a data partition on it ? My first build was a Athlon 64 X2 set up though I used a 4800 cpu and eventually a PHENOM 2 X4 965 Black Edition 3.4 Ghz. Happy memories for me and the pc is still running sweetly. Edited April 11, 2020 by abarbarian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted April 11, 2020 Author Share Posted April 11, 2020 I know it makes sense to set up a separate data partition of some sort but since I update so infrequently on this old rig, I take the lazy man's way out. As far as gaming goes I have two better desktop rigs that I could use. That said, the Athlon 64 X2 is an exception to my 10 year rule and is still a usable processor close to 15 years after it was designed. I believe that the AMD Ryzen design will have that sort of longevity. Right now I have a rather dodgy GTX950 in the box and it makes a lot of fan noise at higher speeds. I would also need to install the nvidia driver to get any sort of game performance and I have had bad experiences with MX-Linux if I do that - install failure, flashing cursor, black screen. With Nouveau the GTX950 runs slow, cool and quiet. The total package plays music very well - which is all I ask from it these days. Horses for courses. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted April 11, 2020 Author Share Posted April 11, 2020 I am waiting for Linux Mint to release its new Ulyana distro after Ubuntu gets its 20.04 release going. That won't be until June/July though and I anticipate having a painless "in place" experience. Linux Mint has not given me fits with switching to the nvidia driver either, although it has been some time since I tried that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted April 11, 2020 Share Posted April 11, 2020 1 hour ago, raymac46 said: As far as gaming goes I have two better desktop rigs that I could use. Yup I would not game on my Athlon either. I did enjoy my Laura Croft early games on it though. I still have and use ocassinonaly the 4x3 Medion monitor which must be almost 13 years old and still going strong. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted April 11, 2020 Author Share Posted April 11, 2020 Well just for giggles I went ahead and made a data partition on my old hard drive. Of course nothing is easy with this junker. I discovered my GParted DVD was obsolete so I had to download and burn a new copy. Then everything went smoothly enough. I am mounting the data partition at /mnt/data and I own it. I am not trying any fancy moves like binding or symlinking. I'll just keep a copy of my music on the data partition to make it easier if I need to reinstall the O/S. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted April 12, 2020 Share Posted April 12, 2020 On 4/11/2020 at 12:17 AM, raymac46 said: The BIOS doesn't allow USB booting, so I have to burn an ISO image to a DVD and install via an old ATA optical drive. If creating a separate data partition gave you the giggles trying plop may make you hysterical. Boot from USB without BIOS Support via PLoP CD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted April 12, 2020 Author Share Posted April 12, 2020 Sounds similar to how you could use a floppy to boot a CD distro except here you use a CD to boot a USB distro. Mind boggling. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted April 12, 2020 Share Posted April 12, 2020 5 hours ago, abarbarian said: If creating a separate data partition gave you the giggles trying plop may make you hysterical. Boot from USB without BIOS Support via PLoP CD That is actually really cool. I remember dealing with some machines that couldnt boot from usb and it was a pain. It was funny that I was able to use a usb dvd drive though. :thumbsup: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted April 13, 2020 Share Posted April 13, 2020 15 hours ago, abarbarian said: ... Boot from USB without BIOS Support via PLoP CD I will check that out for my old system which won't boot from USB. The download link on that page yields a 0B file of an old version. Latest version (only 7 years old :)) is here - https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/download.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted April 13, 2020 Share Posted April 13, 2020 7 hours ago, sunrat said: I will check that out for my old system which won't boot from USB. The download link on that page yields a 0B file of an old version. Latest version (only 7 years old :)) is here - https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/download.html I never thought to check when it was last updated. Hope I have not wasted folks time with a dodo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted April 13, 2020 Author Share Posted April 13, 2020 Another good article on PLoP. https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16822/boot-from-a-usb-drive-even-if-your-bios-wont-let-you/ Of course you need to burn it to CD so it's just as easy to burn the ISO to optical media in the first place. If your machine is so old it won't even boot from a CD and you have a floppy disk you could do it with PLoP as well. Maybe if you just have a CD (not a DVD) player it would help. The possibilities are endless LOL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted April 13, 2020 Share Posted April 13, 2020 Well most computers do not come with optical drives nowadays. I haven't put one in desktop for years now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted April 14, 2020 Share Posted April 14, 2020 13 hours ago, securitybreach said: Well most computers do not come with optical drives nowadays. I haven't put one in desktop for years now. Most computers will boot from USB these days so don't need optical media or PLOP. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted April 14, 2020 Author Share Posted April 14, 2020 Most modern cases don't have any optical drive mounts and a lot don't have a mechanical drive cage either. You just screw the drive to the PSU shield or the bottom of the case, or if it is an SSD stash it behind the system tray somewhere. Time marches on. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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