No Javascript

[raymac46]

My wife is away in Kingston this week visiting her mother, and she took along my Thinkpad. As a result I pulled my old Toshiba netbook out of the closet for a spin.

This is a machine I got for free from a neighbor who was frustrated with it and about to recycle it. As netbooks go it was pretty nice when new. But it never ran well with Windows 7 Starter.

It's easy to work on so I put in a cheap SSD. And if there was ever a machine that deserved to run Linux, this was it.

It has a wimpy Atom processor and only supports 2 GB of RAM. Fortunately it is a 64 bit machine so I could install Arch Linux. With Arch and LXQt it is pretty snappy for a netbook.

At least it is until you try to use a web browser. Chromium slows it to a crawl. I tried Midori but it's still pretty laggy. Then I tried turning off scripts.

The difference is dramatic. Pages load almost as fast as on my new Ryzen 5 machine. Of course, some sites don't work but a lot of them do. Scot's loads and functions just fine.

I think I'll leave Midori without scripts but I'll let my wife continue to use the Thinkpad. She doesn't like change much and no JavaScript would drive her crazy.

[securitybreach]

I ran into the same thing years ago with my little netbook. I tried a ton of browsers and configurations but the net is just too JS dependent to be usable with the processor and lack of memory.

[raymac46]

In my case I think the issue is JS and the CPU. The system is lightweight and with just one tab open on Midori I still have close to 1.5 GB of RAM available. That Atom CPU can't handle the websites today.

 

[securitybreach]

1 hour ago, raymac46 said:

In my case I think the issue is JS and the CPU. The system is lightweight and with just one tab open on Midori I still have close to 1.5 GB of RAM available. That Atom CPU can't handle the websites today.

 

 

Probably so. Mine also had a 64 atom as well.

[raymac46]

The thing is - I really like this little netbook. For something that was on the way to the landfill in 2016 it has worked pretty well. It is a great testbed for Arch Linux, and if I wanted something to type articles on it would still work great.

It just sucks as an Internet appliance. BTW I can't post anything here if scripts are turned off - Augh! No submit button or formatting.

Edited March 10, 2021 by raymac46

[raymac46]

My wife is back, but she left the charger for the Thinkpad in Kingston. Looks like I may be using the Toshiba a bit more than normal. 

[securitybreach]

That sucks

[raymac46]

I do have other PCs so its no big deal. I can get a replacement from Amazon in a couple of days and just leave the charger in Kingston so she won't have to take it next time.

[securitybreach]

Yeah, I would just order one from amazon as well

[raymac46]

I've tried a couple of other lightweight browsers. One that seems to work pretty well is otter-browser.

[securitybreach]

Cool. Never heard of that one before.

[raymac46]

It was in the Arch official repos. Another good one is Falkon if you use Qt Web engine.

[raymac46]

I also ordered a replacement power adapter from Amazon. It looks to be as good quality as the original Lenovo one. Has a much longer power cord as well. My wife will keep the original one in Kingston so she won't need to bring it every time. One less thing to forget. 

[securitybreach]

1 hour ago, raymac46 said:

It was in the Arch official repos. Another good one is Falkon if you use Qt Web engine.

 

Thanks but I do not have a need for a lighter browser anymore. I just use chromium on everything. My laptops have 32gb of ram nowadays. I still have the old atom netbook in a drawer but sadly, it will probably never be used again.

[securitybreach]

1 hour ago, raymac46 said:

I also ordered a replacement power adapter from Amazon. It looks to be as good quality as the original Lenovo one. Has a much longer power cord as well. My wife will keep the original one in Kingston so she won't need to bring it every time. One less thing to forget. 

 

NIce

[raymac46]

I can certainly understand your frustration with the Atom netbook. I had a couple of 32 bit netbooks with even less memory which I junked a couple of years ago.

This particular one I kept because it supports 64 bit Linux.

It has been a useful proof of concept machine for installing "the Arch way" and it does run quite well with LXQt. I would never want to run it as a daily driver, but as a testbed it's fine. I figure that if any modern distro can run OK on the netbook it would be great on any other machine I have here.

That said I'd like to install Arch on another more powerful system. A good candidate would be my Lenovo Flex2 which has 8 GB of RAM and a quad core A8-6410. It is miles ahead of the netbook. I currently have MX-Linux there but since I have 3 other Debian based systems I wouldn't mind switching it over to Arch.

Edited March 12, 2021 by raymac46

[securitybreach]

Well I liked the netbook as its a 10" and it had an atom 64 processor. I didnt know for a long time til I accidentally booted a 64bit iso. I didnt think about it as there were not many 64bit Atoms at the time.

[abarbarian]

3 hours ago, raymac46 said:

I currently have MX-Linux there but since I have 3 other Debian based systems I wouldn't mind switching it over to Arch.

 

Do a quick CloneZilla of the MX os and away you go for an Arch adventure with a means to backtrack if needed. Mind you once you have an Arch set up you won't feel like backtracking.

[securitybreach]

1 hour ago, abarbarian said:

 

Do a quick CloneZilla of the MX os and away you go for an Arch adventure with a means to backtrack if needed. Mind you once you have an Arch set up you won't feel like backtracking.

 

+1 for Clonezilla. I have been using it for years to take a snapshot of my installation twice a year. Ian got me started with that years ago.