raymac46 Posted July 3 Posted July 3 My oldest Linux setup is Arch Linux on a Toshiba NB305 netbook from 2010 - Intel Atom, 2 GB of RAM. While the basic system still runs well, I have had increasingly annoying problems with the aging hardware technology. First, the display managers for LXQt stopped launching the desktop. now, after recent updates the Falkon and Palemoon browsers crash and won't display text. I planned to keep Arch running as long as I can but I think I'm nearing the end of this machine as a useful instrument. For now I can still use Midori and GNOME Web browsers (and Firefox if I don't mind losing my sanity.) But after 8 years it's probably time to install Arch somewhere else. 1 Quote
Hedon James Posted July 3 Posted July 3 46 minutes ago, raymac46 said: My oldest Linux setup is Arch Linux on a Toshiba NB305 netbook from 2010 - Intel Atom, 2 GB of RAM. While the basic system still runs well, I have had increasingly annoying problems with the aging hardware technology. First, the display managers for LXQt stopped launching the desktop. now, after recent updates the Falkon and Palemoon browsers crash and won't display text. I planned to keep Arch running as long as I can but I think I'm nearing the end of this machine as a useful instrument. For now I can still use Midori and GNOME Web browsers (and Firefox if I don't mind losing my sanity.) But after 8 years it's probably time to install Arch somewhere else. 8 years is a good run. If you factor in the age of the hardware at the time of Arch INSTALLATION, I'll bet that number is downright impressive?! As a user of fixed-release distros (first the 'Buntu families, now Debian), I insist on at least a 5-year support window. I think 10 years is probably a "sweet spot" because after 10 years, I'm almost certainly looking to upgrade the hardware, especially the CPU. I recently installed Lubuntu on my Studio Desktop (music software) and was reminded that I have an Ubuntu Pro membership, which provides extended support and security updates for 10 years. I think I might have to reconsider my distro choice again? I also think I remember reading that CentOS provided a 10-year support window before Red Hat/IBM acquired them? Or maybe it was RHEL? Not sure about Alma or Rocky? But I digress. 8 years on outdated hardware is pretty impressive, IMO. Good on you Ray! 1 Quote
raymac46 Posted July 3 Author Posted July 3 Agree that the netbook was a bad machine even when Arch was originally installed. The CPU was slow and the memory inadequate even then. I couldn't upgrade anything but the storage - which I did with a cheap SSD. It was the only machine I had available to install Arch on at that time. It was a 64 bit CPU at least. I've kept it going out of interest to see how good Arch is as a rolling release. Now the GPU is hopelessly out of date and the CPU doesn't have AVX extensions so a lot of modern software won't work. I can still browse with GNOME Web (Epiphany) and Midori so I'll keep it going until no browser works with it. I do have another 11 year old junker which is chugging along quite well with EndeavourOS (an Arch derivative pretty close to the real thing.) Quote
raymac46 Posted July 3 Author Posted July 3 I think the reason Falkon won't render text is that the latest update requires Vulkan support which the netbook's GPU doesn't have. The reason Palemoon crashes is that it needs AVX support which the netbook's CPU doesn't have. Most mainstream laptops have had both of these features since Sandy Bridge or Bulldozer hardware. The netbook is an outlier. I'm posting this from a 2014 AMD machine that I just updated EndeavourOS on. Running the latest Google Chrome here without issue but I got 8 GB of RAM. My major interest is in running Linux on obsolete hardware but sometimes you just have to know when to fold up. Quote
raymac46 Posted July 3 Author Posted July 3 [ray@ray-20377 ~]$ free total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 7023376 1441536 4676552 52104 1204536 5581840 Swap: 0 0 0 [ray@ray-20377 ~]$ Quote
raymac46 Posted 7 hours ago Author Posted 7 hours ago Really the only browser I can use on this old netbook now is Midori. I can surf OK with GNOME Web but it won't let me post to this forum. Quote
raymac46 Posted 4 hours ago Author Posted 4 hours ago (edited) Testing Gnome Web Browser from Thinkpad PC. It works well and I can save posts from it. Another example of why the aging hardware on the Netbook is failing. Edited 4 hours ago by raymac46 Quote
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