9w - an installer for old computers

[Phill Whiteside]

As a non-pae machine can address upto ~4gb RAM, it can also be hamstrung by
what RAM is can use in terms of size etc. Making lubuntu for i586 / i486 /
i386 would mean re-making all the applications. Whilst this could be done,
I do not see a market for it. The most recent Dell I converted was a win98
machine and it is PAE compliant. I do not mind whatsoever in looking after
a non-pae kernel and build for people... After all, there are lot more
non-pae machines out there than ppc machines!

I have an updated set of instructions at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/phillw/non-pae#The_ISO from Bodhi. He has run out
of time, but will assist as and when I / we get stuck. I also have an extra
guy around to help with iso building.

Regards,

Phill.


On 8 March 2014 13:18, JM <meets at gmx.fr> wrote:

> On Sat, 08 Mar 2014 13:38:24 +0100
> Nio Wiklund <nio.wiklund at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> > See this link
> >
> > http://phillw.net/isos/linux-tools/9w/
> >
> >
> > 1. What computer will run at all, will be able to do some 'real work',
> > etc? It might be worth the effort just for the sake of knowledge.
>
> Hi,
>
> I can tell about a recent experience with a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo-EL N243S9
> laptop, known as one of the AMILO EL 6800 at the
> http://support.ts.fujitsu.com/index.asp
> place.
>
> I came with 256 MB ram and a Celeron 2Ghz. I have installed Bento, it was
> heating, and
> quite long. Once installed it was not comfortable for use. I removed all
> possible items
> to gain speed, such as update-notifier and other tools which we can manage
> without them,
> replaced lxpanel by tint2 (which is permanently installed and ready to go,
> just a switch
> of files in the autostart directory of the user is needed), and same for
> pcmanfm, I
> switched to feh displaying the background and finally I configured the
> eth0 internet
> connection in the interfaces file of /etc/network/ and removed
> nm-applet/network-gnome-manager.
>
> The issue would more come from the cpu than from the ram, by the way.
> Anyhow I added 512
> MB which I found in my stock and that started to be better. Better means
> the cpu is
> reaching 100% use when using Synaptic, or while apt-get install is at the
> install stage
> of the process. Else than that, Firefox, Midori, Libreoffice, can be used.
>
> I had done other things such as cleaning the 2 fans full of dust, removing
> some screws
> that were having a walk on the motherboard, and added heat paste as none
> was left.
>
> I put lxpanel back as well as pcmanfm managing the desktop, and also
> nm-applet for some
> reasons... met issues with several features without these items.
>
> I had also tried slim instead of lightdm, but then I could not access to
> internal
> partitions as simple user anymore : there is probably an issue around a
> file missing
> in /etc/pam.d : if someone finds out how that should be done, I would like
> to try to add
> such a slim file, because there is one in Archlinux where no such issue
> occurs (I use it
> everyday with Slim).
>
> I would probably leave this system with nodm, but then also the internal
> partitions
> aren't seen, and the session is not seen as active by ConsoleKit. I don't
> know what other
> issues can occur from a non active session. I don't have enough knowledge
> around this
> topic.
>
> For older machines I suggest the following distributions, in that order:
>
> antiX;
> Slitaz;
> Puppy Linux;
> Damn Small Linux.
>
>
> Take note of this when you install on another machine:
>
> by installing on another machine and putting back the hard drive on an
> older machine, the
> result is often a black screen. What is needed then is boot to init3, and
> once you get a
> prompt, login into the terminal, fix the graphics, and then you can reboot
> and login
> to the X session (using a startx command from the init3 stage if needed,
> with a ~/.xinitrc
> file if needed, which belongs to a package that might not be installed...
> that might be
> the "xinit" package or something of the kind).
>
> About antiX : I have installed it to a machine having 192 MB ram and it
> could not be
> upgraded in ram. The proc was a 800 Mhz Celeron. When I finished tweaking
> antiX for
> performance (zram configured and sorted out, prelink for Libreoffice), it
> could be used
> without pain. Therefore I would not suggest lower specs for old machines
> than 192 MB ram
> and 800 Mhz CPU.
>
> Here is the zram-config files used in antiX, if some are interested to
> test it (it can't
> be used in Ubuntu, this is for Debian branded distros which still use
> rc-sysinit).
> http://meets.free.fr/Downloads/Debian/zramconfig/zram/
> here a tarball containing it all and ready to be unpacked (as root):
> http://meets.free.fr/Downloads/Debian/zramconfig/
>
> Regards,
> Mélodie
>



-- 
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/phillw
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