I have a 15inch Compaq with a 1.8ghz Northwood P4 and Radeon Mobility 8500. It makes a fantastic early XP machine for old games.

Just found an IBM R52 in my closet. And yes... It is running hot as a fire.
It is running XP at the moment, yet even with 2gb of ram on the 1.8ghz Pentium-M it is sluggish.
So I plan on installing a lightweight Linux distro or Win98 on this one.

notsofossil wrote:

What kind of drive do you run your OSes from? 1.8" HDD? CF card? I have a CF card in my Thinkpad X40 running XP SP2 and recently it developed broken USB drivers, also installshield doesn't want to cooperate, can't even re-install the Intel USB drivers. I agree that Thinkpad X systems are highly convenient, just would be nice if there existed a dependable boot drive solution.

The problem you describe is specific to X40/X41 only. All other X series machines use standard 2.5" drives.

ODwilly wrote:

I have a 15inch Compaq with a 1.8ghz Northwood P4 and Radeon Mobility 8500. It makes a fantastic early XP machine for old games.

Maybe you mean 7500? I never heard of a Mobility 8500. I have such a system too (except 14") and it was quite nice for its time. First system I ever ran XP on. I even managed to finish Rayman 3 (or most of it) with the terrible built-in keyboard.

brostenen wrote:

Just found an IBM R52 in my closet. And yes... It is running hot as a fire.
It is running XP at the moment, yet even with 2gb of ram on the 1.8ghz Pentium-M it is sluggish.
So I plan on installing a lightweight Linux distro or Win98 on this one.

Not sure it will do you much good. It's the internet that kills those old machines, not core OS functionality.

dr_st wrote:

notsofossil wrote:

What kind of drive do you run your OSes from? 1.8" HDD? CF card? I have a CF card in my Thinkpad X40 running XP SP2 and recently it developed broken USB drivers, also installshield doesn't want to cooperate, can't even re-install the Intel USB drivers. I agree that Thinkpad X systems are highly convenient, just would be nice if there existed a dependable boot drive solution.

The problem you describe is specific to X40/X41 only. All other X series machines use standard 2.5" drives.

Yes, the x32 uses a standard 2.5" drive. I replaced the original 60GB with a 160GB Seagate in 2012. So far so good!

dr_st: Yep! Sorry it is a 32mb 7500 Mobility with another 32mb shared from the system ram for 64mb. Running XP SP3 it takes awhile to load web pages but I feel like alot of the issues are due to the slow 4200rpm drive. https://www.cnet.com/products/compaq-presario … 0-gb-hdd/specs/ full specs here, besides mine has the 1.8 vs the 1.4 in the review.

dr_st wrote:

Not sure it will do you much good. It's the internet that kills those old machines, not core OS functionality.

Nope... It takes too long time, to be able to do anything with a fully updated WinXP SP3 on that machine.
So it is not the internet that is killing the speed.

On the other hand. It is running 4 to 5 times faster with a fully updated Xubuntu installation.
It takes less than 30 seconds, and I am on Vogons with that machine. (Shutdown takes 7 seconds)
So my advice for the OP is to install a lightweight Linux.
This could be Xubuntu, or even Lubuntu wich requires even less from the hardware.

The best part of Xubuntu on a Pentium-M, is that there is nearly no heat from the CPU, when
compared to a WinXP installation. Obviously it is using less resources than XP.

What exactly runs "4-5 times faster"? Boot/shutdown? Every single task? I can easily believe the former, but not the latter.

Is it a fully updated but bare XP installation? What other software is installed? I found that it is usually the installed software and some specific combinations of drivers that bogs down startup and shutdown times. However, typically after things have stabilized, the system can be rather snappy.

However, it is also possible, that Windows' policies on managing swapfiles, combined with slow hard drives can make certain activities be sluggish compared to the same activities in Linux. Or vice versa.

The question one should ask himself is what he plans to do with the machine, and derive the OS requirements from that. Running the OS itself is not really a functional requirement. I.e., if all you do can be satisfied by a Linux install (you don't use any Windows-specific productivity tools), go for it. On the other end of the scale, one should not restrict himself in the software he can run, only to have faster boot/shutdown times.

brostenen wrote:

The best part of Xubuntu on a Pentium-M, is that there is nearly no heat from the CPU, when
compared to a WinXP installation. Obviously it is using less resources than XP.

Try linux MX on this.https://mxlinux.org/ You will never look back to any *buntu (including Lubuntu).
BTW Best and most refined xorg drivers are the Intel one. It just works without much impact on cpu power.
So if you have Intel Extreme Graphics version, you're lucky.

dr_st wrote:

What exactly runs "4-5 times faster"? Boot/shutdown? Every single task? I can easily believe the former, but not the latter. […]
Show full quote

What exactly runs "4-5 times faster"? Boot/shutdown? Every single task? I can easily believe the former, but not the latter.

Is it a fully updated but bare XP installation? What other software is installed? I found that it is usually the installed software and some specific combinations of drivers that bogs down startup and shutdown times. However, typically after things have stabilized, the system can be rather snappy.

However, it is also possible, that Windows' policies on managing swapfiles, combined with slow hard drives can make certain activities be sluggish compared to the same activities in Linux. Or vice versa.

The question one should ask himself is what he plans to do with the machine, and derive the OS requirements from that. Running the OS itself is not really a functional requirement. I.e., if all you do can be satisfied by a Linux install (you don't use any Windows-specific productivity tools), go for it. On the other end of the scale, one should not restrict himself in the software he can run, only to have faster boot/shutdown times.

I will start by quoting my self...

brostenen wrote:

It takes too long time, to be able to do anything with a fully updated WinXP SP3 on that machine.

I have not even installed Office on he XP installation, and whatever updates that follows.
Chrome on XP takes aprox 5 minutes to be able to go on Vogons, on the one that comes with Xubuntu,
it takes aprox 30 seconds from pushing the power button to being on Vogons.

And mind that I did a full installation of Xubuntu 16.04 (released in April 2016) and had it fully updated.
The Libre office that came with the distro, was ready to be used in 5 to 10 seconds.
So yeah... Basically everything runs faster, more snappy and the filemanager opens instantly.
Wich would take some 20 to 30 seconds on that fully updated XP SP3.

I did say, that my findings would still make me recommend the OP an lightweight Linux.
As he did ask for this possibility in the first place. I only compared similair chores on XP and Xubuntu.
You know... Stuff they can both do.

Basically speaking.... I did not test gaming, on this is a laptop. What I did test out, was how the
system was handeling the hardware, and some web browsing.
Because the XP was such a pain, I would not even dare testing out something like Office 2007/10.
That would really have had the machine biting the dust, because of how slow XP ran.
Xubuntu on the other hand, had multiple programs open, plus one game. And it was still responsive.
Even the heat from the CPU cooler did not go up on Xubuntu. On XP the keyboard became hot after
roughly 30 to 60 minutes, in a way that it was unpleasant to touch.
On Xubuntu, I did not notice any heat through the keyboard after two hours.

Sorry for bad language... Only just woke up today.

I remember seeing a borked Pentium M or core 2 laptop running 7 very slow... even when clean install without updates and software at all. Install took 10 hours and takes to boot ~5 minutes aparently

Also i remember my dad's i3 laptop begin fucked baddly by a failed Windows 10 upgrade, it became unstable, really slow and buggy untill it bricked istelf. it once took 15 min to boot for an i3. Since then, he went back to 8.1

brostenen wrote:

Chrome on XP takes aprox 5 minutes to be able to go on Vogons, on the one that comes with Xubuntu,
it takes aprox 30 seconds from pushing the power button to being on Vogons.

It again sounds like you are talking about boot time. To me this is the less interesting scenario, since I do not turn my computers off so frequently (on a laptop, it's usually enough to put it to sleep, from which it takes a few second to wake up).

It would not take 5 minutes from an "on and idle" system to go to Vogons, even on a Pentium 2 running an unoptimized Vista RTM. If it does, something is seriously wrong either with the OS installation, or the hardware, or the drivers.

brostenen wrote:

So yeah... Basically everything runs faster, more snappy and the filemanager opens instantly.
Wich would take some 20 to 30 seconds on that fully updated XP SP3.

Same comment as above. I run a fully updated XP SP3 on systems comparable to your R52, and the file manager never takes more than a couple of seconds to open.

Granted, I still believe that a lightweight Linux will be always generally faster than XP, but not on the order you describe.

dr_st:
We just have to disagree on this. I know what I saw yesterday, and I am never going back to XP in that R52.

For the record. I was not talking about boot time alone. Yet you are focused on that, as if I was only talking about that. So i guess you have not read it through again or not.

I could spoonfeed you with numbers. Dont see the reason why I should bother. Let's just agree on to disagree on this. I know what I experienced.

I don't mind that we disagree on this. You make it seem like I have some vested interest in having you run XP or whatever on your R52. I can assure you that it's not the case. 😀

I focused on boot time, because of the phrasing you choose repeatedly (i.e. on the one that comes with Xubuntu, it takes aprox 30 seconds from pushing the power button to being on Vogons). This leads me to think that you are measuring from cold boot. Also, the times you chose to present - Chrome on XP takes aprox 5 minutes to be able to go on Vogons - simply don't make sense, unless you include boot time in them. Refer to my earlier statement about a P2 running Vista.

People refer to boot time as an important metric for measuring OS quality, and my opinion, is that it's simply not as important as people make it. So I choose to point it out when it seems relevant.

I understood that you were not talking just about that. But your story just has too many unknowns to serve as a good comparative study. You say that you "found an R52 in your closet that's been running XP". Who installed it? When? How? Did you reinstall it from scratch before doing these measurements? Did you use a clean install, or IBM's recovery disks? Which drivers did you install? Etc. Perhaps you can address all these unknowns, but why bother? You are happy running Linux on that machine, and your advice to run Linux on that machine is good and solid.

It may seem that I am arguing here for the sake of arguing. It's not that. As I said, I too have systems of comparable age (and even older), running Windows XP. On none of them the situation is as bad as you described. Yes, I've seen some systems bogged down to being completely useless - usually they were ridden with viruses, malware, some broken crap beyond salvation. All of my systems are well-maintained, and they are quite usable, even with a fully updated XP SP3.

So once again, here are my points:

1. I fully support running Linux on a P-4 or P-M laptop, or any laptop, if it meets the user's demands.
2. In most cases, a lightweight Linux installation will be faster and more lightweight than a Windows XP installation.
3. The claim that a lightweight Linux will be, in general, 4-5 times faster than Windows XP on P-4/P-M hardware is untrue.

In my experience 1 core CPU machines are good for running Win2k or WinXP (with no patches), and while Firefox can be used on XP, just don't do anything "fancy". DVD playback is fine (even a PIII can do it) but don't even think about YT.

I did the installation of XP from scratch, using all the drivers that was avaliable from the online support page.
It was done some 2 months ago, and after the complete installation, it went into the closet for safe keeping.
So it was never taken into service for anything other than the OS installation. Of course we are talking about cold boot in both cases. As the battery are dead. Nearly dead, has juice for 20 to 22 minutes in XP, some 30 to 31 minutes in Xubuntu. And suspend mode are just too buggy for me to trust on XP, furthermore I am not using it for anything work related.

From a cold boot, the machine would think for a bit over 8/10 second before I was able to see the content of the controll panel/settings in XP. A couple of minutes more, before all the features would be avaliable to use without any lagging. In Xubuntu, this is working fluidly, like nearly instantly. Yet another example on XP hogging all the resources on my R52.

I do agree that updated Windows XP isn't the most ideal choice for Pentium M systems (definitely not P4), so instead I highly recommend Windows 2000 or better yet, Windows ME. The great advantage there is WinME has a tiny footprint, offers Win9x, Win16 and DOS support and did at one point have modern software support. You could use Windows 98SE but it takes more work to get set up, namely the USB Mass Storage driver and then all the patches and updates. WinME just needs the Unofficial Service Pack.

Why would anyone want to use Linux? There's nowhere near as much software support as Windows of any version.

notsofossil wrote:

I do agree that updated Windows XP isn't the most ideal choice for Pentium M systems (definitely not P4), so instead I highly recommend Windows 2000 or better yet, Windows ME. The great advantage there is WinME has a tiny footprint, offers Win9x, Win16 and DOS support and did at one point have modern software support. You could use Windows 98SE but it takes more work to get set up, namely the USB Mass Storage driver and then all the patches and updates. WinME just needs the Unofficial Service Pack.

Why would anyone want to use Linux? There's nowhere near as much software support as Windows of any version.

Would be a desktop Pentium M still not enough for XP? I currently have a dual boot 2000 + XP on my Pentium M desktop build

i use a Pentium M 770 on an MSI 915GM Speedster (MS-9625) (no official 9x support since is the 915GM chipset instead of the 855 series) with 2 GB RAM DDR2 667 @ 533, Radeon x300 PCI-E and 40+160 GB SATA HDDs

both OSes are running very well

I didn't realize Pentium M was available for desktops.

The thing is, since the Pentium M is really just an enhanced and powered up Pentium 3 (which is bare minimum for XP), it does work well enough for XP, think mid-range. Top end would be a Core Duo or Core 2 Duo. Anything more than that is overkill and probably won't have decent XP driver support. A fast Pentium M, 2GB DDR2 and the usual trimmings is very good for XP.

notsofossil wrote:

I didn't realize Pentium M was available for desktops.

The thing is, since the Pentium M is really just an enhanced and powered up Pentium 3 (which is bare minimum for XP), it does work well enough for XP, think mid-range. Top end would be a Core Duo or Core 2 Duo. Anything more than that is overkill and probably won't have decent XP driver support. A fast Pentium M, 2GB DDR2 and the usual trimmings is very good for XP.

is just one of these uncommon desktop motherboards which was made for the Pentium M, there are few of them, desktop Core Duo boards existed as well, also for mobile Core 2 Duos, also ASUS made an adapter to use Pentium M in some of their desktop socket 478 motherboards known as the CT-479, some of the boards which supported that adapter were the ASUS P4C800 series, P4P800 series and the P4GD1. Also don't forget desktop Pentium Ms has more advantages like you can use desktop GPUs, PCI cards and desktop HDD/SSD

I got my MS-9625 almost a year ago on ebay from an UK store, the store where i got it doesn't have it anymore, but another UK store has the same mobo
http://www.ebay.com/itm/MSI-MS-9625-Socket-M- … V0AAOSwbdpWUyat

Acording to MS, the bare minimun for XP is a Pentium II 233 MHz, Pentium M is more than enough for XP, also even stronger than many Pentium 4s due to it's higher IPC

There's a difference between absolute bare minimum and practical minimum. Who in their right mind would actually use XP on a Pentium II? It's hard enough to do anything meaningful with a Pentium III. I consider the benchmark for an OS to be itself plus some applications and games, Pentium III meets that bare minimum. Pentium M is good but Core 2 Duo is better. In comparison, I would consider C2D to be the practical minimum for Windows 7.