VOGONS


Reply 20 of 72, by ppc4me

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songo wrote on 2021-04-27, 17:27:
I use lightweight web-browsers like Qupzilla or K-Meleon, kill Javascripts, use add-blockers etc. - without that, I wouldn't be […]
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dionb wrote on 2021-04-26, 17:36:

But web browsing is another matter. Pages have become so script-heavy and resource-intensive that in the low end web browsing is actually the most demanding application, and one that keeps upping the ante.

I use lightweight web-browsers like Qupzilla or K-Meleon, kill Javascripts, use add-blockers etc. - without that, I wouldn't be able to surf net on my single-core laptop.

Surfing present internet without 'condom' would propably choke even my desktop Core 2 Duo.

Now I'm tempted to buy Thinkpad T23 and try how much can I squeeze from that hardware.

I have a T23 and Firefox used to work with it up until a few years ago. I recently went to run some updates on it (it hasn't been used it in a while) and found Firefox no longer works, it throws an "invalid instruction" error when launched.
The last supported version appears to be this one (from what I could find):
firefox-45.9.0esr.linux-i686.sdk.tar.bz2 134M 18-Apr-2017 16:20
The last time I remember Firefox working, was in the middle of 2018, but the Firefox package was likely stale by that point, and the distribution maintainer was reluctant to update since it was "the last one".

When Firefox could still run on it, it was able to work with most webpages that didn't require heavy use of JavaScript. I used a JS management plugin with it, so they didn't run by default and overload the CPU. Anyone know of any "modern features" browsers that still work with pre-SSE2 machines? Netsurf works with it, but it's not compatible with some websites requiring newer JS features.

Reply 21 of 72, by ppc4me

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ragefury32 wrote on 2021-04-30, 13:04:

Add a modern-ish web browser (which requires SSE2 nowadays so it’s at least an Intel Banias or an AMD K8/Hammer series) and your RAM demand goes up even more.

P4 has SSE2 support, which is older than Banias.
While looking into my Firefox problem, the cut-off appeared to be:
Intel Pentium 4 & AMD K8 (Athlon 64/Sempron 64).
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p … 65c2a#p14687273
The first P4 family, Willamette, had SSE2 and was released in November of 2000, so the entire P4 line should have it. But considering how P4s are space heaters, a Pentium M (like you mentioned) would be the better choice.

ragefury32 wrote on 2021-04-30, 13:04:

For me, unless you run OpenWRT or stay away from modern UIs but insists on modern Linux for daily driving you need a newer CPU (at least a mid-P4, or better yet, a Merom C2D) and more RAM. If you run 20 year old P6 machines, you are pretty much looking at older Linux distros that is based on kernel 2.6 or 3.x, and most won’t boot with less than 32-64MB of RAM. I mean, part of it is code bloat but it’s still the result of years of progress that has left your old hardware waaaaaay behind.

My Thinkpad T23 runs Slackware 14.2 32-bit, with 4.14 kernel, Fluxbox, and it seems to work Ok. Although, I do have the RAM maxed out at 1GiB and wouldn't want to use any less than that. You just have to be realistic about which applications it can use, no you shouldn't try to run Blender on it 😀

Reply 22 of 72, by Caluser2000

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My K6-2 400 with 256megs of ram rig has Duvuan Jessie on it. Last week in install Slackware 13.2 32-bit on it using the huge.s kernel anf it install just fin

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There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 23 of 72, by mR_Slug

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I've got a T60 (forgot specs) think it has 2GB ram. Runs slackeware 14.1 with FVWM2. I found a package that makes FVWM2 look like CDE, upshot is it kinda looks like an old D-Environment, and is a pretty heavyweight config for FVWM. Ran fine with FFox a few years ago. Then I upgraded to FF Quantum. Load too many tabs and it has a fit. Endless paging to disk in a continuous loop that the only way out of is to kill the GUI. Even trying to switch to an already open Htop is impossible.

Not sure if a SSD would fix things. Need more RAM really to be usable with Quantum. I think the reason I upgraded was youtube broke, but i don't recall.

The Retro Web | EISA .cfg Archive | Chip set Encyclopedia

Reply 24 of 72, by Caluser2000

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mR_Slug wrote on 2021-09-14, 19:34:

I've got a T60 (forgot specs) think it has 2GB ram. Runs slackeware 14.1 with FVWM2. I found a package that makes FVWM2 look like CDE, upshot is it kinda looks like an old D-Environment, and is a pretty heavyweight config for FVWM. Ran fine with FFox a few years ago. Then I upgraded to FF Quantum. Load too many tabs and it has a fit. Endless paging to disk in a continuous loop that the only way out of is to kill the GUI. Even trying to switch to an already open Htop is impossible.

Not sure if a SSD would fix things. Need more RAM really to be usable with Quantum. I think the reason I upgraded was youtube broke, but i don't recall.

Give firefox-esr a shot. I have more than 20 links open on this P4 3.2Ghz rig with 2.5gigs of ram. Disable the the composer in Window Manager Tweaks and you'll notice a quite an speed increase in Xwindows. I use XFCE4 as my DE. I'm using uBlock Origin an it is doing a great job.

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There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 25 of 72, by the3dfxdude

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Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-09-14, 19:50:

Give firefox-esr a shot.

Which one?

So slackware 14.2, if I remember, came with prequantum firefox/seamonkey. And that worked great on eeepc atom processor. But the quantum engine is quite heavy, and generally does not work well on machines 2GB or less, like my eeepc. I avoided updating it for a long time, but getting too far post quantum, many sites starting requiring chrome-isms (youtube), which even quantum barely has kept up with, and old firefox does not work. Eventually I updated to latest slackware firefox patch ver 68 esr, but I found later that Mozilla EOL'd that version and the slackware maintainer does not provide newer due to major tool chain changes since around 2018 (firefox does not compile in stock slackware 14.2). I seriously tried to port a current tool chain to that version, but still contemplating my options, since slackware 14.2 isn't imo the greatest release to fork.

To answer the earlier question about the illegal instruction in firefox, I think firefox will work pre-P4, if you compile it yourself, or pick a different distro.

Reply 26 of 72, by Caluser2000

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the3dfxdude wrote on 2021-09-14, 21:10:
Which one? […]
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Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-09-14, 19:50:

Give firefox-esr a shot.

Which one?

So slackware 14.2, if I remember, came with prequantum firefox/seamonkey. And that worked great on eeepc atom processor. But the quantum engine is quite heavy, and generally does not work well on machines 2GB or less, like my eeepc. I avoided updating it for a long time, but getting too far post quantum, many sites starting requiring chrome-isms (youtube), which even quantum barely has kept up with, and old firefox does not work. Eventually I updated to latest slackware firefox patch ver 68 esr, but I found later that Mozilla EOL'd that version and the slackware maintainer does not provide newer due to major tool chain changes since around 2018 (firefox does not compile in stock slackware 14.2). I seriously tried to port a current tool chain to that version, but still contemplating my options, since slackware 14.2 isn't imo the greatest release to fork.

To answer the earlier question about the illegal instruction in firefox, I think firefox will work pre-P4, if you compile it yourself, or pick a different distro.

The current one. Should be in your desktop download repos. At the moment I'm using version 78.14esr under 32-bit Linux Mint Debian Edition 4 Don't worry about the version no. I get security updates on a regular basis. Also LMDE4 gets regular updates. Except for a new kernel or the grub boot loader you don't have to reboot your system..😉

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 27 of 72, by Standard Def Steve

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ragefury32 wrote on 2021-04-30, 16:35:

The NX bit did not come to the Banias, or the Dothan- 400s - you will need a Dothan-533 or newer.

Actually, some Dothan-400s support NX bit. In fact, I have two of them: a 1.8GHz PM-745 and a 2GHz PM-755. I can install and run Win10 on both of them without having to resort to any special trickery.
I run them both on MSI Speedster i915 desktop boards. The 745 runs at 2.4GHz/533FSB (it's actually my file server!), and the PM-755 machine runs at 2.72/544.

Fun fact: I have a second PM-745 chip that doesn't support NX bit. It won't boot Win10, even on the same motherboard! So NX support on Dothan-400 is definitely unofficial. My guess is that any newer Dothan-400 with the same core stepping as a 533FSB model will support NX bit.

Last edited by Standard Def Steve on 2021-09-14, 23:00. Edited 1 time in total.

P6 chip. Triple the speed of the Pentium.
Tualatin: PIII-S @ 1628MHz | QDI Advance 12T | 2GB DDR-310 | 6800GT | X-Fi | 500GB HDD | 3DMark01: 14,059
Dothan: PM @ 2.9GHz | MSI Speedster FA4 | 2GB DDR2-580 | GTX 750Ti | X-Fi | 500GB SSD | 3DMark01: 43,190

Reply 28 of 72, by the3dfxdude

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Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-09-14, 21:43:

The current one. Should be in your desktop download repos. At the moment I'm using version 78.14esr under 32-bit Linux Mint Debian Edition 4

Well, it's Firefox 91.x on slackware 15.0 RC. I have that on my main desktop, but not my eeepc just yet. If 78.x is faster on 2GB, then maybe I'll do the update from 68.x.

Reply 29 of 72, by Caluser2000

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the3dfxdude wrote on 2021-09-14, 22:59:
Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-09-14, 21:43:

The current one. Should be in your desktop download repos. At the moment I'm using version 78.14esr under 32-bit Linux Mint Debian Edition 4

Well, it's Firefox 91.x on slackware 15.0 RC. I have that on my main desktop, but not my eeepc just yet. If 78.x is faster on 2GB, then maybe I'll do the update from 68.x.

Is it ESR? ie Extended Support Release . I highly doubt it. Thanks for trying.....and read what is posted entirely posted and not half quote me.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 30 of 72, by the3dfxdude

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Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-09-14, 23:42:
the3dfxdude wrote on 2021-09-14, 22:59:
Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-09-14, 21:43:

The current one. Should be in your desktop download repos. At the moment I'm using version 78.14esr under 32-bit Linux Mint Debian Edition 4

Well, it's Firefox 91.x on slackware 15.0 RC. I have that on my main desktop, but not my eeepc just yet. If 78.x is faster on 2GB, then maybe I'll do the update from 68.x.

Is it ESR? ie Extended Support Release . I highly doubt it. Thanks for trying.....and read what is posted entirely posted and not half quote me.

FYI, 91.x, 78.x, and 68.x are all ESR. And I am done speaking with you.

Reply 31 of 72, by Caluser2000

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the3dfxdude wrote on 2021-09-15, 02:12:
Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-09-14, 23:42:
the3dfxdude wrote on 2021-09-14, 22:59:

Well, it's Firefox 91.x on slackware 15.0 RC. I have that on my main desktop, but not my eeepc just yet. If 78.x is faster on 2GB, then maybe I'll do the update from 68.x.

Is it ESR? ie Extended Support Release . I highly doubt it. Thanks for trying.....and read what is posted entirely posted and not half quote me.

FYI, 91.x, 78.x, and 68.x are all ESR. And I am done speaking with you.

I hope you have a nice day......😉

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 32 of 72, by maximus

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RE the original question: the bare minimum these days seems to be any 64-bit CPU and 2 GB of RAM.

I'm writing this post on my Acer Aspire One 532h netbook from 2009. It has an Atom N450 and 2GB of RAM and runs Debian 11 with Xfce. The OS boots in less than a minute from the HDD and the desktop environment is reasonably snappy. RAM usage on an idle desktop is just under 500 MB. That leaves enough memory to open multiple tabs in Chrome. The main bottleneck is the CPU. Even with uBlock Origin, big web pages can really bog it down. I have to be a little patient and not expect too much. Other than that, it is perfectly usable. VLC can even play 720p YouTube videos with CPU cycles to spare.

When I first got the machine, it only had a gig of RAM. I ran 32-bit Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it (remember that?) and it was fine. Never hit the memory ceiling. But the Ubuntu family are all wayyyyyyy too heavy these days, even Xubuntu, which I use on my primary desktop. Debian boots faster, feels snappier, and uses less RAM. Also, among web browsers, Firefox seems to be a notable RAM hog. Firefox ESR 78.12's baseline RAM usage is several hundred MB more than latest Chrome. Firefox also feels slower than Chrome again; I guess Chrome has caught up to Firefox Quantum and surpassed it. Too bad.

There are lots of 32-bit Pentium 4s and Athlon XPs that are loads faster than the Atom N450, but the software support just isn't there anymore. Particularly for the Athlon XP family, which lacks SSE2. I tried some modern distros on a Sempron 3000+ recently. 32-bit distros might boot, but drivers and apps will mysteriously crash without explanation. 32-bit Pentium 4s might be more usable still, but their days are numbered, with distros and apps dropping 32-bit support left and right.

Install 64-bit Debian on a slightly faster but still old CPU, even with only 2GB of RAM, and you are golden. I did some testing recently with an Athlon 64 X2 4200+ and Pentium 4 670. The extra CPU speed goes a long way; those systems would make decent daily drivers, particularly if paired with SSDs. So the old idea of installing Linux on a slow system to give it a new lease on life is still valid, even if the window of usable hardware keeps sliding toward the future.

PCGames9505

Reply 33 of 72, by ragefury32

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maximus wrote on 2021-09-16, 02:30:
RE the original question: the bare minimum these days seems to be any 64-bit CPU and 2 GB of RAM. […]
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RE the original question: the bare minimum these days seems to be any 64-bit CPU and 2 GB of RAM.

I'm writing this post on my Acer Aspire One 532h netbook from 2009. It has an Atom N450 and 2GB of RAM and runs Debian 11 with Xfce. The OS boots in less than a minute from the HDD and the desktop environment is reasonably snappy. RAM usage on an idle desktop is just under 500 MB. That leaves enough memory to open multiple tabs in Chrome. The main bottleneck is the CPU. Even with uBlock Origin, big web pages can really bog it down. I have to be a little patient and not expect too much. Other than that, it is perfectly usable. VLC can even play 720p YouTube videos with CPU cycles to spare.

When I first got the machine, it only had a gig of RAM. I ran 32-bit Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it (remember that?) and it was fine. Never hit the memory ceiling. But the Ubuntu family are all wayyyyyyy too heavy these days, even Xubuntu, which I use on my primary desktop. Debian boots faster, feels snappier, and uses less RAM. Also, among web browsers, Firefox seems to be a notable RAM hog. Firefox ESR 78.12's baseline RAM usage is several hundred MB more than latest Chrome. Firefox also feels slower than Chrome again; I guess Chrome has caught up to Firefox Quantum and surpassed it. Too bad.

There are lots of 32-bit Pentium 4s and Athlon XPs that are loads faster than the Atom N450, but the software support just isn't there anymore. Particularly for the Athlon XP family, which lacks SSE2. I tried some modern distros on a Sempron 3000+ recently. 32-bit distros might boot, but drivers and apps will mysteriously crash without explanation. 32-bit Pentium 4s might be more usable still, but their days are numbered, with distros and apps dropping 32-bit support left and right.

Install 64-bit Debian on a slightly faster but still old CPU, even with only 2GB of RAM, and you are golden. I did some testing recently with an Athlon 64 X2 4200+ and Pentium 4 670. The extra CPU speed goes a long way; those systems would make decent daily drivers, particularly if paired with SSDs. So the old idea of installing Linux on a slow system to give it a new lease on life is still valid, even if the window of usable hardware keeps sliding toward the future.

Yeah, I’ll say that a K8 (or its Intel contemporary) with 2GB+ of RAM is fine for modern Linux - especially distributions that’s actually supported. If it’s something like Debian 11 Bullseye/12 Bookworm (or its derivatives like Ubuntu or Pop) and you expect something more pleasant than the bash shell, you’ll want a lighter GUI than the usual GNOME3 (MATE, xfce or fluxbox is what I usually go with). There are often frameworks out there that works with Java or Python2/3 underneath, which depending on the need can be removed since they can/do become bloated. What i do is just install the OS headless /minimal and then add the apps/UI stuff as needed.
That being said, you can still do useful work in Linux on the K7s or the Pentium-Ms: from what I remember Parted magic (the 2019 release 1 ISO) only requires a PAE CPU with 512/768MB of RAM and it’s light enough with a workable UI, and from that I remember, SSE2 in their firefox build is still not a requirement, and on the right chassis it can be used to bridge old/modern hardware. It is technically somewhat modern and supported - but payware though.

You could also do like my Cobalt Qube 3 (really just an K6-3+ based mini-server with a custom bootloader) - run it headless and slap webmin on it - it’s still rather useful as an SMB1 server (although a cheap Chinese MIPS32 dongle like a zsun will do the same within OpenWRT so it’s not some crowning achievement). I am thinking of swapping out debian jessie for something less of a deadend - like slackware 15 RC1. That will probably require me to figure out how to do netboot off a slackware NFS served userland, ssh to it and then do the install. Workable (probably) but I’ll need to compile a working 5.x kernel first.

Reply 34 of 72, by BitWrangler

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Lamest piece of crap I've got running a modern 64 bit linux is a TL-52 notebook I got for free with KBC malfunction, ate it's own legacy I/O chip, needs a USB card in the PCMCIA slot, and a keyboard plugged into that, got 2GB of PC-2 in it.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 35 of 72, by f34rthereaper

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I run debian 11 mate on an ibm thinkpad x31 with a 1.6ghz pentium m and i think 1gb of ram(maybe less). It works well enough, chugs a bit on some websites though. You can even watch youtube videos at 360p if your patient enough to wait for it to load

Reply 36 of 72, by ajacocks

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If browsing is what holds you back from using legacy hardware, then there are a number of solutions for that. For one, I have used https://github.com/ttalvitie/browservice with quite some success.

Browservice does all of the rendering that the modern web requires on a proxy host, and renders everything as an image map, for vintage and slow browsers to consume. It works very, very well.

Here’s my repo for automated deployement of browservice, on a Fedora host:

https://github.com/ajacocks/browservice_ansible

If others would like automation for their *nix of choice, let me know.

- Alex

Reply 37 of 72, by Caluser2000

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ajacocks wrote on 2021-09-18, 01:45:
If browsing is what holds you back from using legacy hardware, then there are a number of solutions for that. For one, I have us […]
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If browsing is what holds you back from using legacy hardware, then there are a number of solutions for that. For one, I have used https://github.com/ttalvitie/browservice with quite some success.

Browservice does all of the rendering that the modern web requires on a proxy host, and renders everything as an image map, for vintage and slow browsers to consume. It works very, very well.

Here’s my repo for automated deployement of browservice, on a Fedora host:

https://github.com/ajacocks/browservice_ansible

If others would like automation for their *nix of choice, let me know.

- Alex

Very interesting Alex. Thanks for sharing.

My wee ASUS EeePC ATOM N270 with 2gig of ram is quite competant at using the modern internet....

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 38 of 72, by f34rthereaper

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ajacocks wrote on 2021-09-18, 01:45:
If browsing is what holds you back from using legacy hardware, then there are a number of solutions for that. For one, I have us […]
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If browsing is what holds you back from using legacy hardware, then there are a number of solutions for that. For one, I have used https://github.com/ttalvitie/browservice with quite some success.

Browservice does all of the rendering that the modern web requires on a proxy host, and renders everything as an image map, for vintage and slow browsers to consume. It works very, very well.

Here’s my repo for automated deployement of browservice, on a Fedora host:

https://github.com/ajacocks/browservice_ansible

If others would like automation for their *nix of choice, let me know.

- Alex

Wow! Definitely going to get that set up. I've been using web rendering proxy, though it's a bit cumbersome

Reply 39 of 72, by BitWrangler

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Use lynx or links 😜 ... there are two of them and I always get them confused. I think last time I browsed on a 386 was using links or lynx. Some way into the noughties a local ISP had a free trial shell account still up. So I found this out off a well buried old page on their site, and next time all the decent computers in the house were oversubscribed with various homeworks and real works, I plugged the old 56k sportster into my Zenith 386 and dialled it up. Now I only did this 3 or 4 times with days between each and not on for more than an hour or so, and didn't do anything silly, just a bit of generic browsing at normie type sites. But I must have reminded them it still existed or something as they shut it down and deleted the old pages referring to it. I believe they even had a login warning that you'd get booted off if the modem pool was getting used up, to make room for paying subscribers, but I never got the connection dropped on me, so I figured I wasn't troubling them.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.