Pentium 4 2.4/1GB S-L-O-W in Mint 13 Mate. Help?
Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2013 4:16 am
Hi, gang:
I need to make a virus-proof "kid-puter" from on older Compaq desktop PC. It has 1 GB RAM and a Pentium 4 running at 2.4 GHz. The HD is IDE and 40 GB.
I ran MEMTEST and Seatools / Spinrite before I began to verify that the hardware was okay. It is.
This PC runs XP SP3 butter smooth, so I was very surprised to see that, when I installed Mint 13 LTS Mate, it's unusable, at least on the internet.
Firefox is slow and stuttery, with unacceptable lag on every keystroke and mouse click. It can barely play a youtube video (unexpended), and if I switch to full-screen mode, it's like a slide show. Since Firefox -- and Mint's VLC / Flash / etc, with everything working out of the box goodness -- is the primary use for this PC (browsing, online kid games, Facebook, etc), this is unfortunate.
Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10, or Mint 10, my previous distros for virus-proof "kid and grandma" PCs, are getting old and may not support web-technology like flash, etc, so I'm reluctant to use them from now on.
I installed Mint 14 (Mate and Cinnamon) in a VM and didn't prefer it. I installed VMs of Mint 13 (Mate and Xfce), and Mate was "just right," while Xfce had trouble browsing my Windows shares, etc. In 1 GB VMs all versions were *very fast* (although my i7-930 box is about a million times faster than the old Compaq P4), so I was surprised at how choppy it was on the P4.
The only thing I haven't really checked yet is the wireless internet adapter. I just grabbed one that was laying around and, thanks to Mint 13, it "just worked." I haven't speed-tested it yet, and I haven't hooked it up to a wired network port.
Barring that, did I miss something?
I can try other distros, but I like Mint 13 Mate and my time is kinda limited
Thanks for your help!
--Kirk in MN
I need to make a virus-proof "kid-puter" from on older Compaq desktop PC. It has 1 GB RAM and a Pentium 4 running at 2.4 GHz. The HD is IDE and 40 GB.
I ran MEMTEST and Seatools / Spinrite before I began to verify that the hardware was okay. It is.
This PC runs XP SP3 butter smooth, so I was very surprised to see that, when I installed Mint 13 LTS Mate, it's unusable, at least on the internet.
Firefox is slow and stuttery, with unacceptable lag on every keystroke and mouse click. It can barely play a youtube video (unexpended), and if I switch to full-screen mode, it's like a slide show. Since Firefox -- and Mint's VLC / Flash / etc, with everything working out of the box goodness -- is the primary use for this PC (browsing, online kid games, Facebook, etc), this is unfortunate.
Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10, or Mint 10, my previous distros for virus-proof "kid and grandma" PCs, are getting old and may not support web-technology like flash, etc, so I'm reluctant to use them from now on.
I installed Mint 14 (Mate and Cinnamon) in a VM and didn't prefer it. I installed VMs of Mint 13 (Mate and Xfce), and Mate was "just right," while Xfce had trouble browsing my Windows shares, etc. In 1 GB VMs all versions were *very fast* (although my i7-930 box is about a million times faster than the old Compaq P4), so I was surprised at how choppy it was on the P4.
The only thing I haven't really checked yet is the wireless internet adapter. I just grabbed one that was laying around and, thanks to Mint 13, it "just worked." I haven't speed-tested it yet, and I haven't hooked it up to a wired network port.
Barring that, did I miss something?
I can try other distros, but I like Mint 13 Mate and my time is kinda limited
Thanks for your help!
--Kirk in MN