Running LMDE 201403 on 10 year old Sony Viao

[germanix]

I recently installed LMDE 201403 - cinnamon on my 10 year old Sony Viao laptop. The specs for my machine are as follows: Intel Celeron Processor with 1,6 GHz, 2 Gb ram and graphics on board. Up until the instalation I was running Xubuntu 12.10 on this machine but as the support for this OS is running out and my processor is non-PAE I could not upgrade to any later versions of Ubuntu. It was then that I saw that LMDE 201403 supported PAE in the 32 bit version and decided to try it out. I have tried to install LMDE on some occasions in the past on this machine but could not get the WiFi to work, so I was expecting problems.
The install went very smooth and I was pleasantly surprised to see that WiFi worked out of the box and so did everything else. Even installing DropBox which is a pain in Ubuntu installed here without any hassels. I have a slow ATA/100 80 gig harddrive build in but LMDE still manages to boot in 1 minute and 40 seconds. (Xubuntu required 59 seconds). The only problem I experienced was when I connected my external drive it was at first not recognized and the file-manager froze up, but after a new-start the system decided to make friends with the HDD and all was well again.
I am very exited to have LMDE at last running on my old Sony. Somewhat slow on this old hardware which was to be expected but not that slow either. In fact it is still faster than Windows XP on my office desktop at my place of work. There is still some live in my Sony and LMDE will hopefully keep on supporting my old hardware for some time to come.
Great work Team and thank you for this very nice distro

[leejosepho]

Congratulations! I had to use MATE for my old stuff.

I have a slow ATA/100 80 gig harddrive build in but LMDE still manages to boot in 1 minute and 40 seconds. (Xubuntu required 59 seconds). The only problem I experienced was when I connected my external drive it was at first not recognized and the file-manager froze up, but after a new-start the system decided to make friends with the HDD and all was well again.

Keep an eye on your favorite auction site and you can likely find a 7200rpm drive with a nice buffer to speed things up a bit, if you wish, then use the one you have as a backup device.

[bobafetthotmail]

Congrats!

I'd say to give a shot at XFCE user interface, as both interface and file manager are lighter and better suited for older and/or weaker hardware. Packages xfce4 and xfce4-goodies, then on reboot click on the gear icon in the login panel to try out XFCE.

[itsme4401]

leejosepho wrote:

Keep an eye on your favorite auction site and you can likely find a 7200rpm drive with a nice buffer to speed things up a bit, if you wish, then use the one you have as a backup device.

Be sure what you are buying there:
I have an 8 year old VAIO and its HDD has a different formfactor: 1.8 " Even 2.5 " will AFAIK not fit in your machine. To make sure:
google for the HDD in your machine, the HDD type & name can be found with the assistance of Gparted and/or google for a HDD giving the exact type of your VAIO. (Mine is VGE-NS38E)

[germanix]

I thank you for all the good advice and tips. I plan to look into it and report back. Have a nice day.