would linux be ok on this?

[JoshP4]

I want to watch youtube. That's all just youtube at 360 or 480p. Specs

Pentium 4 no hyperthreading
2.4ghz

768mb ram
Intel 82845 graphics



Linux mint xfce be ok?

[ivan-the-idiot]

Yup, as long as you have the bandwidth to support it.

[JoshP4]

I'm new to Linux. I have used ubuntu before and Linux mint. Just not on low specs before. Thanks

[Reorx]

Can you run Linux on that hardware? Definitely. Can you run Linux Mint on that hardware? Not well - with the possible exception of LM13 XFCE 32bit version with a min RAM requirement of 384 MB. Pretty much every other current version of Mint requires 500 mg of RAM at a minimum and 1 GB for "comfortable use". The single threaded P4 isn't doing you any performance favors either. Any video beyond low resolution, small screen video with likely peg your CPU meter at 100% and produce "framey" playback.

My favorite distro for anemic and aging hardware is LXLE. It is based on Lubuntu. You might consider giving it a look-see.

P.S.: To test YouTube vid performance, you don't have to install anything. You should be able to tell a lot from running the Live USB (assuming your computer can boot to a Live USB stick).

[edwardr]

Consider using Minitube, which lets you watch youtube videos without using flash, or adding a video downloader extension to your browser and downloading the youtube videos to your harddrive and watching them locally.

[DarrenG]

Maybe Puppy Linux? They have a version based on Ubuntu Tahr. http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pu ... p64-6.0.5/

[Wild Penguin]

I think the most limiting factor is the amount of RAM as stated by others - I'd upgrade it to at least 1GB or preferentially 2GB. With a lighter desktop environment you might get by with lesser RAM, but even running Firefox or Chromium will hog quite a bit of RAM.

Playing back video will be CPU intensive with most video cards - Video service providers (like Youtube) usually target Windows only, and (perhaps?) use Video cards for decoding there - but on Linux the end result often is the CPU doing the decoding. With NVidia and Chrome you may (?) get HW decoding. Not using a browser (but downloading the video one way or the other) may offload decoding from the CPU, and use GPU decoding instead.

Summary: I think it is feasible on your HW, but it may not be easy / fun ... YMMV! Try it on some Live distributions.

[felemur]

I had more or less the same question with my Toshiba A100. It shows around 850Mb of RAM when I check the specs, though the label on it says 1GB. It has a horrid Celeron M processor.

I tried it with Mint Cinnamon and it would not play youtube at even the lowest resolution without constant stopping and starting - no good.

I tried Puppy Linux based on my good experience of Puppy from installing it on an Acer Atom 512Mb RAM net-book from 2008. Puppy Linux is now much more system demanding than it used to be, and I found it was a total pain in the Toshiba.

I then tried Lubuntu. It was recommended for a system that low end by many sources. However, though the youtube videos did play without stuttering, it would crash and freeze regularly - no good. (And it looks like Windows '98)

I then installed as a dual boot, Mint Xfce and Manjaro Xfce. Both worked well. Neither crashes, and both will play youtube on the lower resolutions. Now, I hate to say it here, but the Manjaro makes the computer work faster - noticeably faster. However, the Manjaro was a pain to get the printer and scanner to work with it, and despite what reviews say, Manjaro is not a beginners Linux IMO especially when it comes to installing software not in the Manjaro repositories.

So, yes - I think Mint Xfce is a good choice for that computer playing youtube vids.

[Reorx]

...I then tried Lubuntu. It was recommended for a system that low end by many sources. However, though the youtube videos did play without stuttering, it would crash and freeze regularly - no good. (And it looks like Windows '98)

Try taking a Live USB stick with Live LXLE on it for a test drive - you might like it.

[felemur]

...I then tried Lubuntu. It was recommended for a system that low end by many sources. However, though the youtube videos did play without stuttering, it would crash and freeze regularly - no good. (And it looks like Windows '98)

Try taking a Live USB stick with Live LXLE on it for a test drive - you might like it.

Thanks, looks good. I'll install it on that old Toshiba A100 and see how it goes. Since it is based on Ubuntu 14.04 it will be interesting to see how it compares to Manjaro Xfce. So far, on that computer, Manjaro Xfce is the only distro that doesn't feel sluggish, though the Mint Xfce does the trick without issues.

Note to JoshP4: No mater what distro or DE you run, I found that if you use up your RAM, youtube vids will stutter. So only run the one window in your browser and have no other apps running - even a file manager. I find it makes a big difference. Each window/app open uses up RAM, and once you run out, you start to swap, and when that happens, things slow down.

Also, if you use MInt, make sure you change the swappiness: https://sites.google.com/site/easylinux ... important-

[songhuijohn]

My neighbor gave me his old Dell computer (Pentium 4 a 3.00 GHZ with 3 gigabytes of memory) and it ran Linux Mint 17.3 just fine but slow ( email and search) until I tried to watch a video on Youtube - this did not work - the audio was fine but the video was terrible - unwatchable.

Beware!! You have a slower CPU then I did.