Mint Rocks on Ancient PC

[benali72]

I found a desktop someone threw out and thought it would be fun to play with it.

It's an Emachines desktop, model t5274, which I believe was made in about 2006. One of the earliest dual-core machines, it runs at 2.0 ghz and has 2 gig ram.

I installed Mint 19.3, it works great. Runs smoothly, very useful for Libreoffice and testing. The main limitation I've run into is that when you web-surf, you want to have maybe one or two tabs open instead of a whole bunch.

Just wanted to post my thanks here to the Mint folks. What a remarkable tool to bring life to a 15-year-old computer!

[vimes666]

Give it an ssd and you will be amazed

[benali72]

Hey, great idea. I have one from a laptop I can spare. Thanks!

[900i]

More ram = more tabs

[JoeFootball]

I installed Mint 19.3, it works great.

Not to dismiss your success, but just wanted to add that LM 19.2 Xfce (supported until April 2023) is great for older hardware, as it features a "lighter" desktop, and defaults to the 4.15.x kernel.

You didn't mention your desktop, but if you're already using Xfce, you can manually install the latest 4.15.x kernel. Those two aspects will get the most out of that 2006 artifact.

[benali72]

Thanks for the suggestions here. I should have mentioned I'm using the Xfce desktop. I would guess this old pc could not support the fancier visual effects available in the heavier desktop alternatives.

I added an old laptop SSD and it made a BIG difference.

I wanted to add more ram, as @900i here points out, that could really help. The online documentation says this pc supports only 2g ram (2 slots with 1 gig of ddr2 in each). But I updated the BIOS, and then slapped in a 2 gig stick, and got it up to 3 gig total. So now I can relax a bit about how many tabs I have open in Firefox.

Anyway, it makes a great free machine for the basement, that's for sure. Thanks for the feedback.

[DraganTheMighty]

Till recently I had a Pentium 4 2.8 with an ATI Video card 128mb and 1024MB ram.
Except Windows XP only Linux Mint 18 Xfce 32bit could boot this pc and it was almost as fast as XP.
I tried Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Linux Lite, MX Linux and all resulted to black screen.

[Samarian Sunset]

Mint rocks on my 12 year old PC!

A Dell OptiPlex 780 (from 2009), with the old Intel Core2 Duo E8600, 4gb ram, SSD and NVIDIA GeForce GT 330 GPU. I'm still running 19.2 Cinnamon and it runs smooth and fast. I don't do video editing or gaming, but for everything I do it's sweet. I've tried 19.3 from a live USB and that worked good too. Don't know if there's enough juice left in my old machine to handle Mint 20?

[JoeFootball]

A Dell OptiPlex 780 (from 2009), with the old Intel Core2 Duo E8600, 4gb ram, SSD and NVIDIA GeForce GT 330 GPU. I'm still running 19.2 Cinnamon and it runs smooth and fast. I don't do video editing or gaming, but for everything I do it's sweet. I've tried 19.3 from a live USB and that worked good too.

LM 19.2 defaults to the 4.15.x kernel, which tends to be better for older hardware like yours. While LM 19.3 defaults to the 5.4.x kernel, you can do an in-place upgrade to 19.3 and retain the 4.15.x kernel. If you wanted to, that is.

Don't know if there's enough juice left in my old machine to handle Mint 20?

I don't know either, but the LM 19.x series will be supported until April 2023, so no need to go to LM 20.x now if everything is working as you like it.

[RickyRaccoon]

Typing this on a 2007 Acer Power FH that shipped with a P4HT. Have an old Radeon card and an SSD. With that and 2Gb RAM, Cinnamon 20.x was a bit sluggish- I've since upgraded the RAM (4Gb but for some reason everything's reporting back 3) and swapped the Pentium for a Core2Duo, and it's snappy enough.

[AlithinosMakethonas]

Yes, it rocks but my hardware died...

[RickyRaccoon]

Yes, it rocks but my hardware died...

Yes I've suddenly been having problems with my old Acer seeing all the installed RAM- hoping it's the modules I bought. And it's not the OS- the shortfall is showing up on the BIOS screen, as well. CPU-X is the only thing that recognises what's installed but that's not a count, right? That's just 'you have a ___ in slot 0, you have a ____ in slot 1'. But the total RAM isn't adding up, with both modules installed. I'm not sure what's going on. They seem to do right, with only one module installed, but it goes to hell when I have both of them in. Fortunately DDR-2 RAM is pretty cheap now so I might try again with a fresh set. Officially, this Acer with two memory slots only goes to 2Gb, but all the memory sites (and anecdotal evidence) is that it'll see 4. When I bought two 2Gb modules and installed them- fairly recently- I could see 3.8 ish. When I have two 1Gb installed it sees 1.9, so that makes sense. But then it dropped to 3.2... and when I reseated them/swapped them around, it dropped to 2.8. And shows that now, no matter what I do. Also just shows 2.8 in the BIOS when I try one paired with a 1Gb stick. It shows that now, no matter what. Put my 1Gb modules back in (won't get past the BIOS screen with mismatched modules) and might try ordering a fresh pair. Or not. I don't have to be in a hurry with it- for browsing, I have enough with no performance hit- and that's still running Cinnamon.

Unrelated to that, I discovered I was having a screen-blanking problem. When uploading System Info, or when starting Evolution email, the video signal would blank out for a good 10 or 15 seconds, then come back. Now, I've run the Cinnamon DE under multiple Mint versions, on this system, without problem. I'm not sure what the problem is now, but at the time I had an old spare HD 6450 installed to bypass the crappy integrated graphics. I... replaced it with an equally if not more decrepit GeForce 310- haven't yet changed to the proprietary driver, but that solved my screen blanking. It's not simply Mint and the open-source AMD driver... I have an HD 6450 also installed in my homebrew which is running the same Mint revision, and don't have this problem. So I presume it's the combination of this old motherboard and the GPU that's not agreeing with the Mint Radeon driver. Be interesting to see if it's like that with other AMD cards, or just the 6450. But not enough to buy another Radeon (I'd rather have a better Nvidia than this old 310).

[MartyMint]

Install Windows on your old, testing machines...and use Linux on your main rigs.

You've talked the talk, now walk the walk.

[pilotbob42]

I'm still using 19.3 on a Asus EeePC 900HA. Really wish that there had been just one more 32 bit release, but 19.3 works really well on it.

[RickyRaccoon]

I'm still using 19.3 on a Asus EeePC 900HA. Really wish that there had been just one more 32 bit release, but 19.3 works really well on it.

Yes.... I hate it 32 bits are being dropped.. wait for it... bit by bit.

I no longer have any 32-bit systems (even my old P4 was a hyperthread before I dropped a C2D in it) but I have a friend with a desktop that the PS has been crapped out for a long time now- he keeps talking about getting a PSU for it (and I might have one for him soon- if it fits). When he does... I'm pretty sure it's going to be a Pentium 4, I just don't know if it's hyperthread or not. Was going to try and get him to get off whatever hopelessly outdated Windows is on it, and get him started on Mint- but if it's 32-bit, gonna have to be 19.3 I reckon.

Had a Gateway G6-333c that shipped with Win98 that had a... I'm going to say it was a Slot 1 333Mhz Celeron. Long set aside- by the time I got around to thinking 'You know, I'mma gonna see what I can get it to boot to', something had crapped out in it- guessing the caps- failed to power up. Think I had planned to start with Puppy Linux and go up from there. Really would have gotten a kick out of seeing it boot to something in.. I don't know maybe it was 2016 when I tried to power it back up.

[AnonymousFighter]

Give it an ssd and you will be amazed

ancient pc and ssd???

[RickyRaccoon]

Well not so ancient it don't have a SATA, I suppose. And every little bit of speed helps. This Acer I'm typing this on (which is running off a little 60Gb SSD) is... new enough to have SATA- but it also has a PATA connector- the DVD-R I have in it is PATA. Also has a floppy, although I seem to have trouble accessing it in Linux- maybe I'll figure that out sometime. The slots are a mix of tech, also. I'm running an old Nvidia GPU in my x16 PCIe slot, and I'm connected to the wifi with a card plugged into one of the two PCI slots. I love this computer.

[mrgordos]

I had a 2006 HP Pavillion a1730n with the Athlon 64 X2 4600+ 2.4 GHz and use an old nvidia G210 graphics card with HDMI. Added 2GB of ram for a total of 4GB and a ssd and it's running Mint 19.2 Cinnamon, gave it to my sister recently and she still uses it connected to her tv as a monitor to watch my Plex account movies, as well as for her every day computer needs. I tried Mint 20 and it seemed to work ok, was just worried that it might have problems down the road that she wouldn't be able to fix.

[RickyRaccoon]

I had a 2006 HP Pavillion a1730n with the Athlon 64 X2 4600+ 2.4 GHz and use an old nvidia G210 graphics card with HDMI. Added 2GB of ram for a total of 4GB and a ssd and it's running Mint 19.2 Cinnamon, gave it to my sister recently and she still uses it connected to her tv as a monitor to watch my Plex account movies, as well as for her every day computer needs. I tried Mint 20 and it seemed to work ok, was just worried that it might have problems down the road that she wouldn't be able to fix.

So far 20.1's run good on my Intel-based Acer. I have had one freeze-up that lasted about 30 seconds that was odd. But nothing before or since- except for those memory modules that went bad. put my old ones back in and it's been running well on 2GB RAM, but then, right now I'm not doing any heavy lifting with it.

[The Dark Side]

MX Linux, AntiX Linux, and Devuan they do real miracles on an old PC. I recommend any of these 3, best regards.