Travelmate C204MTI

[Billathome65]

Hi I've just picked up a Travelmate C204MTI as it was being chucked. Touch screen floating screen. 32bit

Can I instal a user friendly linux distro on this? If so which one and what are the possible issues that may arise.

Cheers for any help.

Bill

[Hoser Rob]

The only 32 bit Mint available is LMDE. 32 bit is being abandoned in Linux, it's pretty likely IMO that the next LMDE version won't support 32 bit because its Debian base likely won't. Not having any specs it's not possible to tell if LMDE would run on it. What's the RAM?

That hardware is 20 years old, you may indeed have problems running Linux on it. Even with INtel a 20 year old GPU is probably not going to be supported any more.

The best thing would be to just download an LMDE live boot iso, burn it to a USB stick or DVD if that's not possible, and try it yourself.

If it doesn't work well because tat machine is RAM challenged or whatever, try 32 bit Antix in a live boot. It's not easy to use like more modern distros like Mint/Ubuntu/Fedora but that's just the way these things go. Antix is pretty easy to use in the world of "distros that are meant to work on really old hardware".

[Billathome65]

Hi heres some of the specs.

Processor manufacturer * Intel
Processor family * Intel Pentium Mobile

Processor model *760
Processor frequency * 2GHz
1
1
2 MB
L2
H-PBGA479, PPGA478
533 MHz
90 nm
32-bit
Intel Pentium M 700 Series
Dothan
FSB

27 W
100 °C
144 M
87 mm²
15
Intel® Wireless Display (Intel® WiDi)

Memory
Internal memory * 1 GB
Internal memory type DDR2-SDRAM
Maximum internal memory * 2 GB

It has 1GB memory but iI can upgrade it to 2GB if worth it.

TBH it is only going to be sat on the kitchen side with recipes and youtube on save having books open

Currently has Windows Vista on it bit slow so if something else will run better then cool.

Any advice based on the info that would be great.

As stated it is touch screen so needs to have that capability.

Cheers Bill

[Hoser Rob]

1Gb RAM is definitely not enough for Mint or any other modern distro like Ubuntu or Fedora. 2Gb isn't enough either.

While Linux may run on very weak computers, technically Linux is just the kernel, which controls the hardware and processes and manages files. But the desktop environment, the wrapper that makes Linux useable for most of us, uses a lot more memory. Just the OS on even the lightest Mint edition will take up half the memory.

I'd try Antix, it uses about 1/3 the RAM on boot as even the lightest Mint desktop edition, about 150-175 Mb at boot. Antix is easier to set up and use than other minimal distros AFAIK. But it's still not as easy as Mint or Ubuntu at all. If you do install antix, don't change the defaults.

However many web sites like Facebook or Youtube will still bog the system down. You won't be able to have too many browser tabs open. Antix has much lighter browsers in their software center but they aren't that useful. Dillo is very light but it's only good for wikipedia. It's not so much the OS that eats RAM nowadays as the browsers and many web pages.

It's also quite possible that the graphics card won't be properly supported, and the chances that the touchscreen would work are next to zero.

It's be worth a try running Linux on it, but as you may have noticed, there are limits to this "Linux saves old hardware" thing.

[Billathome65]

Cheers for the info and the time you've taken on this.

I chucked windows 7 ultimate on it which seems usable however its not loaded the Network Controllers which where thier with Vista and I've been unable to find a driver online so am currently usesing an ethernet cable to access the web and just running Opera 32bit

If you have any sites that may have the drivers that would be cool.

But many thanks for your time.

I will try that distro first however and see how that goes as I like a challenge with very limited linux knowledge

Regards Bill

[Hoser Rob]

That machine has Intel WiDi wireless? Intel has the best Linux support but this seems to be one of their rare missteps. I can't find any evidence that there's ever been a Linux driver for it. IMO you're screwed there unless you want to use ethernet.

[ivar]

It has 1GB memory but iI can upgrade it to 2GB if worth it.

TBH it is only going to be sat on the kitchen side with recipes and youtube on save having books open

I have a some years newer netbook with Atom cpu and 1GB ram. Put RaspberryPi OS 32bit on it to see if it was usable. OS in itself fells fine but things grinds to a screeching halt as soon as I try to open anything in a browser

[Hoser Rob]

It has 1GB memory but iI can upgrade it to 2GB if worth it.

TBH it is only going to be sat on the kitchen side with recipes and youtube on save having books open

I have a some years newer netbook with Atom cpu and 1GB ram. Put RaspberryPi OS 32bit on it to see if it was usable. OS in itself fells fine but things grinds to a screeching halt as soon as I try to open anything in a browser

That's the thing. I haven't tried RP OS but Antix, while I can scroll down in FB a bit before I hit swap hell, isn't that great either. And Antix only uses about 150Mb at boot.

Doing Web browsing may be considered one the most mundane and least hardware taxing things you can do on a computer but try it on a RAM challenged box and you'll see differently. Browsers and esp. web pages are some of the biggest RAM hogs around.

Dillo, which I mentioned above, is very light but almost useless. Seamonkey, which I've also tried, is more useful but not as light, and forget facebook on that. Youtube maybe too.

[rlm]

There are some possible options listed here:

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/light ... r-your-pc/