Computer Related > Lubuntu Miscellaneous
Thread Author: RattleandSmoke Replies: 19
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New Wed 26 Jan 11 23:59 
 Lubuntu - RattleandSmoke
Had a customer who had an 11 year old laptop with a dodgy version of XP on it, WGA installed and now wanted her to activate it before going any further by entering in her COA number . There is no COA so this was not an option.

She said she only uses it for facebook and email so she may as well do without a computer. I then suggested that Linux would be better than nothing now it is a PIII 500 with 512MB RAM (must have been upgraded).

I have just installed Lubuntu on it which is a strip down version of Ubuntu which uses LXEDE it is very basic but I have got it working with 802.11G and the latest version of Chrome.

I was straight into Youtube and the videos played quite smoothly. The system also boots up very quickly.

I am simply very impressed considered it is a 500Mhz PIII (most phones are now more powerful than this laptop).

I have warned the customer of the limitations. Anyway it is an interesting experiment as the customer is in her mid 60's. It is the first time I have ever suggested linux to a none techy.

So this laptop is 11 years old and working perfectly with all modern websites. There is no chance Ubuntu would have worked well on this laptop with Gnome so I am very pleased.
Last edited by: RattleandSmoke on Thu 27 Jan 11 at 00:00
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New Thu 27 Jan 11 00:16 
 Lubuntu - rtj70
I used to run X11 and Linux on a 33MHz 486 in 8Mb of RAM. I'm not surprised.
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New Thu 27 Jan 11 00:32 
 Lubuntu - RattleandSmoke
Indeed the interface looks like a Windows 3.1 shell but I was just surprised how well flash worked.

I am thinking about it installing it on my Atom netbook now it would be very fast on that.
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New Thu 27 Jan 11 12:55 
 Lubuntu - AnotherJohnH
puppylinux is worth a look for running on antiques (or new skinny stuff)


puppylinux.org/main/Overview%20and%20Getting%20Started.htm
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New Thu 27 Jan 11 13:23 
 Lubuntu - Victorbox
For e-mail, internet and office applications I find Windows 7 runs acceptably well on old Pentium 3's (possibly not as old a 500Mhz though) with just 1GB RAM.
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New Thu 27 Jan 11 13:43 
 Lubuntu - AnotherJohnH
>> For e-mail, internet and office applications...

you get all the applications you need in the 100megs or so that puppy is (for free..)

try the live cd option for amusement. nothing gets broken or overwritten on your machine.
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New Thu 27 Jan 11 16:09 
 Lubuntu - RattleandSmoke
I would not want to spend £70+ on a Windows 7 licence for a PIII thougfh!.

This is where Linux is brilliant it is a way of re-using antique laptops legally without expensive software costs.

I should add I restarted the PIII this morning and was amazed to find that the WIFI (a cheap PMCIA card) works perfectly.

What I think is brilliant about this distro (Lubuntu) is it is Ubuntu it has the same drivers and software library the only difference is the windows manager. No fancy graphics to such the RAM.

Video play back works fine too although a bit jumpy due to the PIII. I need a new laptop as the netbook is getting a bit tiresome to use. I know a £100 early P4/1GB RAM setup will work perfecly with this distro where as before I was a bit wary because it would not work so well with Ubuntu.

My Atom struggles with Ubuntu but I suspect it is more due to the crap SSD rather than processor.
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New Thu 27 Jan 11 19:23 
 Lubuntu - Bellboy
im pleased my message is getting across
next time you try it rattts try downloading linux mint and install that, just put it on a standard write cd,i think its on 10 now,takes 30 mins to download on my 2 meg home virgin
it even accepts straight from plug in my cannon scanner,no drivers needed to find and obviously if you use lan on install it even finds that automatically
one other thing its easy to download spotify with wine

superb for basic intenet and its
free
free
free
free
free
free
free
freefree
free
free
freefree
free
free
free
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New Thu 27 Jan 11 19:27 
 Lubuntu - RattleandSmoke
I use Mint on my admin PC, a Celeron 1.8Ghz with 1.5GB of RAM it works flawlessly. It is still a bit fancy and while it works perfectly on a Yonah Celeron it won't work too well with a PIII.

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New Thu 27 Jan 11 19:29 
 Lubuntu - Bellboy
im on pentium 3
its an old server with two processors linked together bought it for $35 ish a few years back in an auction
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New Thu 27 Jan 11 20:08 
 Lubuntu - MD
BB does twin choke Webbers, Plugs and points and is still ahead of the pack on space ship stuff. WOW!!!
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New Thu 27 Jan 11 21:48 
 Lubuntu - DP
If you want another good use for an old box, a couple of big cheap hard drives and an installation of FreeNAS turns the system into a very good, reliable NAS drive.
I built a fileserver for our showroom at work using an old P4 box we had kicking around, and a couple of 1TB SATA drives. Been up now for 403 troublefree days (checked today) as a file repository for a couple of Macs and 30 or so PC's. Works an absolute treat.
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New Fri 28 Jan 11 10:24 
 Lubuntu - spamcan61
>>
>> My Atom struggles with Ubuntu but I suspect it is more due to the crap
>> SSD rather than processor.
>>
I have the HDD version of the Acer and it wasn't particularly quick on easypeasy 1.5 (basically Ubuntu 9), although it did work fine provided I din't want to change anything.

I hang my head in shame - I gave up and put XP Home on it off my old dead Dell, battery life is improved and cold boot isn't too bad - under a minute including MSE and wifi login. I'm using it as a media centre PC with an external USB soundcard now.
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New Fri 28 Jan 11 21:09 
 Lubuntu - RattleandSmoke
I had XP on it but had too many file system issues on it, again I suspect dying SSD. Have been able to watch Iplayer with Lubuntu which I couldn't with XP it was too jumpy.

I might do a RAM test on it though, I upgraded the RAM from 512mb to 1GB (it is a motherboard out job) but I don't know the history of the RAM as it was just some I had in spare.
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New Fri 28 Jan 11 21:19 
 Lubuntu - spamcan61
I upgraded the RAM in mine from half to one and a half gig a couple of weeks back, now memory prices have dropped again. It is a bit of a ballache for an occasional PC dismantler like me, you have to take the entire thing to bits, pretty much.

..almost as bad as a modern car

I've had no BSOD or anything untoward with XP.
Last edited by: spamcan61 on Fri 28 Jan 11 at 21:23
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New Sat 29 Jan 11 17:40 
 Lubuntu - RattleandSmoke
No issues with BSODs but with XP the HD light would often hang for seconds and the file system would corrupt itself but I used FAT32 rather than NTFS for performance reasons.

The SSD is simply crap and I wish I had bought the hard drive version now.
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New Sat 29 Jan 11 13:47 
 Lubuntu - Bagpuss
>> laptop with a dodgy version of XP on it

Yes I have that as well - since the XP update in December last year.
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New Sat 29 Jan 11 17:40 
 Lubuntu - RattleandSmoke
Was your legit to start of with though?
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New Sat 29 Jan 11 21:58 
 Lubuntu - Bagpuss
>> Was your legit to start of with though?

Yes. As is the XP on my wife's laptop which has been similarly blue screening since the December update.
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New Sun 30 Jan 11 04:18 
 Lubuntu - RattleandSmoke
The customers latpop was not blue screening, it was simply saying the copy was ilegal and that she must enter the COA number, which she didn't have. Hence in her case she was probablty conned.
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