Re: An old box running Debian 8
On 11/11/20 7:09 PM, Greg Wooledge wrote:
Upgrading to a newer release is not likely to make it faster. If anything,
it'll be slower (due to increased memory demands of newer software).
That's something I have already experienced with previous upgrades. But
it was always in full GUI (either Gnome, KDE, LXDE, Mate, etc). While I
examined that machine for a 'refurbished' CLI-based system, I removed
all GUI. And it was not so bad. Then I re-installed Mate desktop again,
just to run it for some specific tasks such as Thunderbird client. Of
course the GUI + TB is terribly slow, but it is used only once in a while.
It's also worth noting that Debian 8->9 has a huge change to X and video
drivers. Lots of chipsets are supported *differently* in Debian 9 than
they were in previous versions. Whether that's good or bad will depend
on the chipset. Some chipsets may have lost support altogether.
On another machine, a little bit better than the first one, I did have a
big issue: After upgrading 8->9 and restart it did not want to open GUI
at all, so the only solution was to boot in CLI, then 'startx' GUI. So I
suppose than on this (older) box, GUI might be even more problematic.
(It is Matrox MGA 400.)
On the other side, it makes me wonder if just CLI-only packages in
Debian 9 would make it too slow after upgrade (if workable at all).
At this point, your system is quite old, and you should not expect it to
last forever. Even if the software works perfectly, the hardware is
eventually going to fail. You might want to get ahead of that by buying
something less ancient. You might even save on electricity by doing this.
Yeah, I know. The point was to use it until the hardware dies :-)
Electricity? It is in the ham union's office, so nobody cares :-)
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