Re: An old box running Debian 8
Miroslav Skoric composed on 2020-11-14 17:02 (UTC+0100):
> I understood from this thread that after distro upgrade
> from 8 to 9 shall work in CLI, and then look for a simple window manager
> & light mail processor.
I can't imagine why it wouldn't work. Last night I performed a fresh installation
on a relic similar to what yours could be with a dirt cheap or free CPU upgrade to
a Pentium II or III and bringing RAM up to 384M or even 768M or 1024M, depending
on what the board supports. Many old P2 boards came with 3 RAM slots supporting up
to 768M. That's what the board I used constitutes, but with BIOS upgrade also
fully supports Pentium IIIs. Newer Celeron boards with Socket 370 instead of slot I
have seen only have two RAM slots but support at least 1024M RAM.
This was a NET installation initialized by Grub after downloading only the
installation kernel and initrd before starting. Also, in advance, I partitioned
and formatted, and provided an ample swap partition for the installer to use.
Thus I was able to use the GUI installer. As all my PCs are, it's multiboot,
this one with DOS, Windows XP and two old SUSE releases running 2.x kernels.
Note that Trinity Desktop Environment is a full DE, not mere window manager.
Its version 14.0.9 was released just last week. It's developed on and primarily
intended for Debian-based distros.
Also note below the dismal disk I/O. That's because the HD is running on a 50 pin
SCSI-2 HD, which when new, was a lot faster than the IDE disks of its early '90s
era.
# inxi -Cy
CPU:
Info: Single Core model: Pentium III (Coppermine) bits: 32 type: MCP
L2 cache: 256 KiB
Speed: 702 MHz min/max: N/A Core speed (MHz): 1: 702
# inxi -GIMSmay
System:
Host: s2846 Kernel: 5.9.1-2-default i686 bits: 32 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.1
Desktop: Trinity R14.0.9 tk: Qt 3.5.0 info: kicker wm: Twin 3.0 dm: TDM
Distro: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20201111
Machine:
Type: Desktop Mobo: Tyan model: Intel 440BX/GX v: Rev. 4 serial: 00000000
BIOS: American Megatrends v: 063101 date: 07/15/99
Memory:
RAM: total: 483.6 MiB used: 138.2 MiB (28.6%)
Array-1: capacity: 768 MiB slots: 0 EC: N/A max module size: 256 MiB
Device-1: N/A size: 256 MiB info: double-bank speed: type: N/A
bus width: N/A total: N/A manufacturer: N/A part-no: N/A serial: N/A
Device-2: N/A size: N/A info: not installed speed: type: N/A bus width: N/A
total: N/A manufacturer: N/A part-no: N/A serial: N/A
Device-3: N/A size: 256 MiB info: double-bank speed: type: N/A
bus width: N/A total: N/A manufacturer: N/A part-no: N/A serial: N/A
Graphics:
Device-1: Matrox Systems MGA G400/G450 driver: matrox_w1 v: kernel
bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 102b:0525
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.9 driver: matrox_w1 note: display driver n/a
FAILED: mga unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa display ID: :0 screens: 1
Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1280x1024 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 339x271mm (13.3x10.7")
s-diag: 434mm (17.1")
Monitor-1: default res: 1280x1024 hz: 77
OpenGL: renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 11.0.0 128 bits) v: 4.5 Mesa 20.2.1
compat-v: 3.1 direct render: Yes
Info:...Shell: Bash v: 5.0.18 running in: konsole inxi: 3.1.09
# free
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 495392 134324 81852 1404 279216 346244
Swap: 4875652 264 4875388
# df /
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb7 6460497 1668643 4460436 28% /
# hdparm -t /dev/sdb
/dev/sdb:
Timing buffered disk reads: 56 MB in 3.01 seconds = 18.61 MB/sec
I have not tried any more with the TDE GUI on this installation than
customizing settings and using Konsole to collect this data, but they were
plenty brisk, in spite of the poor Matrox graphics performance. IMO TDE
qualifies as a lightweight well suited to antiques. After all, it's a fork of
KDE3, which ran well on hardware common when it was forked to TDE a decade
ago, and hasn't been bloated by unnecessary changes in the interim.
--
Evolution as taught in public schools, like religion,
is based on faith, not on science.
Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!
Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/
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