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Should I install Linux and if so what version? — Parallax Forums

Should I install Linux and if so what version?

Don MDon M Posts: 1,652
edited 2014-11-01 16:14 in General Discussion
I have an older HP computer sitting around and it needs a hard drive as the original one died. I'm trying to decide what to do with this box- whether to buy a drive and install Linux or just scrap it out. I don't have any experience with Linux so I thought I'd ask the general forum here for some suggestions.

Here's the specs on the HP:

Pentium 4 3.20GHz
2 GB Ram
ATI 2400 Pro AGP Dual DVI video card
RS232 & Parallel port
4 USB 2.0 ports
3 1/2 Floppy
2 DVD drives (1 Writer)

Don't know if it's worth messing around with. What say you?

Thanks.
Don
«1

Comments

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-10-28 10:28
    Debian. With the KDE Plasma Desktop.

    It is well worth messing around with Linux.

    Edit: What? You have a machine with real serial and parallel ports and you want to scrap it! No waayyyy...

    Other edit: Just noticed you don't have a hard drive. Just for fun burn a Knoppix live CD image onto a CD or DVD and boot that up. Then you can see Linux running. Dead easy, no installation required. Such live CD's are often handy for repair work.
  • GenetixGenetix Posts: 1,754
    edited 2014-10-28 10:42
    Don, that's an old system, single core, what did you plan on using it for?
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-10-28 10:53
    Old, single core, so what? If one wants to have a little dabble in Linux it's probably perfectly adequate.

    My home machine is an old single core AMD 64 bit something it is hardly distinguishable, performance wise, from the much newer Intel Quad core wiz bang on my desk in the office.

    Stick an SSD in there and have fun with it.
  • OppaErichOppaErich Posts: 48
    edited 2014-10-28 10:57
    Buy a SSD and that thing will fly, OK 2GB more RAM wouldn't hurt but 2 should be fine.Debian with KDE like Heater said. The gfx card is old enough, the free driver, read: no hassle for you & enabled by default, should even serve all the bling but that may slow your machine down. But you can turn the bling off and it'll fly.@Heater: I bought a PCI serial interface card some years ago. Works fine 'til now, 1 sub-D9, 1 sub-D25 and 1 classic parallel port.
  • Don MDon M Posts: 1,652
    edited 2014-10-28 10:59
    Genetix wrote: »
    Don, that's an old system, single core, what did you plan on using it for?

    I really have no specific plans. I mostly dabble in programming i.e. the Propeller. Just thought I'd learn more about Linux.

    This machine was my main programming machine (Windows XP) until the hard drive quit. It was more than adequate at that time. I replaced it a couple years ago and it has been sitting around since. Been cleaning out the basement lately.
  • Don MDon M Posts: 1,652
    edited 2014-10-28 11:05
    I guess one of my main concerns, if there is one, would be the dual DVI video card and making that work (in Linux) with the 2 monitors I still have for it.

    As far as hard drive replacement- it'll be the most inexpensive option that I find. I don't need a lot of storage but something for around $50 or less would be fine.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-10-28 11:12
    I have never tried a dual monitor setup. A quick google hints that it is quite doable.

    That need not be a "main concern" if you are exploring Linux for the first time.

    I understand the budgetary constrains but 50 dollars more on an SSD makes life so much nicer. The best up-grade I have had to any machine ever.
  • SRLMSRLM Posts: 5,045
    edited 2014-10-28 12:05
    I prefer Ubuntu Gnome. It fits my needs and workstyle well, and there's lots of support for it. My system has a dual monitor setup with an Nvidia card, and it pretty much works out of the box.
  • FredBlaisFredBlais Posts: 370
    edited 2014-10-28 12:13
    Take a look at this for your Hard Drive
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178450
    500GB, almost as fast as an SSD


    I have Xubuntu http://xubuntu.org/ installed on a computer even older than this one and works like a charm

    trusty_desktop.png
  • David BDavid B Posts: 592
    edited 2014-10-28 14:52
    The linux os itself will run fine on almost anything, but the desktop you install can make a big difference in performance.

    I was playing around with Ubuntu on a older machine than yours, and the standard desktop that Ubuntu installed brought it to its knees; it felt so sluggish it was painful.

    Then I tried Lubuntu, a version with a lightweight desktop. It was much faster but the desktop was a little too lightweight, without much in the way of features.

    I went back to Ubuntu and played around with configuring desktops for a while, and eventually got a pretty good mix of useful features which still ran pretty quickly on quite an old machine.

    So your machine would be more than adequate.

    I don't know about you, but I find surplus hard drives around all the time in giveaway pcs, many of decent size and with years of life left in them. They may not be the biggest or the fastest, but if you can find one, it could be an easy way to get started with Linux and get a feel for whether this is something you'd want to invest more time and money into.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-10-29 09:31
    Ububtu is out of the running for me. Over the years we have had a few Ubuntu set ups around the office and they have all led to problems.

    Seems Canonical take Debian and break it in interesting ways in the name of creating a more attractive user experience.

    The KDE Plasma Desktop is just fine on Debian. I must admit however that I do turn off most of the eye candy, fade this, animate that, nonsense. Also KDE used to start up some file system search service that would suck all your performance away for hours at a time as it was indexing all your files. That was the first thing to turn off but it does not seem to be such a problem now days.

    Oh, and I found that installing the Chrome browser from the Debian repos screwed up posting to this forum for some odd reason so it's better to install Chrome form a download from Google.

    Gnome is, well, just awful :)
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2014-10-29 09:31
    Linux works nicely on older machines. And as mentioned here, there are distributions with a less demanding GUI that will perform quite well. I have an old Asus Tualitan with 512Kb ram that operates well in Linux

    Try out the LiveCD in demo mode to see what the computer's look and feel will be. And don't become too worried about making your first Linux install being perfect for you. It is easy to change to another distribution later if you take the time to have 3 partitions -- / or Root partition, /home or Home partition, and /swap or Swap partition. By having that separate /home partition, all your data can remain untouched if you want to switch from one distro of Linux to another.

    I suspect you will be pleased with how well Linux performs on a machine that might bog down in Windows. The /swap partition improves performance by acting a additional virtual RAM.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-10-29 09:45
    Swap space is a funny thing.

    It makes it seem that your machine has a lot more RAM than it actually has. By, well, swapping memory blocks for disk blocks.

    On the one hand if your programs need to use swap that will decrease performance by orders of magnitude. Not good.

    On the other hand it may allow programs to actually run that would otherwise be killed off with an out of memory error. In which case they are running infinitely faster with swap that without!

    For me, as soon as I see swap space is required it's time to get more RAM.
  • rogersydrogersyd Posts: 223
    edited 2014-10-29 10:04
    FredBlais wrote: »
    I have Xubuntu http://xubuntu.org/ installed on a computer even older than this one and works like a charm

    Ditto to the Xubuntu advice. Running that on a old dual celeron small form factor pc. Serves as a media center mame machine. That OS works a treat.
  • JordanCClarkJordanCClark Posts: 198
    edited 2014-10-29 12:15
    If you're looking to get a hard drive, being it's a P4 system, you may want to double-check the interface. Be a shame buy a SATA drive when it's looking for IDE. If I recall, the switchover was taking place right in that time frame.
  • Don MDon M Posts: 1,652
    edited 2014-10-29 12:21
    If you're looking to get a hard drive, being it's a P4 system, you may want to double-check the interface. Be a shame buy a SATA drive when it's looking for IDE. If I recall, the switchover was taking place right in that time frame.

    The original was a SATA drive.
  • WBA ConsultingWBA Consulting Posts: 2,934
    edited 2014-10-29 16:43
    I am another one that has been very happy with Xubuntu/Ubuntu/Edubuntu loads. I have done quite a few and the only issue I have ever had was getting a very old DVD drive to play movies on one load. Dropped in a newer drive and it worked great. I have done a number of Edubuntu loads for people, but personally, I prefer Xubuntu. I still keep a bootable CD around to try out on various machines now and then to see how well different systems run and how easily they "work". Setting up an old PC with Linux and getting a surfable system running in under 20 minutes just seems to happen like you would want.

    I do plan to try what my friend calls "vanilla" which is the Debian/KDE load. He uses it almost exclusively and swears by it, but he has been a Linux Guru for years. I don't know how much of his tweaking on installs is required and how much is because he knows what he is doing to make systems purr like a kitten.
  • Don MDon M Posts: 1,652
    edited 2014-10-30 17:16
    I found a new un-used 250GB drive from a friend. So now I want to try the "live" CD or DVD before I install anything. I've been looking online for how to make one but it seems confusing to me. There's talk of .iso files etc.

    So I have 2 different options to make a DVD or CD. Either on my MAC or a Windows XP machine. Can someone point me to where I need to go to get this done?

    Thanks.
  • Don MDon M Posts: 1,652
    edited 2014-10-30 17:34
    So I'm downloading a file from here: http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu-iso/CDs-Xubuntu/14.04/release/

    The file I'm downloading is this: xubuntu-14.04-desktop-i386.iso 16-Apr-2014 13:47 899M

    Is this the correct one to try it live on DVD first?
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2014-10-30 17:53
    OppaErich wrote: »
    Buy a SSD and that thing will fly, OK 2GB more RAM wouldn't hurt but 2 should be fine.Debian with KDE like Heater said. The gfx card is old enough, the free driver, read: no hassle for you & enabled by default, should even serve all the bling but that may slow your machine down. But you can turn the bling off and it'll fly.@Heater: I bought a PCI serial interface card some years ago. Works fine 'til now, 1 sub-D9, 1 sub-D25 and 1 classic parallel port.
    A machine that old probably uses IDE drives. Are there any IDE SSD drives?
  • Don MDon M Posts: 1,652
    edited 2014-10-30 18:59
    David Betz wrote: »
    A machine that old probably uses IDE drives. Are there any IDE SSD drives?

    David- As I mentioned earlier in this thread- my original hard drive was SATA. I installed a SATA drive tonight. I was also able to make a live DVD for Xubuntu and it works! The new drive shows up and I'm able to read files from it. Now I need to learn how to format the drive in Linux and install the OS.
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2014-10-30 19:05
    Don M wrote: »
    David- As I mentioned earlier in this thread- my original hard drive was SATA. I installed a SATA drive tonight. I was also able to make a live DVD for Xubuntu and it works! The new drive shows up and I'm able to read files from it. Now I need to learn how to format the drive in Linux and install the OS.
    Sounds like you're making good progress. Congratulations! I'm sure you love Linux. :-)
  • 4x5n4x5n Posts: 745
    edited 2014-10-30 19:32
    Don M wrote: »
    David- As I mentioned earlier in this thread- my original hard drive was SATA. I installed a SATA drive tonight. I was also able to make a live DVD for Xubuntu and it works! The new drive shows up and I'm able to read files from it. Now I need to learn how to format the drive in Linux and install the OS.

    The installation program for the linux distribution will partition and format the drive for you. Boot offof the dvd and let it rip!
  • Don MDon M Posts: 1,652
    edited 2014-10-30 19:35
    4x5n wrote: »
    The installation program for the linux distribution will partition and format the drive for you. Boot offof the dvd and let it rip!

    I found that out when I went through the installation. Up and running now.
  • Don MDon M Posts: 1,652
    edited 2014-10-31 07:59
    This post is from my Linux computer. Works a treat!
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-10-31 08:08
    Don M,

    Yay, well done!

    You will now be lost in a life long study of the ocean of Free and open Source Software. :)
  • FredBlaisFredBlais Posts: 370
    edited 2014-10-31 21:51
    Don M wrote: »
    This post is from my Linux computer. Works a treat!

    So you went with Xubuntu? How is your experience so far?
  • Don MDon M Posts: 1,652
    edited 2014-11-01 08:07
    FredBlais wrote: »
    So you went with Xubuntu? How is your experience so far?

    Fred- so far it works fine. I only chose to install Xubuntu because it was the quickest to download an image for live dvd. The next day I was finally able to download Debian / KDE (for some reason it was really slow) and made a live dvd of that also. I have tried it too but not as much. Both seemed to work fine for all the more that I have used either.

    I don't know what to really test to determine which one may be better than the other. Along with my inexperience with Linux that only adds to it. Both of them where able to find all the hardware and make it work.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2014-11-01 08:29
    I would not worry about which is best for now.

    First order of the day is to fire up a console window and get familiar with the command line. You need to know the everyday commands: ls, cd, cp, mkdir, rmdir, rm, pwd, sudo, whoami, more, less, cat, touch, tar, zip, gzip, gunzip, ln, mount, unmount, wget, curl, ssh, etc etc. And of course "man", the manual pages. Just type "man ls" for instructions on ls. Or "man man" if you want to know how man works:)

    Of course if you have a browser open typing "man ls" into the search box quickly gets what you want to know.

    Don't forget that a Unix command line "shell" has auto completion for file names so hitting TAB after typing part of a file name will often complete it correctly. If there are more than one possible files with that name prefix another TAB will list the options. Cursor up down will scroll back thought your recent commands if you want to do them again. "history" will show a list of all the command you have used recently. All in all the Unix shell is a lot more luxurious than the old DOS command line you may be used to.

    For extra geek cred you need to get to grips with an editor vim or emacs.

    As for that "best" thing. Eventually whatever distro you are using will annoy you somehow and you will try another, and an other. Everyone goes through that. Ultimately end up with Debian:)


    With that under your belt it will be time to install SimpleIDE and PropellerIDE so you can work with your Props from there.
  • prof_brainoprof_braino Posts: 4,313
    edited 2014-11-01 09:34
    I found that installing linux, and letting the updates install themselves, is WAY faster than a windows install. So consider it might be worthwhile to try the full install process on several distros, it gives you a feel for what it will be like to use. Also, if you put your data on an external drive, it become portable between installs. At least until you settle on a fav distro.

    A few versions ago I read that Linux Mint was the most downloaded that month. The MATE desktop exactly suited me, coming from windows xp. That's is, it makes the same sense like xp, but isn't broken or crappy. And the install drives itself, not stupid screwing with GRUB or kernel up/down/sideways-grade, etc. I would recommend Mint MATE 14.04, it is built on debian like ubuntu, except Mint MATE is not broken with unity or gnome. I have Mint on all my rigs nows, from the pentium 4 to the i7. Incidentally, gnome was my fav until they started messing it up a few versions ago, which is why Itried MATE in the first place. heater can correct me, but I ithnk Mint is like debian with reasonable options pre-configured for a new user. Which is nice, as I was always stumped from too many options when installing linux.
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