AMD Athlon XP CPU Distro choices for today

Neo2024

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Here is my system first of all

CPU = AMD Athlon XP 2600+ 32bit MMX None PAE SSE V.1
RAM = 2 GB PC2700
HDD = 80 GB
Graphics Card = ATI Radeon HIS 4600 AGP

Ok, so my problem is that I am looking for a Distro that will give me the most out of my machine without it being the lightest possible variant available. On top of this though is I need a Distro that has everything I need to enjoy the modern internet even though my CPU's instruction set is no longer supported by all modern browsers. I currently have Linux Mint 19 xfce installed but, I am having a hell of a time trying to just get it to a point that I can use the computer for regular stuff like browsing the web etc. Since all modern browsers require SSE V.2 I first attempted to just install an old version of firefox. Since 48 was the last version that supported SSE V.1 I thought that would work but, alas it does nothing but, crash. So, I opted to try Firefox version 45 extended support. Same issue crashes instantly. So, this time I went ahead and went way back. Ver. 18.0b1 and it finally will load a page but, as soon as I get to anything that I'm assuming prompts for it to update it crashes immediately. I've spent a good portion of the day dling a version then going to the other computer since it has no functioning browser and installing another version to have it fail and I'm starting to think it may be more than just the browser. So, I can't be the only person out there with a 32 bit Athlon XP CPU that is interested in using a somewhat more robust version of Linux than say the likes of puppy Linux etc. So, what would be the best Distro to go for that would have what I need to do modern web browsing, or what version of firefox will actually work and not crash? I will say that I am a little upset because at least with Windows XP and 7 I could surf the web even if it is with Internet Explorer...
 


G'day Neo, and Welcome to linux.org

We have a member here......wizardfromoz......who will no doubt see this post of yours. He also is from Australia. The time zone there varies considerably from yours....so make allowance for this fact.

Wiz runs a great number of distros on his PC's....if anyone can pick one that will tick the boxes for you, It will be him.

Be patient....he will 'appear'
 
G'day Neo

(Wizard appears in a puff of smoke, trips over a little mouse, considers turning it into a toad, but aw, it looks cute)

"Little Mouse" is what I call Xfce, but gee it's a good little DE (Desktop Environment) :p

Welcome @Neo2024 , let's see if we can get that AMD Athlon to get up and kick some serious ass, eh?

First 3 that spring to mind are:

  • LXLE
  • MX-17
  • Linux Lite 4.0
  • MX-17
  • and
  • MX-17
OK, I can't count, 5,000 years old and the memory is going :D:(

LXLE is the lightest in memory consumption, has some wonderful features, but has a PITA screensaver that kicks in when you least want it to.

MX-17 and Linux Lite are on a par with memory, and Linux Lite 4 has Timeshift shipping with it. See my Tute on Timeshift here https://www.linux.org/threads/timeshift-similar-solutions-safeguard-recover-your-linux.15241/

However Timeshift can be installed on all.

Peach OSI BB (Bare Bones) is another good one.

All of these are quite well featured, and on 2GB RAM would get up and fly, hang on to your hat :cool:

I have to run for now and get food and sleep but will be back on deck in less than 24 and can elaborate more.

Cheers

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz

Thanks Brian (@Condobloke ) ... I know where you live ;)
 
Hi @Neo2024, and welcome! Linux Lite is a nice distro for low-end systems, but version 4.0 has dropped 32-bit support. Check their 3.x series to give it a try. Version 3.8 is available here.

I would also throw Peppermint 9 into the review. I have had some good luck with it on older hardware, and they still have a 32-bit version. Available here.

These may not resolve the browser issue though. You might try some others, like Chromium or Midori... maybe others.

Cheers
 
You could try the 32 bit build of Crunchbang++ (crunchbang plus plus).
https://www.crunchbangplusplus.org/

AFAIK the 32 bit build of crunchbang++ is non-PAE by default.

Crunchbang++ is a fork of Crunchbang (a Debian based distro which sadly met its demise a few years ago when its original developer decided to end the project).

It features the lightweight Openbox window manager. It's fairly minimalistic, and comes with a set of fully featured, yet lightweight software (including firefox) and other 'full-fat' software is available from the Debian repositories!

There is also another fork of Crunchbang called Bunsenlabs:
https://www.bunsenlabs.org/
They also have a non-PAE build available - according to the downloads section on their installation page:
https://www.bunsenlabs.org/installation.html#downloads

The "bl-Helium_i386_cdsized+build2.iso" will install a 32-bit build which uses a non-PAE kernel.

Bunsenlabs also uses Openbox and again - has the entire Debian repository available to it, so alongside the default set of lightweight applications, you can install 'full-fat' software on there too!

So those are two options available to you!
 
Thanks everyone for some suggestions. I will be a bit busy over the next few days so won't be able to give it another go for a little bit. But, I am curious if anyone here is actually running this series of CPU the 32-bit AMD Athlon XP and if so what are they currently using? Only reason I ask is because I suspect because of the aforementioned SSE V.1 problem it may still present some challenges even if another Distro is used so it might be helpful to find someone who has found success as all of these CPU's will have the same MMX non-PAE SSE V.1 issue. Thanks again though guys. I will be testing most of these until I find what works best for this scenario.
 
Hi @Neo2024, and welcome! Linux Lite is a nice distro for low-end systems, but version 4.0 has dropped 32-bit support. Check their 3.x series to give it a try. Version 3.8 is available here.

I would also throw Peppermint 9 into the review. I have had some good luck with it on older hardware, and they still have a 32-bit version. Available here.

These may not resolve the browser issue though. You might try some others, like Chromium or Midori... maybe others.

Cheers

Unfortunately so far as I know with browsers all of the modern versions of every browser require SSE2. The reason for this is SSE2 builds on SSE and also fills the role of MMX but, also SSE is no longer supported in what is used to code the browsers. So, basically they all around the same time no longer had the ability to support the old standard. This almost certainly means that an older browser version will need to be used but, once again it can be a pain to isolate the best browser then version and also then Linux Distro since it doesn't seem that there is something that you can easily reference to match existing hardware to software that will function on it and of course since things always change in terms of standards like SHA1 or SHA256 AES etc. or things like html5 it is hard to say what will continue to work if using an older browser. That is part of why I was hoping for some assistance here since I was hoping someone in the community is already using something similar. One of the biggest obstacles due to the age of the system and the major change to 64 bit within most of the desktop pc space is that less and less is known amongst regular folks about older hardware and how to make it usable today. If this was a 64 bit CPU of the same era I don't even think this would come up as an issue unfortunately.
 
Hi Neo :)

I've been doing a little brainstorming this arvo (afternoon) and thinking outside the box, with a view to checking out web browsers that support SSE1 first and foremost, because if you like The Little Mouse desktop environment (DE) then why change it?

If you are around for 30 minutes or so, sing out and I'll put together a summary of what I've found. Are you US timezone or other?

Cheers

Wiz
 
Hi Neo :)

I've been doing a little brainstorming this arvo (afternoon) and thinking outside the box, with a view to checking out web browsers that support SSE1 first and foremost, because if you like The Little Mouse desktop environment (DE) then why change it?

If you are around for 30 minutes or so, sing out and I'll put together a summary of what I've found. Are you US timezone or other?

Cheers

Wiz

Hey, thanks for getting back to me. I really don't have a specific preference for XFCE or really any specific Distro for this. To be honest I'm running Puppy Linux on some really old hardware on another machine. That machine has a Cyrix MII 266 Mhz 32-bit CPU 256 MB of PC-100 RAM with onboard Ati graphics and a 2.1 GB HDD and it can do some minor web browsing etc but, nothing really major as it doesn't support some more modern stuff so I can't like log on to my bank account with it or watch youtube etc. So, that is why I came here. I was hoping to retire Windows on this AMD machine and attempt to get the best possible easy to use modern full feature Distro on it and also manage to get it browsing the web like it can with Windows 7/IE. I actually started this with 18.2 Mint Cinnamon and when I had issues before I talked to a few people and they said well why don't you try XFCE? So, that is what got me to here. I attempted to use the chat after this latest install and they seemed to completely not understand that I couldn't use the browser at all on it... Which led me to dling the old browser versions on my Most modern machine and then going down and installing it via some terminal commands and the Alacart Main Menu program. Still no dice and like I said the oldest version of Firefox that is currently on it is more or less unusable because I can't even goto the help/about menu without it crashing. Unsure of why that is but, I suspect it attempts to reach out for a new version update and crashes upon attempting to do that. So, yeah I'm still looking for a Distro as well as a functional browser because I haven't ruled out that the Mint Distro I'm using isn't part of the problem... Also, I am in the United States Eastern time. I work most days in the evening but, I will monitor this pretty close as I go along. Even though I am somewhat familiar with Linux it is only because of my job. I work as a Network Engineer and it is pretty common to need to use a Linux based OS when working on equipment like F5 Loadbalancers.
 
Hi Mate, I'm putting together what I have sourced so far in a WP doc so I get some structure to it, and then I'll paste to here when it's done.

When you get time, can you go to Terminal and enter

Code:
inxi -Fxs

and paste the output here? It will give me a broad picture of the Athlon's features, more comprehensive than the specs you were thoughtful enough to provide in your Original Post.

Also, are you acquainted with

  • Synaptic Package Manager and
  • GParted?
Cheers

Wiz, off for more coffee :D:D
 
Last edited:
Hi Mate, I'm putting together what I have sourced so far in a WP doc so I get some structure to it, and then I'll paste to here when it's done.

When you get time, can you go to Terminal and enter

Code:
inxi -Fxs

and paste the output here? It will give me a broad picture of the Athlon's features, more comprehensive than the specs you were thoughtful enough to provide in your Original Post.

Also, are you acquainted with

  • Synpatic Package Manager and
  • GParted?
Cheers

Wiz, off for more coffee :D:D
GetAttachmentThumbnail
 
Hi Mate, I'm putting together what I have sourced so far in a WP doc so I get some structure to it, and then I'll paste to here when it's done.

When you get time, can you go to Terminal and enter

Code:
inxi -Fxs

and paste the output here? It will give me a broad picture of the Athlon's features, more comprehensive than the specs you were thoughtful enough to provide in your Original Post.

Also, are you acquainted with

  • Synpatic Package Manager and
  • GParted?
Cheers

Wiz, off for more coffee :D:D
Also, with Synpatic Package Manager and GParted I'm not really terribly familiar but, I poked around at it a little.
 
Hi Mate, I'm putting together what I have sourced so far in a WP doc so I get some structure to it, and then I'll paste to here when it's done.

When you get time, can you go to Terminal and enter

Code:
inxi -Fxs

and paste the output here? It will give me a broad picture of the Athlon's features, more comprehensive than the specs you were thoughtful enough to provide in your Original Post.

Also, are you acquainted with

  • Synpatic Package Manager and
  • GParted?
Cheers

Wiz, off for more coffee :D:D
I also found this though if you think it to be helpful http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K7/AMD-Athlon XP 2600+ - AXDA2600DKV4D.html
 
Hi Mate, I'm putting together what I have sourced so far in a WP doc so I get some structure to it, and then I'll paste to here when it's done.

When you get time, can you go to Terminal and enter

Code:
inxi -Fxs

and paste the output here? It will give me a broad picture of the Athlon's features, more comprehensive than the specs you were thoughtful enough to provide in your Original Post.

Also, are you acquainted with

  • Synpatic Package Manager and
  • GParted?
Cheers

Wiz, off for more coffee :D:D
I may have been wrong about it being non-PAE it seems the flags indicate it is there and also says it on the page I referenced. Either way though SSE remains an issue.
 
Hi Mate, I'll have to really digest that link, later, but thanks for providing :)

I have to go for a few minutes, and then come back and change over Distros. I am working on migrating several Terabytes of data between 3 computers, as part of my contingency plan.

Meantime, I'll give you verbatim what I am working on, so that you can start to have a look at it.

If the inxi output does not compromise your privacy (if so, just black out some), I could do with it, because I am thinking that the best way to evaluate a Distro, if you want to change, is first with Live USB, followed by full install (better than VM, or anything else), and you can see which Distros work with which Browsers that might be SSE1 - friendly?

If that applies, I would carve back some space on your HDD, and install one at a time, blowing away what does not work. That's where I need to know your Partition setup.

Here's a quote and then I'll be back later, I hope:

My Input

Key Issues

OP’s unit is non-pae, SSE1, 32-bit



#?

LIGHTWEIGHT WEB BROWSERS

  • Dillo
  • Epiphany-browser by GNOME
  • Falkon aka Qupzilla
  • hv3
… are all in the Repos of Tara

  • Netsurf
was in the Repos up to and including Linux Mint 18.3 ‘Sylvia’ but for unknown reasons Clem (Clement Lefebvre, CEO and Project Leader of Linux Mint) has not shipped it with Tara.

You could consider dialling back to Linux Mint 18.3, which still has LTS (Long Term Support) until April 2021 as do all the 18 series. 18.3 has the added benefit of being the first of the LM stable to incorporate a shipped version of Timeshift.

All of the above allegedly run on non-PAE 32-bit, but the versions available in the Repos are likely not the version you need, you might have to source them elsewhere.

  • PaleMoon
  • SeaMonkey
I have just installed SeaMonkey on my MX-16, and find it, myself, quite likeable. As it comes from Mozilla, I was able to import my bookmarks from the Synced Firefoxes I use, by exporting from FF as an .html file, then importing into SeaMonkey. Bit higgledy-piggledy, but I’ll sort it.

SeaMonkey is definitely supposed to be non-PAE-friendly.

  • FF ESR 52 series
Firefox-ESR (Extended Support Release) is numbered a few back from its cousin. We are currently around the 52.9 version. I use it on a few of my Distros, because it also allows for an addon called DTA (DownThemAll), a download manager that is faster than FF’s native downloader, and incorporates a you beaut option to plug in SHA1sum and SHA256sum figures so you can validate your downloade .iso as you go. DTA is not supported since the advent of Quantum with FF 57.

I believe that with either 52.8 or 52.9, support for non-PAE was being wrapped up by Mozilla, and that the one for non-PAE drops dead latest date is set at 28th August.

  • BUT (there is always a but with Wizard), Mozilla themselves say that the timeframes they set are not necessarily restricting on those Linux Developers whom ship their products. So, who knows?
  • Answer to that may lie with Jas (@jaskinasis) our drumming, Debian, FF-ESR, scripting guru


DISTROS

MX-16 32-bit appears to have a non-PAE kernel available, I am unsure if this is contained in the downloaded .iso available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/mx-linux/files/Old/MX-16/

If downloading, note the italicised I in a circle at right, click it to get the SHA1sum.

According to the MX website, MX-16 will be supported as long as Debian “Jessie” on which it is based, is supported.

Hope the formatting differences are accommodated, later

Wiz
 
But, I am curious if anyone here is actually running this series of CPU the 32-bit AMD Athlon XP
That is pretty highly unlikely.... kind of like a needle in a haystack, as the saying goes. But not impossible either, by any means.

I have worked on 32-bit systems in the past couple of years, but I've given my old ones away and have nothing now to test and compare (some belonged to others that I have worked on too). But using the latest Peppermint OS (ver. 8 at that time) I had Firefox running just fine. So I'd guess the SSE issue must not have affected those particular systems. The bigger problem for me was running stable WiFi for streaming video, and Peppermint was my best fix for that compared to other distros. Other distros did make the WiFi work, but the connection was dropped frequently which really showed the problem on YouTube videos.

It's great to use old hardware for as long as possible... I'm all for it, and I have helped breathe new life into many old computers with Linux. But yours may be one of those that should just be retired if you don't find a solution. I really can't, in good conscience, recommend that you use an older browser because of security problems... whether Firefox, or Internet Explorer, or any other. But I'm sure you realize the risk in this already too. 32-bit support is becoming more and more scarce as more distributions drop it as they move forward. It's hard to say how long support will linger, and which distros will hang on to it the longest, but there are fewer options every year. :(

Good luck!
 
Totally agree with and follow what Stan was saying above.

That being said, though, in my travels I came across I think two (2) references by OPs or others using AMD Athlon XP 2600's.

I will put my reference sources together and bring them back here as soon as I can. Of course some of what I had written needs to be modified given @Neo2024 has found that he is actually PAE rather than non-PAE and that is a part of why I wanted to look at that inxi output, the flags can be very useful.

Cheers

Wizard
 
Hi, all.
First of all, I must refuse my very poor English. I would like to forgive about the disorder of sentences and grammar.
I am a fan of AMD K7 series. Yes, it is not an exaggeration to say that I love it anymore.
So I also understand Neo 2024's feelings for distributions and web browsers available on the K7 CPU.
I would like to make two recommendations.
1: A non-SSE 2 WWW browser.
---- It is a thing of the SeaMonkey 2.49 line.
SSE build objects may be the last on this, or it may not be the case. It depends on the community, but I do not need SSE 2 ... now it is still.
2: Please try Basix 4.0.
---- This is a lightweight Japanese-based distribution based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS bionic, which is a primitive Linux for creating personalized distributions freely customized as the name suggests.
Available as a Live CD from http://simosnet.com/livecd/basix/
As well as adding the Ubuntuzilla repository you can install 1: WWW browser relatively easily.
(The default browser is Firefox ESR but this already requires SSE 2. You should purge it.)

Fortunately for K7 users!
 

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