Best Linux distro for a 20-year-old ThinkPad

[Brickwizard]

would the 32gb version of Mint Linux 6 be a good option?

I had an Acer with single core Mobile celeron M CPU like yours, I ran MINT 13 on that machine till it reached the end of life in 2017 I got an extra few years out of it running MX/ANTI-X [they are the same thing] 32 bit it had a final flying lesson last year

 

[Brickwizard]

Most of my oppo's have come back, Like myself none of them know of any Linux 32 bit legacy drivers for your GPU those for Windows xp are still available in 32 bit

 

[Lynx52]

I am installing slackware now.

 

[Brickwizard]

fingers crossed.

 

[MikeWalsh]

You have yourself "dissed" Puppy.....but it's one of the best candidates for prolonging the life of such an elderly machine.

So; what DON'T you like about Puppy? Care to elaborate on what you mean by "it is bad"? Why the insistence on running a bog-standard, "mainstream" distro? When keeping elderly, low-resource hardware alive & functional, you often have to take a 'lateral' & 'non-standard' approach to things..!

I run a 'kennels' of around a dozen Puppies; 9 of them are 64-bitzers, the remaining 3 are 32-bitzers. And all 12 of 'em are running up-to-date, secure browsers. That's just for starters....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

I agree that Puppy's software installation system takes some getting used to.....and system 'updates' simply don't exist, because every Puppy exists as a 'snapshot in time'. But then, Puppies are so small that re-installing the next newest build is no more storage-intensive than what most mainstream distros will download & install during the course of a major upgrade.....often smaller. And it only takes a couple of minutes to complete, because all you're doing is to replace a handful of highly-compressed, pre-built files....followed by a re-boot, because the newer builds almost always have newer kernels, too.

The Puppy software system centers mainly around member-built, -supplied & -hosted packages. This is necessary, because our Pup works just sufficiently different that 'standard' software packages frequently don't work OOTB.....whereas community-built packages take this into account, and are built to work WITH Puppy, rather than against it.

Like Linux itself, it's not an inherently "bad" system.....but it IS "different" to that of the mainstream. And anyone who tells you that Puppy can't run this, that or the other 'specialist' software program is just talking out of their a**hole.....because these same people have, 9 times out of 10, never even looked at Puppy OR tried it.....and are merely parroting what everyone else says online when "dissing" her.

The only way to tell is to run a Live Puppy for at least a few days. Don't be fooled by appearances; Puppy devs don't spend all their time making her look "pretty". Instead, they concentrate on under-the-hood stuff that actually makes her work efficiently. You can easily change the desktop appearance to make it look like anything you want it to.....same as you can with any other distro.

Totally home-brewed desktop.....just like all my Puppies!

Mike.

 

[The Duck]

You have yourself "dissed" Puppy.....but it's one of the best candidates for prolonging the life of such an elderly machine.

So; what DON'T you like about Puppy? Care to elaborate on what you mean by "it is bad"? Why the insistence on running a bog-standard, "mainstream" distro? When keeping elderly, low-resource hardware alive & functional, you often have to take a 'lateral' & 'non-standard' approach to things..!

Probably like most reads that running root is bad.

I've been using Puppy Linux since Tahrpup (2014).

Throughout the years I've read how bad Puppy Linux is because it runs in or as root.

All root has ever saved me from doing is wrecking my own Linux distro due to my own stupidity.

If a user is serious about running a secure Puppy in root there are ways to prevent bad guys from writing to your HDD / SSD but you have to learn how this is done.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Fear Not Root"

https://bkhome.org/archive/puppylinux/technical/root.htm

Fear Not Root

Back in the day, we all had root. When you used a DOS or Apple machine, there was just one user – YOU. You learned to be careful. As multi-user systems like Linux arrived on the desktop, this…

igurublog.wordpress.com

 

[MikeWalsh]

@Brickwizard :-

Most of my oppo's have come back, Like myself none of them know of any Linux 32 bit legacy drivers for your GPU those for Windows xp are still available in 32 bit

Having done some digging, Brian.....how's this one?

https://www.amd.com/en/support/downloads/drivers.html/graphics/legacy-graphics/radeon-x-series/ati-radeon-x3xx-series.html

Of course, it's "date-sympathetic". Last 'Catalyst' driver (9.3) for this GPU was released in March 2009, though I'm thinking this wouldn't be so much of a problem. If the OP truly wants to run this as a robotics controller.....and has no intentions of trying to run this as an on-line "daily driver".....then he shouldn't have that much of a problem with it. Use a date-sympathetic "vintage" distro with it and, as @KGIII says, it'll work the way it was designed to work. Just don't expect it to run 'modern' software, 'cos it'll fail.....miserably.

This is what I mean by taking a somewhat "different" approach to 'retro' computing. Ya gotta learn to think laterally... Too many people take Linux literally at its word of "keeping old hardware useful".....and automatically assume this means running bang up-to-date software and trying to do everything that Windows users take for granted with modern high-powered hardware. Linux is very, VERY good.....but it ain't a miracle worker.

Mike.

 

[Brickwizard]

@MikeWalsh I spent nearly 2 hrs going through the AMD site and this one didn't come up, but then I was looking for one for current Linux builds, if he can find an iso for say Mint 9 or 13, it should work, but i could not guarantee this

 

[MikeWalsh]

@Brickwizard :-

Heh. Well, running a no-longer supported Nvidia GPU myself, I'm already used to rummaging around in the 'legacy' driver sections. It's actually quite surprising just how MUCH old GPU software the major 'players' still keep around in their repos. Mine's only around 18 months out of support, but I'm hanged if I'm throwing it away when it still works perfectly & does everything I want from it with older drivers, or even the 'nouveau' kernel module.

If you search through Nvidia's Unix GPU driver repos, they still have a ton of stuff for Unix-based OSs going back nearly to the turn of the millennium. There must be HUNDREDS of the things! Though many would ask "Why?" For a forward-thinking company like Nvidia.....where IS the point in keeping all that old software around? Especially when it's full of acknowledged security holes?

As it is, I use very little in the way of software that insists on specific or 'up-to-date' drivers. That's usually games.....and I'm no 'gamer'.

I hate to admit it, but ye anciente 2002 P4-powered Dell Inspiron, despite running Tahrpup very, VERY well back in late 2014, STILL ran XP that little bit better.....

(shrug...)

Which REALLY niggled me!


Mike.

 

[Lynx52]

I just don't like the appearance, I am too picky. I thought Debian 12 with my highly customized lxde looked better. And My installation of slackware failed, there were too many things I did not understand. I need to read a manual.

 

[The Duck]

I need to read a manual.

Don't know what your Linux experience is but this should shed some light on things about Linux.

It's an old article but spot on.

Linux is NOT Windows

I used to have a lot of old 32 bit computers they all got scraped and tossed.
When I couldn't find support for them using Linux I knew it was time to get rid of them.

The only 32 bit boxes I still run are for my flight simulators running on Windows XP.

 

[The Duck]

Like Linux itself, it's not an inherently "bad" system.....but it IS "different" to that of the mainstream. And anyone who tells you that Puppy can't run this, that or the other 'specialist' software program is just talking out of their a**hole.....because these same people have, 9 times out of 10, never even looked at Puppy OR tried it.....and are merely parroting what everyone else says online when "dissing" her.

The only way to tell is to run a Live Puppy for at least a few days. Don't be fooled by appearances; Puppy devs don't spend all their time making her look "pretty". Instead, they concentrate on under-the-hood stuff that actually makes her work efficiently. You can easily change the desktop appearance to make it look like anything you want it to.....same as you can with any other distro.

Mike.

A lot of arm chair Linux users who bad mouth what they've read someone else's experience is or was without ever trying it for themselves.

The only real way to know how something works or if something is going to work is to try it for yourself and then you will actually know how it is and how it works and what it can do.

Unfortunately hardware support for some hardware comes to and end even in Linux.

It took me awhile to accept that and yes it really sucks but welcome to progress.

 

[MikeWalsh]

@thinkinglinux11 :-

I just don't like the appearance, I am too picky. I thought Debian 12 with my highly customized lxde looked better. And My installation of slackware failed, there were too many things I did not understand. I need to read a manual.

As the old saying goes....."Never judge a book by its cover". Customization - by the user - is one of the easiest (and most enjoyable) parts of setting up ANY Linux OS. What's far more important is that the OS in question should have all the 1001 relevant components "under the hood" that make it easy, even enjoyable, to use......and that enable it to work as expected.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

Don't take this the wrong way, because millions of people are just the same, but.....it's a very shallow person who judges any OS purely by its default, OOTB appearance, since what appeals to one person might be considered ugly by another. It's totally subjective, and varies from one individual to the next. Devs have a hell of a job deciding on a layout that will be considered attractive by the greatest number of potential users...

"Beauty is skin-deep".......despite that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder".

I refer you back to the image I included with my earlier post. That's just MY interpretation of the ideal Puppy desktop.....and mine is but one of an infinite number of possibilities.

Linux truly IS customizable to the nth degree. It's all down to you at the end of the day, and the degree of effort you wish to put into it. In spite of the fact that methods of implementation vary between distros, ALL Linux distros are pretty much capable of doing the same stuff.

It's all down to your imagination. The sky's the limit!

DO read the last 2 posts by @The Duck . They're highly relevant to what's going on here.


Mike.

 

[Lynx52]

Well @MikeWalsh, I am 14 years old using Linux on a 20-year-old laptop, you might just think that some people my age find that strange. If I was to add that my Linux distro is called "Puppy" it would only make things far worse. This really is not that important, but I would just rather use a more mainstream version so that I am not labeled. This is just my opinion, I don't see puppy Linux users as weird. And I am not looking for a windows experience. I am looking for something closer to windows 95, it is easy to use and looks nice.

 

[Lynx52]

I need help with Slackware, so I started a new thread. If anyone has any experience, please help

 

[MikeWalsh]

@thinkinglinux11 :-

Nah, I can understand where you're coming from. When I was your age, "fitting in" and being just the same as my mates was more important to me than just about anything else. And I definitely didn't want to be labelled as "strange", either!

As ya get older, however, you get so you care less and less....until you reach where I am now - in my 60s - when you no longer care WHAT anybody else thinks of you.

From experience, I can tell you that it WILL happen to you, too. You have to reach that stage in your own good time, though....


Mike.

 

[Lynx52]

I am American, and I am growing up in a generation that is for the most part not very smart. My friends struggle with simple straight forward math, so I really don't care about being the same as them. I would rather be getting an A+ than falling behind.

 

[Lynx52]

Slackware is ok, KDE is very slow, and I need to install LXDE. If anyone knows how, please help. I also do not know how to connect to the internet on it, through the command line.

 

[MikeWalsh]

I am American, and I am growing up in a generation that is for the most part not very smart.

Heh. THAT is an astonishinly profound statement from a teenager. I applaud you for being perceptive enough to recognise it. Kudos, young'un!

My grand-nieces and grand-nephews come to me for advice with homework sometimes. They're a great bunch of youngsters, they really are.....but I look at the stuff they're working with, and I shake my head in amazement & think to myself, "I was learning this stuff when I was half your age".

The education system is way more "dumbed-down" than it was when I was at school, that's for sure. But I'm guessing we're probably stuck with it.....at least for the forseeable future.


Mike.

 

[The Duck]

@thinkinglinux11

These days most people your age use smartphones.

My grandchildren use their game consoles to do stuff online.

I'm in my 70s and understand what you are saying.

Just remember the important thing about using Linux is to enjoy the Linux adventure.