Really Old Laptop, new life with MX

[Sprocket]

Greetings to All

I have an old laptop (15 years) that I was about to disassemble and throw away. It's an old Toshiba, AMD64 X2 with 4gb RAM. I've been using Ubuntu on another old laptop which runs great, but it's a good bit higher spec. I've been hearing of and reading about MX for sometime and many years ago used Mepis for a little while. I thought I'd put an SSD in it and and give MX a try. Installed KDE Plasma and didn't expect much, but wow was I surprised! I've been a Linux user for over 20 years, but I'm just a user and not an expert, so I had mentally put MX at the same level as Ubuntu or Mint in terms of resource needed. I didn't expect this laptop would have handled it. It runs smooth and quick, even YouTube videos run without a glitch. So, I may have to rethink disposing of it.

The only glitch I can identify is that at the login screen in flickers quite badly (very low end graphics). I turned off compositing and it helped, but it didn't cure it. It does not reoccur once logged in, only at the login screen. If anyone knows of a fix, I'd appreciate it. Other than that, I am very impressed with MX KDE and will consider using it on my higher end laptops. Well Done to the MX team!

Best regards

Bob

[j2mcgreg]

I think that you should try MX's sister OS, Antix with a laptop of that age.

Antix, which is aimed at ancient computers like yours, can be found here:

https://antixlinux.com/

My reasoning is that the two most likely reasons for that flicker at boot are that the modern vesa video driver (that's loaded at boot) doesn't quite fit with your video card or that the screen refresh rate is incorrect. The reason that it works properly after boot is that the proper drivers are loaded by MX.

[Sprocket]

Thank you for your reply. I will give that a look and try the live session. But, if the brief flicker is all I have to deal with, I'm happy with that. This laptop is not important to me, but I was ready to throw it away and can now see some practical use for it. MX has a recent version of Libre Office and I can certainly use that because it runs smoothly on this old dinosaur.

Thank you for your help.

Bob

[markol]

@Sprocket try -> https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php ... 92#p704492

[seaken64]

Honestly, that computer is not that old. With 4GB of RAM it's much better than a lot of systems I have running MX. I would suggest you try MX XFCE 32-bit. But KDE will work just fine with that equipment. I run it on older Dual Core Pentiums with 2GB of RAM.

If you really need to run something lighter than MX KDE then MX Fluxbox is a good choice. antiX is really light but may not be your cup-o-tea if you prefer a full Desktop Environment. I also run Q4OS with Trinity on this era of equipment. I prefer MX XFCE. I usually run MX XFCE on systems with 2GB or more and antiX IceWM on systems with less than 2GB. I run MX XFCE 32-bit on a Hyper Threaded Pentium 4 with 4 GB. I also have run MX Fluxbox 32-bit on a Pentium-III with 512MB (although not as good as antiX).

Welcome to MX.

Seaken64

[seaken64]

Please share your Quick System Info (QSI) so we can see more about your machine.

Thanks,
Seaken64

[Sprocket]

System: Kernel: 5.10.0-21-amd64 [5.10.162-1] x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.1
parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.10.0-21-amd64
root=UUID=<filter> ro quiet splash
Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.20.5 wm: kwin_x11 vt: 7 dm: SDDM
Distro: MX-21.3_KDE_x64 Wildflower September 18 2022
base: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)
Machine: Type: Kvm System: TOSHIBA product: EQUIUM A210 v: PSAFJE-006007KS serial: <filter>
Chassis: AMD type: 1 serial: <filter>
Mobo: ATI model: SB600 v: Rev 1 serial: <filter> BIOS: Phoenix v: 1.70 date: 02/22/2008
Battery: ID-1: BAT0 charge: 28.2 Wh (51.9%) condition: 54.3/60.0 Wh (90.4%) volts: 15.0
min: 15.0 model: PA3534U-1BRS type: Li-ion serial: <filter> status: Charging
CPU: Info: Dual Core model: AMD Athlon 64 X2 TK-57 bits: 64 type: MCP arch: K8 rev.F+
family: F (15) model-id: 68 (104) stepping: 2 microcode: N/A cache: L2: 512 KiB
flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 svm bogomips: 7581
Speed: 800 MHz min/max: 800/1900 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 800 2: 800
Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: Not affected
Type: l1tf status: Not affected
Type: mds status: Not affected
Type: meltdown status: Not affected
Type: mmio_stale_data status: Not affected
Type: retbleed status: Not affected
Type: spec_store_bypass status: Not affected
Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
Type: spectre_v2
mitigation: Retpolines, STIBP: disabled, RSB filling, PBRSB-eIBRS: Not affected
Type: srbds status: Not affected
Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected
Graphics: Device-1: AMD RS690M [Radeon Xpress 1200/1250/1270] vendor: Toshiba driver: radeon
v: kernel bus-ID: 01:05.0 chip-ID: 1002:791f class-ID: 0300
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.14 compositor: kwin_x11 driver: loaded: ati,radeon
unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa display-ID: :0 screens: 1
Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1280x800 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 338x211mm (13.3x8.3")
s-diag: 398mm (15.7")
Monitor-1: LVDS res: 1280x800 hz: 60 dpi: 98 size: 331x207mm (13.0x8.1")
diag: 390mm (15.4")
OpenGL: renderer: ATI RS690 v: 2.1 Mesa 22.0.5 direct render: Yes
Audio: Device-1: AMD SBx00 Azalia vendor: Toshiba driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
bus-ID: 00:14.2 chip-ID: 1002:4383 class-ID: 0403
Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.10.0-21-amd64 running: yes
Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes
Network: Device-1: Realtek RTL810xE PCI Express Fast Ethernet vendor: Toshiba driver: r8169
v: kernel port: a000 bus-ID: 08:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8136 class-ID: 0200
IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter>
Device-2: Realtek RTL8187B Wireless Adapter type: USB driver: rtl8187 bus-ID: 1-6:2
chip-ID: 0bda:8197 class-ID: 0000 serial: <filter>
IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter>
Drives: Local Storage: total: 223.57 GiB used: 14.64 GiB (6.5%)
SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required.
ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: Integral Memory model: V Series SATA SSD 240GB
size: 223.57 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 3.0 Gb/s type: SSD
serial: <filter> rev: V3.3 scheme: MBR
Partition: ID-1: / raw-size: 217.94 GiB size: 213.46 GiB (97.94%) used: 14.64 GiB (6.9%) fs: ext4
dev: /dev/sda1 maj-min: 8:1
Swap: Kernel: swappiness: 15 (default 60) cache-pressure: 100 (default)
ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 5.62 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2
dev: /dev/sda2 maj-min: 8:2
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 59.0 C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Repos: Packages: note: see --pkg apt: 2387 lib: 1310 flatpak: 0
No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list
1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates main contrib non-free
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list
1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib non-free
2: deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security main contrib non-free
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list
1: deb http://mxlinux.mirrors.uk2.net/packages/mx/repo/ bullseye main non-free
2: deb http://mxlinux.mirrors.uk2.net/packages/mx/repo/ bullseye ahs
Info: Processes: 192 Uptime: 9m wakeups: 2 Memory: 3.72 GiB used: 1.26 GiB (33.8%)
Init: SysVinit v: 2.96 runlevel: 5 default: 5 tool: systemctl Compilers: gcc: N/A
alt: 10 Client: shell wrapper v: 5.1.4-release inxi: 3.3.06
Boot Mode: BIOS (legacy, CSM, MBR)

[Mauser]

@Sprocket
Please edit the Quick System Info by removing what you posted and open Quick System Info and just right click and paste in the forum. Please do do it any other way because it will show incorrectly like you posted. This makes it easier for everyone to read and doesn't take up so much real estate on the forum.

[Huckleberry Finn]

It's probably due to sddm. You can (if you like only) install another one (lightdm) and try.
Just, have a live usb (proven to work) under your hand in case you need to turn back.( It can be your snapshot iso, too ).

[j2mcgreg]

@Sprocket In future when you post your QSI, please heed this message:

We need your computer’s complete profile before we can diagnose a problem like this, so you need to post the output from the QSI utility. The Quick System Info (QSI) utility is located in MX Tools and its output is automatically formatted for use here in the forum. Run the QSI utility, click “Copy for Forum” at the bottom and then just paste it here in your thread.