If the computer is modern enough that you’d consider buying it to use, I can almost guarantee that you’ll be fine to run the latest distros. I just threw Arch + KDE on a 14ish year old laptop I found, and it runs so well that I may daily drive it for a while just for the hell of it.
At worst, you may need a lighter-weight desktop environment (DE) than some of the pretty ones you see in screenshots. And those are simple to install and try out.
So then there’s really nothing special you look out for? why have I had such issues with linux issues and my Dell Xps 13 9310? user error or proprietary b.s.?
Proprietary BS, Dell has become kinda notorious for that. A lot of their stuff has weird hacky workarounds to get Linux running properly. Unfortunately there isn’t a great way to know that in advance, other than poking through wikis or asking around.
For most computers, it really isn’t much different than installing Windows. Most things will just work, maybe a few drivers to install, and you’re good to go.
Both, but consumer is generally worse. For reference, check here for issues related to yours. The instructions are geared toward Arch, but the problems affect most distros.
I oughtta browse ebay and see if anybody’s selling some system76 stuff. I gotta see what to do with my Dell Xps 13 9310 thats stuck in manufacturing mode first. probably sell for parts or idk?
Great. Works on anything without any issues. I use it for pretty much everything (except web browser and only because I don’t wanna bother with permissions on that)… As for the size argument, I have also never had isssues with space, my laptop has 128GB of storage total and the /home partition on my desktop is ~100GB, both use fllatpaks for pretty much everything, I have no issues with space on either… And yes I use flatpaks on gentoo, cry about it.
good old x201 here (i5-720m iirc), 8GB ram, sata ssd. Debian stable. No DE, just stumpWM. Not watching 4k youtube videos but runs fairly well for a 13 years old machine.
AFAIK if you buy any computer from within the last 20 years, there’s a good chance you can get a 6.X Kernel running on it. 32-bit support is fading out, though. If you buy a 64-bit computer, you’ll be able (with sufficient RAM and hard disk space) to install any modern distro on it.
Then why have I had such a terrible experience with my newer Dell Xps 13 9310 experience? user error or proprietary b.s.? because I have been told that the new Dells are going the more propriety route.
I’d say that single core performance and amount of RAM you have are the biggest issues with running anything on old hardware. Apparently, in theory, you could run even modern kernel with just 4MB of RAM (or even less, good luck finding an 32bit system with less than 4MB). I don’t think you could fit any kind of graphical environment on top of that, but for an SSH terminal or something else lightweight it would be enough.
However a modern browser will easily consume couple gigabytes of RAM and even a ‘lightweight’ desktop environment like XFCE will consume couple hundred MB’s without much going on. So it depends heavily on what you consider to be ‘old’.
The computer at garage (which I’m writing this with) is Thinkstation S20 I got for free from the office years ago is from 2011. 12GB of RAM, 4 core Xeon CPU and aftermarket SSD on SATA-bus and this thing can easily do everything I need for it in this use case. Browsing the web on how to fix whatever I’m working with at the garage, listen music from spotify, occasional youtube-video, signal and things lke that. Granted this was on a higher end when it was new, but maybe it gives some perspective on things.
I’m running Arch on a very early 2000s computer. Dual core athlon with two gigabytes of RAM. With KDE desktop on a period correct display. Works great as long as you are not trying to push it hard with modern tasks. Browses the internet just fine and can even watch videos of a size more appropriate for that era. But yeah, you get into 1080p displays and high resolution videos. Or modern bloated websites. It’s definitely going to chug.
Oh, right, the screen resolution is something I didn’t even consider that much. My system has 1600x1200 display and GPU is Quadro FX570. This thing would absolutely struggle anything higher than 1080p, but as all the parts are free (minus the SSD, 128G drives are something like 30€ or less) this thing is easily good enough for what I use it for and it wouldn’t be that big of a stretch to run this thing as a daily driver, just add bigger SSD and maybe a bit more modern GPU with a 2k display and you’d be good to go.
And 1600x1200 isn’t that much anyways, if memory serves I used to have that resolution on a CRT back in the day. At least moving things around is much easier today.
As old as my system, is. Anything much more modern than what’s already in it would be bottled necked by the system bus. It’s PCIe. Not PCI 2 3 or 4 lol. And SATA, early SATA at that. Still has two IDE headers. But I used to use a lot less to run blender on back in the day. I have it pushing a good old 1024 x768 4x3 display.
whatever distro you choose, disable the nvidia graphics first. you’ll lose the display out but you’ll gain a cooler laptop with better autonomy. integrated graphics is more than enough to drive Plasma.
I mean… Depends what you mean by 100% free firmware… If you mean only the boot firmware, that’s the case for PCs like the ThinkPads T400, T500, R500, W500, X200, as well as the Dell Latitude E6400. Note Libreboot even recommends the latter for new full libre buys, as it can be software-flashed without disassembly.
But if you mean 100% free including EC firmware, wireless firmware, and disk firmware, then this will probably never happen, or at least not until a very very long time.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s an uphill battle, arguably pointless too.
Before going with the current 30 series, I was using X200 and X60. They’re both good machines, don’t get me wrong. However, their age shows when trying to do modern tasks, even something as simple as web browsing.
The X60 doesn’t even have the hardware acceleration capability for my usual KDE setup. By the way, you’d be stuck with DDR2.
The X200 is much more capable than X60, but try to browse most modern sites and you’ll feel the machine getting hot. You could turn off javascript, but then you’ll be missing quite a bit of functionalities. I definitely wouldn’t run VSCodium on it for work. I’m currently using this one as a testbed for distrohopping.
To me, the 30 series is a sweet spot. The Ivy bridge is not too old for demanding computations of modern days. If you opt for the highest tier i7, you could beat a lot of the average ones from the following generations. If you don’t get the processor you want, you can always replace it since it’s socketed, at least for my W530, which should apply for T430 &T530 (not X230).
You might want to ask yourself: what are you trying to achieve, and more importantly, how can you measure what you’ve actually achieved? No, blindly following online articles is not a good measurement.
I found out later on that I had no way of actually verifying anything with libreboot. The build system is a pain in the neck to follow thru. I then tried doing it with coreboot upstream, and my experience building with it was much better. Even with it, I wouldn’t have the chance to look thru every line of code, I still need to just “trust” somebody.
You can definitely play around, but if that’s all you do, you’d be asking yourself why you did all that when you get bored.
The title “Makes EL source available” made me very frustrated for a second lol
This is good news, I am glad they have officially released FOSS code for EL and not, which I thought I read, them moving from a FOSS license to a source available license.
Lenovo G505S 16gb RAM - no (the A10-5750M processor has neither Intel ME nor AMD PSP), software probes - too, if instead of the closed UEFI from the manufacturer you install the open source BIOS coreboot+SeaBIOS: it will contain only a few small closed binaries , they were all dismantled and no backdoors were found. Someone made a script in which by rolling back 1% of the last commits (made after deleting the G505S) you can return AMD boards to coreboot - review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/76832. You can install the AR9462 module, whose ath9k family WiFi is 100% open source.
Try to build Coreboot on Lenovo G505S using the restore_agesa.sh script in conjunction with the csb_patcher script, which applies a group of unofficial patches for AMD platforms
I avoid it like the plague. It’s fat and slow, and the Arch repos + the AUR have just about everything anyway (I use Arch btw, in case you’re wondering). I’ll sooner build from source than touch anything flatpak.
With modern hardware neither of those really are an issue. You can get a 1 TB nvme ssd for €50 and 2 TB for less than a 100. That should lend you plenty of storage and speed
I still find it noticeable 🤷 I do have an nvme ssd, and while 50 eur is negligible to you or me, not everyone is so lucky, + there’s no reason to create e-waste when your older hardware is working fine.
AUR can be an unstable mess at times (yes, it’s very convenient, but it has flaws and arch isn’t the only distro out there. Also the space argument just makes no sense, yes the 1st time you download a flatpak, it downloads like 1~2GB of dependencies, but after that all other flatpaks use said dependencies and are a fraction of the size. So ironically, flatpaks end up using less space than AUR packages, if you don’t clean out their cache…
Yeah I’m always wary of what I install from the AUR, never more than 1 or 2 packages on any given system. But a surprising amount of stuff can be found even in the main arch repos, so the AUR is rarely necessary.
There are too many, especially outdated runtimes in use. That is a problem. I have like 7GB of runtimes, somewhere a year ago when I roughly counted it.
There can be. There are certainly Bios’ that don’t give options that motherboards are perfectly capable of changing. I had an old Phenom II that I managed to patch NVME support into the bios so I could boot off of a PCIe Riser.
Granted, I was patching UEFI stuff and none of it was open source – but the idea is the same. Open source bios in theory, could unlock features.
Though, this shouldn’t stop one to pick their fights and savor the wins. The defeatist mentality is our biggest enemy, we will not be victorious in the end if we don’t resist.
Let’s hope an excellent implementation of RISC-V with eye for open-source, processing power, efficiency and affordability comes out so that we’re not limited to the expensive (but otherwise excellent) Talos II by Raptor Computing Systems.
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