What Puppy for a 2007 PC w/ 500 MHz CPU and 1GB of RAM?

[Abigail]

Hello everyone.

I have a reaaaaally old (I think 2007 or so) laptop Packard Bell s18p. I think it's a rebranding of a VYE S18 and/or Kohjinsha SA1F00A, if any of those ring a bell.

It has an AMD Geode LX800 500mhz processor and 1GB of RAM.

The thing is... I tried a lot of lightweight linux distros and I always get stuck at the same point: the geode driver seems to be rather useless. :/ I either get X errors saying it can't find any screen, or the screen goes completely black after trying to start X.

Other hardware isn't an issue, really, but the display driver is driving (no pun intended) nuts. The only way I can get to see things is using the Vesa driver or using nomodeset kernel option.

Any help with this will be deeply appreciated. The only OS I could install and make it run semi-smoothly was Windows XP, which has an official set of drivers for everything, but I wouldn't want to use an old OS... let alone Windows.

Thanks a lot for your time <3

[cobaka]

@Abigail - Woof to you!

Found a review for the Kohijinsa.
The smallest notebook PC in the world, the most energy efficient and the quietest also has the lowest CPU clock-rate. The Kohjinsha SA1 takes a low-power approach to computing in order to enable mobility and long battery life. Carrypad used it for a month and here’s the detailed report. Link: https://www.umpcportal.com/2007/02/323/

Could not find any specs for the Packard Bell.

I find the 500MHz clock worrying - even for Puppy Linux.
I have been running uPupBB32 on a 1.4 (and also 1.6GHz) Inspiron.
For routine computing the Dell works well enough. Watching YouTube Videos (recently) I found the response slow - although I suspect the problem lies more with the speed of the internet, not the laptop. I say this because I got an adequate response from the same setup a few months earlier.

Speaking about running any puppy - I can't help you directly because I found the early puppies lacked a good browser.
That was 3 years ago. I could connect to the internet, but not adequately. Perhaps some-one has re-configured an older puppy to deal with that. Anyway, here is my point. The browser is as important as the OS.

Suggest you try Precise Puppy.
Suggest you try installing the Puppy on a thumb drive initially. After that, if you are satisfied with performance, you can consider installing to the internal HDD.

Собака

<more from the review.> The Operating system supplied is Windows XP Home and it was a nice clean install. The choice of software seems sensible as the memory footprint is small and learning curve is short. One can’t help wondering if you could save some money and opt for a Linux version though!

Speaking of Linux…DSL booted from USB CDROM but didn’t find the WIFI. Knoppix 4.0 was the same story.

[Phoenix]

Do you know what purpose you have for it? It would help a lot, as if you intend to use it for browsing Precise will be hopelessly outdated to even make a connection.

[darry19662018]

viewtopic.php?t=94

[amethyst]

Do you know what purpose you have for it? It would help a lot, as if you intend to use it for browsing Precise will be hopelessly outdated to even make a connection.

This is not exactly true. Palemoon up to about version 28.16 will run out of the box on the originally released Precise. If you use jrb's Precise Light with the newer glibc built in , you can run an even later version of Palemoon. I'm actually still using Palemoon 28.14.2 with all my Puppys, works fine. However - the user's specs is at low end so I think accessing any of these resource hungry internet sites (like youtube), facebook, etc. will be problematic.

[Abigail]

Do you know what purpose you have for it? It would help a lot, as if you intend to use it for browsing Precise will be hopelessly outdated to even make a connection.

Light web browsing and communication.

I found out that I could easily install Pidgin but even that is slow as hell. I had nice experiences with Finch tho, but I'd need to figure out a way to watch images and listen to audios that's not a hassle.

Hell, I'd be 100% happy with only a command line if there was ANY cli browser that supports basic Javascript so I don't get blocked from certain pages. Maybe a combination of nomodeset so I can run Palemoon-non-SSE2 + a console running finch?

[amethyst]

Do you know what purpose you have for it? It would help a lot, as if you intend to use it for browsing Precise will be hopelessly outdated to even make a connection.

Light web browsing and communication.

I found out that I could easily install Pidgin but even that is slow as hell. I had nice experiences with Finch tho, but I'd need to figure out a way to watch images and listen to audios that's not a hassle.

Hell, I'd be 100% happy with only a command line if there was ANY cli browser that supports basic Javascript so I don't get blocked from certain pages. Maybe a combination of nomodeset so I can run Palemoon-non-SSE2 + a console running finch?

I've been running Opera Mini with an emulator for about 15 years for general browsing. No multimedia support so you can't stream video/audio. This will work even on a very old Puppy.

[Abigail]

Do you know what purpose you have for it? It would help a lot, as if you intend to use it for browsing Precise will be hopelessly outdated to even make a connection.

Light web browsing and communication.

I found out that I could easily install Pidgin but even that is slow as hell. I had nice experiences with Finch tho, but I'd need to figure out a way to watch images and listen to audios that's not a hassle.

Hell, I'd be 100% happy with only a command line if there was ANY cli browser that supports basic Javascript so I don't get blocked from certain pages. Maybe a combination of nomodeset so I can run Palemoon-non-SSE2 + a console running finch?

I've been running Opera Mini with an emulator for about 15 years for general browsing. No multimedia support so you can't stream video/audio. This will work even on a very old Puppy.

What kind of emulator? Wine?

I'm not sure how well would it behave under my specs

[amethyst]

Light web browsing and communication.

I found out that I could easily install Pidgin but even that is slow as hell. I had nice experiences with Finch tho, but I'd need to figure out a way to watch images and listen to audios that's not a hassle.

Hell, I'd be 100% happy with only a command line if there was ANY cli browser that supports basic Javascript so I don't get blocked from certain pages. Maybe a combination of nomodeset so I can run Palemoon-non-SSE2 + a console running finch?

I've been running Opera Mini with an emulator for about 15 years for general browsing. No multimedia support so you can't stream video/audio. This will work even on a very old Puppy.

What kind of emulator? Wine?

I'm not sure how well would it behave under my specs

No you don't need WINE, you need Java. Check here: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic ... 438#p15438
You can download an older version of JRE here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gin7dcltuqbm ... 2.pet?dl=1

[mikeslr]

Regarding video/media files on the web, trying to stream them is likely to drive you nuts, at best. But maybe amethyst or backi can tell you more about making use of the web-sites mentioned here, viewtopic.php?p=48267#p48267 perhaps others/similar to download the files and then play them from storage.

[Abigail]

Regarding video/media files on the web, trying to stream them is likely to drive you nuts, at best. But maybe amethyst or backi can tell you more about making use of the web-sites mentioned here, viewtopic.php?p=48267#p48267 perhaps others/similar to download the files and then play them from storage.

I tried downloading videos and then playing them with some video players but still laggy. I gave up a long time ago.

[MrDuckGuy]

This is not a "puppy" but some of us are fooling around with 'TinyCore' OS. It is really small. Also you can run Vivaldi browser on it, and also I believe Firefox. You can even run 'ROX' file manager (which is the same file manager as most Puppys use). There is a series of YouTube videos with step-by-step instructions, on how to load and install it using a pair of USB keys. The YouTube series was created by Puppy Byte (a Puppy Linux user). Like Puppy, it can be completely based on a USB key, or moved to an HD. I don't think that the largest version of it takes up more than 70MB, and the smaller version is around 10MB at that:
Homepage:
http://tinycorelinux.net/intro.html

YouTube Playlist - installation & configuration: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... tSVu99amYz

I've been running it on an old ('05) Dell Dimension 4700 with a Pentium 4 (2.8 Ghz) and 4GB of RAM (just upgraded from 1.75GB & it ran with the old RAM). I'm thinking my Dell is around twice as powerful as your Geode seems to be, specification-wise, though. I'd be curious to see if TinyCore would run well on it.

According to Wikipedia's page on this topic:

System requirements
Minimal configuration: Tiny Core needs at least 46 MB of RAM in order to run, and (micro) Core requires at least 28 MB of RAM. The minimum CPU is an i486DX.
Recommended configuration: A Pentium II CPU and 128 MB of RAM are recommended for Tiny Core.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_Core ... quirements

It would seem that your hardware should easily be able to run this OS.

[Abigail]

This is not a "puppy" but some of us are fooling around with 'TinyCore' OS. It is really small. Also you can run Vivaldi browser on it, and also I believe Firefox. You can even run 'ROX' file manager (which is the same file manager as most Puppys use). There is a series of YouTube videos with step-by-step instructions, on how to load and install it using a pair of USB keys. The YouTube series was created by Puppy Byte (a Puppy Linux user). Like Puppy, it can be completely based on a USB key, or moved to an HD. I don't think that the largest version of it takes up more than 70MB, and the smaller version is around 10MB at that:
Homepage:
http://tinycorelinux.net/intro.html

YouTube Playlist - installation & configuration: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... tSVu99amYz

I've been running it on an old ('05) Dell Dimension 4700 with a Pentium 4 (2.8 Ghz) and 4GB of RAM (just upgraded from 1.75GB & it ran with the old RAM). I'm thinking my Dell is around twice as powerful as your Geode seems to be, specification-wise, though. I'd be curious to see if TinyCore would run well on it.

According to Wikipedia's page on this topic:

System requirements
Minimal configuration: Tiny Core needs at least 46 MB of RAM in order to run, and (micro) Core requires at least 28 MB of RAM. The minimum CPU is an i486DX.
Recommended configuration: A Pentium II CPU and 128 MB of RAM are recommended for Tiny Core.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_Core ... quirements

It would seem that your hardware should easily be able to run this OS.

I already tried TinyCore, Slitaz, Antix, Debian, Alpine... they're all OK but my processor lacks of SSE2 instructions so most browsers are incompatible, unfortunately. The only one I had some success with was Palemoon non-SSE2.

[mikewalsh]

@Abigail :-

Oh, BOY. An LX800 Geode..? REALLY?!? (*whistles...*)

It's an "embedded" forerunner to the SoC's (systems-on-a-chip) now in common use on smartphones:-

https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Geode_LX/index.html

Except that this is really crappy specs! You're kinda stuck with it - what ya see is what ya get; nothing is upgradeable. On top of which, you can't even swap it out for something better, since these are BGA-format chips (BallGridArray).....and, as such, are soldered to the motherboard. No sockets for these babies. You'll never get a current browser to run on it - not even one of Fenyo's SSE-only "NewMoon" Pale Moon clones - since the newest instructions on this thing were MMX. No SSEs at all.

And this was produced at a time when the sub-components on the chip weren't very advanced, either. I mean, all credit to PackardBell for trying out this idea, but it was bound to be a flop.....to my way of thinking, nobody with any financial acumen would have even contemplated using such a piece of low-end garbage.

Small wonder PackardBell went under, years ago.....

Even TinyCore would be a stretch on this thing. Not due to hardware limitations, more due to software deficiencies.

Mike.

[MrDuckGuy]

... TinyCore would be a stretch on this thing. Not due to hardware limitations, more due to software deficiencies. ...

What about KolibriOS? That is even more simple than TinyCore!

[mikewalsh]

... TinyCore would be a stretch on this thing. Not due to hardware limitations, more due to software deficiencies. ...

What about KolibriOS? That is even more simple than TinyCore!

Umm....well, yeah. I mean, 100% assembly machine-code? Sure; it'll run. But have you ever tried actually doing anything with Kolibri?

All credit to its Russian devs for squeezing the whole thing into, what is it? 8....10 MB? The built-in browser won't do squat, because it doesn't meet current TLS-compliant status. It can't even do https://.....which IS kinda compulsory these days. About the most stable item on there is that big pair of daft, "googly" eyes that follow your cursor around the screen. Oh, yeah, that's a MUST-have item right there, all right..!

(I tried all these micro-OSs several years ago, and came to the conclusion that most of them are a great idea for ancient hardware in theory, yes.....but you couldn't possibly live with them day-in, day-out. They'd drive you nuts.)

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

It's more of a showcase; a demonstration of what's possible, what CAN be done if you're determined - or crazy! - enough to do it! But as for practical, and 'usable' on a daily basis?

Nah. Not a snowflake's chance in hell, amigo.

Mike.

[amethyst]

Regarding video/media files on the web, trying to stream them is likely to drive you nuts, at best. But maybe amethyst or backi can tell you more about making use of the web-sites mentioned here, viewtopic.php?p=48267#p48267 perhaps others/similar to download the files and then play them from storage.

I tried downloading videos and then playing them with some video players but still laggy. I gave up a long time ago.

Download the videos at a low resolution like 360P.

[darry19662018]

Hmmmm the computer equivalent of a Skoda.

[mikewalsh]

@darry19662018 ;-

Hmmmm the computer equivalent of a Skoda.

^^^ LOLOLOL!!!

(Hey, don't knock Skodas, Darren. My first two cars were both Estelles; a 120L, and a 130 LS "Rapid"; brilliant cars, once you got used to their 'quirks'.....like an almost compulsory top-end rebuild at around 65-70,000 miles, due to always blowing the head gasket between cylinders 3 and 4! Apart from that, though, they were good little motors.....so long as you drove within their limitations.

They didn't win their class in the World Rally Championships, 23 years on the trot, for nothing y'know.....)

And don't start on about the list of Skoda jokes, mate.....I've heard 'em ALL before!

• What's the definition of a skip (or 'dumpster, for our US members)'? A Skoda with the sunroof open.....

• What's the best thing about a Skoda? The heated rear windscreen.....so you can keep your hands warm while you're pushing it!

• What do you call a Skoda with twin exhaust pipes? A wheel-barrow....

Same old, same old..... *yawn*

https://skoda-jokes.blogspot.com/2008/0 ... jokes.html

http://www.jokes4us.com/miscellaneousjo ... jokes.html

Mike.

[MrDuckGuy]

... TinyCore would be a stretch on this thing. Not due to hardware limitations, more due to software deficiencies. ...

What about KolibriOS? That is even more simple than TinyCore!

... Nah. Not a snowflake's chance in hell, ...

Okay, I get that now. But ... how about this? I know there are a lot of users out there who have installed ChromeOS, AndroidOS and a lot of oddball OS's that were designed to run on very meager hardware. For example, very old Smartphones and netbooks. Don't you think that one of those might work?

I know I've installed a version of Android on a PC before, some time ago.

Also I found a few links to non-SSE2 browsers:
(below - last updated February '22)
http://matejhorvat.si/en/unfiled/nosse2.htm

2022-03-04-1048-Screenshot.png (127.73 KiB) Viewed 1301 times

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This is older, from 2021:
https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=42720

2022-03-04-1054-Screenshot.png (34.89 KiB) Viewed 1301 times

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This is the last link from the above (it's from '06 though):
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=12102

2022-03-04-1103-Screenshot.png (118.55 KiB) Viewed 1300 times

[darry19662018]

@Mike Walsh - Yeah sorry mate to be honest a bit of a habit. In this country they were the butt of many jokes.

Funny thing is Our Police replaced their Holdens with them. They seem to come with a lot of unique extra features.

[darry19662018]

There used to be distro called LinuxBBQ they used machines like this. Doesn't exist anymore but basically it was Debian or sometimes slackware with or even arch with a very minimal window manger like Awesome so you could start with a non-xserver environment and Add a minimal window manager.

https://linuxbbq.com/cream.html
https://linuxbbq.com/bbs/

[mikewalsh]

@MrDuckGuy :-

NewMoon is from the same guy - Feodor2 - who produced the MyPal browser for those hold-outs still clinging to XP. He's been on here as Fenyo, and made the 'NewMoon' SSE-only builds available for us; this is what he turned to after being kicked-off the MyPal team by his two co-builders (who caved in to the demands of Moonchild Productions about proper badging, and credits being assigned correctly. Moonchild gets quite snotty about that).

Mike.

[wizard]

@Abigail

Have a old Compaq laptop with a Pentium 2 400mhz cpu, 384mb ram, no SSE, closest I have to your AMD Geode LX800 500mhz.
Runs both Puppy 4.1.2 w/Firefox 3.6.1 and Puppy 5.2.8 w/Firefox 16. Limited internet usefulness due to old browsers, but does work. Don't know if they have drivers for your system.

wizard

[mouldy]

There used to be distro called LinuxBBQ they used machines like this. Doesn't exist anymore but basically it was Debian or sometimes slackware with or even arch with a very minimal window manger like Awesome so you could start with a non-xserver environment and Add a minimal window manager.

https://linuxbbq.com/cream.html
https://linuxbbq.com/bbs/

It hasnt been updated in years and not sure it was all that useful back in its day, but its available: https://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxbbq/

[mouldy]

There are plenty vintage Puppy and others that will run on your machine. However you are going to beat your head against a rock trying to find a modern browser that works on them.

Oh this thread got me looking at text browsers. Honestly browsh seems best, but it requires a modern version Firefox be installed somewhere either on your computer or onto a server computer you can ssh into.

I installed it on my computer and in terminal type "browsh" without the quotes and it starts, finds Firefox and goes to default browsh homepage and shows it on terminal in text of course. CTRL+l and type in any url. The nice thing with browsh is that since its basically running on a headless Firefox, it supports all modern stuff.

This however isnt useful to you. You would need to install browsh onto a more modern computer that also has modern firefox. You then install SSH or Mosh if not already there on both computers. You can then SSH or Mosh the remote computer into browsh on the "server computer". Its mostly a workaround for slow internet at the remote computer. But could let an old computer that cant run a modern browser navigate the internet. Browsh minimizes amount data needing to be transferred. I can see this working for somebody remote with only dialup available and family member with faster connection. Dialup is pretty useless trying to navigate modern websites.

https://www.brow.sh/

Browsh is a fully-modern text-based browser. It renders anything that a modern browser can; HTML5, CSS3, JS, video and even WebGL. Its main purpose is to be run on a remote server and accessed via SSH/Mosh or the in-browser HTML service in order to significantly reduce bandwidth and thus both increase browsing speeds and decrease bandwidth costs.

I am no SSH or Mosh expert, just heard of Mosh while looking on browsh site. But my take how it works. It would be an end run to use an old computer or slow internet in modern world.

[Phoenix]

There is also elinks final, last commit version. Its Javascript engine is not fully finished, and you'll still need to possibly build an external SSL library to your build of elinks to. Also it will require upgrading GCC... which might take days. Just to exemplify that, on my 1.9GHz cpu with 256MB RAM and 4GB swap, and resizing the /tmp to 8G. It took roughly 2 days to make a successful build. (Withholding the fact I had to keep fixing several issues and then rebuild because I made the mistake of mixing libc's)
However it works quite fine, and although you can't view images directly, you can download them. Although its javascript engine might crash, spawning multiple error prompts unless you have it silenced via the configuration or knock out the entire browser. So you may end up playing with the javascript toggle to see whether the site will work fine without Savascript.

[darry19662018]

It hasnt been updated in years and not sure it was all that useful back in its day, but its available: https://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxbbq/

Quite true Mouldie but the recipes they used for some of ther minimal builds are very useful still. CWM, Fluxbox, Blackbox, etc anyone?

[darry19662018]

Amazing how they got ram usuage down to minimal comparable to puppy at the time.

[MrDuckGuy]

... already tried TinyCore, Slitaz, Antix, Debian, Alpine... they're all OK but my processor lacks of SSE2 instructions ...

What about: AndroidX86?
https://www.android-x86.org/

Is this an option for you?