Single core, 32 bit CPU, can’t even do video playback on VLC. But it kinda works for some offline work, like text editing, and even emulation through zsnes! It’s crazy how Linux keeps old hardware like this running.
Thankfully though, this laptop CPU is upgradable, and so is the ram, so I’m planning on revitalizing and bringing this old Itautec to the 21st century 😄
2GB of RAM? Low?
Were you born after the year 2000?
Haha, I’ve been used to 4gb ram minimum for most of my life 😆
I remember when 128MB RAM sticks were $400
I remember expanding my Amiga with 512KB to 1MB Fast RAM and later going crazy with another two megabyte Slow RAM.
I remember my dad’s friend upgrading our PC clone to 640K. He used a soldering iron.
I remember when computers had no memory and the storage was on punch cards made from mammoth leather that we had to tan ourselves after spending our weekends hunting the mammoth with spears. Also we carved our code by hand on stone tablets. Young people these days have it easy.
You had one job.
Mentioning punch cards had me, but you blew it!
Punch cards. The “true” PC era.
I slept in my first computer - and worked as verbal RAM (first VRAM!) 28 hours a day !
“…and when you tell this to young people today, they won’t believe you !” - Monty Python.
Oh so that’s where the term VRAM comes from! 🤯
“Stone” tablets? Luxury. Ours were dried mammoth dung.
Get off my lawn
Lmao, I’ve ran Linux on an eeePC with 1GB RAM and 900MHz Intel Atom. Compiling gcc & glibc could take hours.
Edit: RPi3 still got only 1GB, BeagleBone Black even got 512MB, don’t forget RPi0
I still have a cool laptop (with Mandrake and kde) with 192 megs of memory somewhere.
2 gigs of ram ? You probably can have an emulation station up to PS1 with this hardware.
Oh, I tried… But the CPU/GPU is just TOO slow for that, SNES was the best I could do
I always forget how crappy Intel iGPUs are.
Pretty close tho
Hell yeah! Love seeing old hardware like this still running a modern OS.
With Linux, if your hardware is a decade old, you’ve barely even reached middle-age.
Meanwhile Windows 11 won’t even allow an official install on hardware that’s 4-5 years old.
Long live Linux & FOSS ✊
thats my current laptop
Edit: im exagerating but I really have 20-yr 32-bit Dell laptops running minimal debian linux. and my current laptop is 10+ yrs old Lenovo which I already replaced its screen, rams, keyboard, bluetooth, usb ports… and it’s still working flawlessly for daily tasks, video/music editing, coding and programming, internet browsing :D
Are you using systemd? Because 317 MB of RAM is really low for a normal Debian installation with XFce. At my mom’s 2 GB ram laptop, it uses 850 MB on a cold boot.
It is because it is 32 bit. You can run a 32 bit distro on your machine too if you really want.
You can get a full Trinity desktop on Q4OS in 130 MB of RAM (32 bit edition).
I don’t think the difference between 32bit and 64bit is 2x in memory sizes, it’s way less than that. I run Q4OS, it runs at 350 MBs here.
Are you running Trinity or KDE?
Not sure why I get so much less unless it is that. Or are you saying you run Trinity 64 bit?
I agree that 32 bit is not often going to be 50% less in practice. Sometimes I think we should be running 64 bit kernels with 32 bit userland.
Trinity of course. That’s the point of low end computing with Q4OS. :)
I suspect my first Linux ran on an 80mhz AMD K6. I did however also run it on a retired dual core UltraSPARC some years later I had somehow gotten my hands on. It might have been faster, but at that time it sure felt slow. And it sounded like a train passing through when it was on. In retrospect installing Gentoo on it was an optimistic endeavour.
Ackshually… I also had an AMD K5 with Performance Rating 100.
K6 was 166 MHz and up, Pentium II competitor.
If Minix counts, I got it running on a 286 some years ago. I don’t remember how much RAM it had, but it was very little.
My daily driver at home has the same specs. Works fine.
Do you daily drive htop or something? 😆
No just top. Only with swap on…😉
I’m planning on revitalizing and bringing this old Itautec to the 21st century
I think it was born in the 21st century? From this it looks like the first Celeron M was in 2004, and the first at that clockspeed was 2005.
Also, 2GB of RAM is plenty for many purposes - that’s more than any Raspberry Pi before the Pi 4 had!
Actually… You’re right about the 21st century lmao. I just wanted an excuse to quote Metal Gear Solid
Also, the issue is not ram itself, of course, 2GB is enough for lots of fun on Linux, it’s the CPU that’s killing me
My 2011 MacBook pro is still chugging along thanks to Linux.
I upgraded 4GB RAM to 16GB, upgraded the HDD to SSD, and replaced the CD drive with a second SSD. Sadly the screen is almost completely gone, occasionally intermittent, probably a cable gone bad, not sure, but the mini display port is working fine for an external monitor.
My girlfriend’s 2012 MacBook Pro is also running Fedora like a beast with its upgraded 16GB or Ram and its SSD.
It’s great that old hardware gets a bew chance to shine!
I found my people.
I have Linux on a 2009 and 2012 MacBook Pro and 2013 and 2017 MacBook Airs.
The 2009 is getting a bit sluggish but for regular stuff, they all work great. We even played a Steam game on the 2012 earlier today (not AAA obviously).
All Chimera Linux.
2012 MBP here, 12Gb RAM & 500Gb SSD, running Solus Budgie.
Did the same thing with my Thinkpad, 1 tb SSD, 20gb ram (16 gig stick and 4 soldered on) and an upgrade wifi card. Best computer I’ve ever had
Stories from the “good” old days running Linux on a 386 machine with 4 MB or less of memory aside, in the present day it’s still perfectly normal to run Linux on a much weaker machine as a server - you can just rent a the cheapest VPS you can find (which nowadays will have 128 MB, maybe 256MB, and definitelly only give you a single core) and install it there.
Of course, it won’t be something with X-Windows or Wayland, much less stuff like LibreOffice.
I think the server distribution of Ubunto might fit such a VPS, though there are server-specific Linux distros that will for sure fit and if everything fails TinyCore Linux will fit in a potato.
I current have a server like that using AlmaLinux on a VPS with less than 1GB in memory, which is used only as a Git repository and that machine is overkill for it (it’s the lowest end VPS with enough storage space for a Git repository big enough for the projects I’m working on, so judging by the server management interface and linux meminfo, that machine’s CPU power and memory are in practice far more than needed).
If you’re willing to live with a command line interface, you can run Linux on $50 worth of hardware.
only give you a single core
And boy would that core be shitty and over-provisioned.
Those are better specs than what I used throughout college (an Asus Eee PC running Debian with Xfce and Openbox). Not a powerful machine, but I absolutely loved that thing.
Are we competing again?
I’m proud to be setting up a rhel10 desktop, as it’ll be the first time I ran Linux as a desktop in 30 years of a Linux/Unix career.
To rephrase: I ran XFree86 on a 4mb i386 machine 30 years ago.
What do I win?
I didnt have the intention to compete, was just proud of seeing this 2007 laptop running a modern OS again!
Ran an ISP on a Pentium 90 and a few 486s. Linux and FreeBSD!
