Linux On Older Hardware

Joe Barr writes "Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier has put together a substantive report on how well Linux runs on older hardware. Are you surprised to learn that the belch of smoke and FUD out of Redmond on the topic last month isn't true? As Zonker shows, 'The bottom line: Linux is still quite suitable for older hardware. It might not turn your aging PC into a powerhouse, but it will extend its lifespan considerably.' NewsForge, like Slashdot, is part of OSTG."

Comments

Why not paste the real link?

[jpetts]

Do us a favour: post the link to TFA at linux.com, not just the link to a single paragraph at "News"forge.

"Linux" can mean many things

[kcbrown]

...from a highly stripped-down distribution (such as muLinux) to a highly featureful one (such as Ubuntu).

So of course it can run, and run well, on older hardware. The only question is what you have to give up to make it work well.

What about older versions of Windows?

[Silverlancer]

Windows 98, I've always felt, was a drastically underrated version of Windows. It was only a 200MB install, in comparison to the 500MB of Windows ME and gigabyte plus of Windows XP. And its workings, by comparison, were simple. For example, Windows 98 had the option to completely turn off the usage of the swap file until memory is filled. Doing so made the entire system run from memory, vastly speeding up the system. As far as I know this is impossible in Windows XP. If you have an old system and toss a bunch of extra memory in it (pennies for older systems) you can make it run incredibly fast using Windows 98. I have an older laptop that I recently "inherited" from a friend. It took about 5 minutes to boot up and 30 seconds to even open a folder. I wiped it, installed Windows 98, tweaked it a bit, and installed Firefox. It now runs beautifully, as fast as my main computer. When I use Windows 98, it almost seems to me as if XP was designed to slow down your computer. Too bad most modern software no longer supports it.

Re:What about older versions of Windows?

[evilviper]

Windows 98, I've always felt, was a drastically underrated version of Windows. It was only a 200MB install, in comparison to the 500MB of Windows ME and gigabyte plus of Windows XP.

No. People were saying, non-stop, how great Win98 was when ME came around. I'd say, at it's peak, it was VASTLY over-rated. Although much smaller and somewhat faster, it isn't a fraction as stable as 2000 or XP.

The most underrated Microsoft operating system is NT4... Smaller and faster than 98, and every bit as stable as 2000 or XP.

NT4 got lots of bad publicity for being a version behind 95/98 in DirectX versions, and sadly only got up to DirectX 6.0 before being E.O.L.ed. It also got a bad wrap for lacking USB support, even though several companies released NT4 drivers for their USB devices, USB input devices like keyboards and mice don't need OS support, and a third-party company is still selling the USB stack/drivers for NT4 for $30. These were features Microsoft was holding back on, to force an upgrade to 2000.

NT4 was great, in it's stability and simplicity. It was frustrating to see a blue-screen when you swapped a videocard, but it only took a little bit of knowledge to solve the problem, and be back to 100% in no time. Repeatability is amazing, unlike 95/98/2000/XP which may install the drivers for a device once, then won't the second time, NT4 was, at the very least, completely consistent.

For example, Windows 98 had the option to completely turn off the usage of the swap file until memory is filled. Doing so made the entire system run from memory, vastly speeding up the system. As far as I know this is impossible in Windows XP.

I can't comment on XP, but I do remember that Windows 2003 (the server version of XP) had the option of completely disabling the pagefile, which made it just noticably faster, in only a few very specific cases.

When I use Windows 98, it almost seems to me as if XP was designed to slow down your computer.

Why almost? Each successive version of Windows IS designed to slow down your computer. My favorite example is the "Open With..." dialog. It hasn't changed the slightest bit since Windows 95, but it gets SIGNIFICANTLY slower with each release. As in, outpacing hardware improvements... I can only imagine it's because they're making the registry slower and vastly more bloated with each release (perhaps they throw a few sleep() calls in there to make Dell/HP happy).

Also, there is one huge reason I would suggest M.E. over 98... UMASS support. People REALLY don't want to go to the web and have to download a driver for every single USB device they use. Without UMASS support, you can't just plug-in a USB hard drive, flash dongle, iPod, etc. and have it work. With ME and 2000 being the first versions of Windows with UMASS support, is it any wonder most knowledgable people (myself included) recomend 2000 over all other versions of Windows?

The thought of engineered obsolesence still makes me gag. I'd much rather have Linux/BSD, where things like USB and UMASS support aren't intentionally held back, and you can always backport any newer features you want.

Windows 2003

[ben_1432]

Win2003 requires,
- 133mhz processor
- 128mb of ram
- 1.25gb+ of hard drive space

From memory, that's a computer in the early 90's with some extra memory and a bigger hard drive, neither of which are anywhere near expensive.

It's no surprise that other server operating systems run on old hardware as well.

It's no surprise that Linux will run on older hardware,

Non-CD Booting Options and Distro Support

[billstewart]

I don't consider a machine that can boot from CDROM to be old :-) (And I especially don't consider any machine that supports USB to be old...)

Machines that have to boot from floppy or HD are old, and laptops with random pre-Cardbus PCMCIA Ethernet cards are old, and working with them requires distro support for booting from floppy into a system with the right Ethernet drivers and/or support for booting from MS-DOS file systems that you loaded before the first Linux boot. Many of the distros out there _could_ do it, but don't necessarily give you the documentation to figure out how :-)

One trick I'm planning to try soon is putting the laptop disk into an external USB shoebox so I can load it from one of my larger computers, side-stepping the whole problem. That still requires a sufficiently small distro, but at least it's a start.

Re:Verus older versions of Windows?

[SeeMyNuts!]

Up to this past year, I had a 13 year old Sun workstation serving as the firewall for my home network, running a very recent version of OpenBSD (50MHz SPARC handles DSL bandwidth very nicely:). Even Solaris won't install on these machines, any longer (perhaps Solaris 2.7, but I'm not sure).

Truly one of the "value added" features of the F/OSS operating systems.

No surprise there

[Al Al Cool J]

I was looking to pick up a cheap notebook last year, and my brother-in-law said I could have his old 400MHz Celeron Toshiba (one of the first generation with DVD). He had long since retired it, as Windows was running too slow and the computer tech he took it to said it was too outdated and couldn't be used for anything.

I put Gentoo and fluxbox on it (cross-compiling the binaries on my desktop - I am not a moron), opera, abiword, gnumeric, mplayer, and even the MythTV frontend, so I can watch shows in bed. It runs really quite snappy, and seems more responsive than my Dad's 1.2GHz celeron running XP.

My brother-in-law is quite suprised that I've been able to breath new life into a computer he was told was a junker. He meanwhile has a 1GHz PIII notebook that he is thinking of again replacing because Windows runs too slow.

Re:I don't get it.

[Opportunist]

There are a few reasons why it could maybe not run on aged systems: The system itself, and the various distributions.

Now, the system thankfully IS working nicely with all the old machines I've tried it on. But there's still the possibility that it relies on some more modern features. There have not been ground shaking steps since the 386 (compared to the leap that came from 286 to 386), but some subtle changes happened. What if the kernel needed certain CPU Operations? What if the system expects to have at least 64 megs of ram? What if it expects a graphics adapter that can at least run VESA standard (ok, unlikely with Linux, but still...)?

All matters that could keep a system from running on old hardware.

Then there's distributions. What if the distribution compilers expect you to be able to run X, and run it at at least 800x600 resolution? What if they don't provide a text based installation routine? What if they expect at least PS/2 mice and won't accept serial? What about proprietary CD-Rom drivers, standards developed kinda late in that area? Not to mention the graphics headaches before VESA. Or if they require at least 64 megs for their ramdisk image they want to install from?

The reasons are numerous. So I'm kinda glad someone took the burden to actually try that. I envy that guy for the time he has at hand to spend on something like this (must've taken weeks to test it through on old hardware).

386/33 with Unix SVR4 and X10.? worked just fine

[billstewart]

I _think_ it was SVR4, but the late 80s are fairly old memory by now so it could have been SVR2, and maybe it was X11.* by then. Sure, it wasn't as fast as a Sun4, much less the HP graphics workstation we had which had 48MB of video RAM, but basically it worked pretty well.

Re:Verus older versions of Windows?

[BorgHunter]

[Windows 2000] is part of the Microsoft Windows NT line of operating systems and was released on February 17, 2000.

The original Pentium 4, codenamed "Willamette", ran at 1.4 and 1.5 GHz and was released in November 2000 on the Socket 423 platform.

The Pentium III is an x86 (more precisely, an i686) architecture microprocessor by Intel, introduced on February 26, 1999.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_III

In short, when 2k came out, P4 was almost there and PIII Coppermine was ubiquitous. A Pentium II would no more be "high end" then than a Willamette P4 at 1.5 GHz would be "high end" today, loosely. Though you are correct: Win2k does run well on hardware like that.

The problem with older versions of Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm suprised I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but the reason I would use Linux on older machines over older Microsoft OS' like Windows 95/95/ME/2000 is because Linux gives you the benefit of still being a supported OS. The problem with older versions of Windows is that Microsoft simply gives up on them. Even if there's some absolutely critical security flaw, Microsoft simply stop caring.

Compare this to Linux and you can use a new, fully patched, fully secure, fully tested release and scale it down to run on your old hardware, I think that's the key difference that's been missed by some here when recommending just using older Windows releases instead.

Put simply, using Linux on an old box means you can run an old box with modern software - modern in that is uptodate in terms of features, security updates and hardware support. It basically feels like when Microsoft gives up on an OS that OS is in a timefreeze, don't expect to have much luck with some hardware/software/security problem that emerged after MS gave up on it, compare that to Linux however and generally you'll have much more luck with resolving said hardware/software/security issue on the same hardware because some kind Linux developer, I guess that's the wonder of open source compared to proprietary.

Don't forget Sparc

[AFCArchvile]

I've done a bit of installing on some Sparc machines over the past year, so I know a little bit about running near-modern *nix on older hardware. My first foray into it was when I picked up a Sparcstation 5 for free. It has a 110 MHz CPU, 256 MB of RAM, and an 8-bit framebuffer. The first OS that I fully installed on it was Debian Woody for Sparc. The first installation had GNOME; it ran, but not really in a speedy fashion. I later switched back to lighter-weight environments like fluxbox or XFCE. When I picked up the Ultra 2 (2 x 300 MHz UltraSparc, 640 MB of RAM, 24-bit Creator3D framebuffer), it ran quite a bit better in Debian Woody / GNOME, thanks to the faster processors and larger memory space. Still nowhere near P3 level performance, but to be fair, this was a workstation built in 1996, and was the fastest thing in its day. When Solaris 10 came out in the free RTU license for multiprocessor machines, I installed that. Java Desktop loads up a bit slowly, so I usually log in with CDE, but the other aspects of the Ultra 2 are great for a 10-year-old computer. It can even burn 8X CD-Rs without stuttering. Your average PC back in 1996 probably wouldn't be able to sustain the throughput for 6x, let alone 8x. Once the Ultra 2 became the primary user of the 13W3 monitor due to its 24-bit framebuffer, I relegated the Sparcstation 5 to headless duty, using Debian Woody, then Sarge, and currently NetBSD 3.0.

Right now the Sparcstation series is a bit long in the tooth for graphical use beyond an ultra-light window manager like XFCE, but they were small form factor before there was a mainstream market for it. Companies like Sun and SGI made small workstations with fast processors and great throughput (and high margins and prices!).

Re:Verus older versions of Windows?

[Ayanami Rei]

>> The only feature I miss is remote desktop, and that's only of marginal utility.

That's the most important reason why to install Server 2003 or XP. Once you start using it, it changes the way you work with Windows machines.

I suggest trying to find a copy of Server 2000 so at least you get Terminal Services (with unlimited connections in Per-User mode!). If you're too poor to spring for it, or don't trust P2P, you should try to find NTSwitch.exe... and follow these instructions:

- Execute the NTSwitch Program (Backup your system first) following the instructions that it gives

- You MUST immediately afterward successfully install (any) Service Pack. It apparantly creates/restores some necessary registry entries.

- After Service Pack is installed REBOOT machine.

When you go into the START MENU>Settings>Control Panel>"Add Remove Programs" and click on "Add/Remove Windows Components" you will get a series of errors - it will tell you what files that are missing.

These are the (12) files you must have:

certocm.dll
certocm.inf
ins.inf
licenoc.dll
licenoc.inf
ocmri.inf
rsoptcom.dll
rsoptcom.inf
tsoc.dll
tsoc.inf
wmsocm.dll
wmsocm.inf

You will need to obtain these files either from an existing W2K Server installation or from the 2000 Server install CD.

Copy all .inf files to the Windows\Inf directory
Copy all .dll files to the System32\Setup directory

If this is done correctly then when you run the Add/Remove component it will list (2) Terminal Services options

You will still need to have either a W2K Server or Advanced Server CD to actually install the remaining Terminal Server files (apart from the ones above), these are located in a compressed format on the \I386 directory (TSC.001) on the CD (about 14MB)

Once you verify that Terminal Services is running and installed, you can revert the machine to Professional (or keep it at Server if you find it useful).
Seeing a 2K professional machine running multiple Terminal Services sessions without protest is a clear indication that the Server vs. Workstation distinction is only for market segmentation and maximizing profit, not any technical/support reason.

Re:Verus older versions of Windows?

[swillden]

That's the most important reason why to install Server 2003 or XP. Once you start using it, it changes the way you work with Windows machines.

Hopefully Vista will really get a decent shell interface, *and* all of the important system functionality will become available through that interface (I'm not holding my breath on that last, though), and then you'll *really* change the way you work with Windows machines. The remote GUI access is okay, but it only works when you have a high-bandwidth connection, and scriptability is very poor.

(Now we get to the *real* point of this post, which is just to share a little Linux anecdote and do a little chest thumping ;-) ). As an example of what you can do with a good remote shell, consider my experience from yesterday:

I'm in a hotel room in Paris, France. My wife was at her mother's house in Morgan, Utah, USA and sent me a message via Jabber. She had to get some pictures off of her nephew's digital camera so that she can incorporate them into a slideshow she's putting together for his wedding. He brought the CD that came with the camera, and she installed the software (on her iBook) and tried to download the pictures. Nothing happened. The computer didn't even seem to see that attached camera. We IMed back and forth for a while, trying to troubleshoot the problem, but it was no good. Looking at the camera's support web site, it appears that maybe my wife needs to download a newer version of the software, but it's 40MB and she's on a slow dialup line (my father in law is out in the sticks and even his telephone service isn't very good -- he rarely gets connected at better than 26Kbps). Actually, as it turned out, even after she upgraded the software (at home on a cable modem connection), she still couldn't talk to the camera. Dunno.

Now, a while back, I gave my father in law a computer... an old AMD K6 300Mhz running Ubuntu Linux (Hoary, as I recall). It lets him browse e-Bay, send and receive e-mail and write the occasional letter and I don't have to support it at all -- it just works. So, I told my wife to go attach the camera to the Linux box. One little complication was that both the Linux box and my wife's iBook are connected via WiFi to a little AP/router with a dialup modem in it. That's because my father-in-law had no way to get a phone line into the room where he wanted to keep the computer (it's an old house). The AP/router, of course, does NAT. Not a major problem... I just told my wife to type "ssh -R5000:localhost:22 ..." on the Ubuntu box to connect to my server at home and set up a tunnel back to the Ubuntu box.

Then, from my hotel room in France, I connected first to my home server, then logged into the Ubuntu box. Damn... gphoto2 wasn't installed. "aptitude install gphoto2", plus a three-minute wait for the 233KB download to finish (yes, barely over 1KB per second -- it's a *slow* dialup) and I had the software. "gphoto2 -P" detected the camera, identified it, connected to it with the correct protocol and downloaded all of the pictures from the camera. "nmap" found the IP address of my wife's iBook and "scp" quickly copied all of the pictures into her home directory.

That's it. Problem solved... I looked like some kind of a wizard for being able to do this from 1/3 of the way around the planet, but the truth is that it's no different than doing it from the console. I suppose perhaps someday all Internet connections will be fast enough that you can always use a remote GUI, but that day has not yet arrived, and won't for some years yet.

A good CLI rocks.