This laptop was originally sold with Windows 7 32-bit edition installed. Even back then it was really unresponsive and clunky. After several years of it lying around and being useless, I decided to do a really lightweight debian install on it.
And guess what? It can do so much more than sit idly in some landfill.
Now I can use it to write my study notes in neovim (gives me a good excuse to learn vim, and I'm learning slowly), listen to music with gst123, learn c and c++, torrent large files with transmission-cli and qbittorrent, and the list goes on....
I mostly just use tty. I hit "startx i3" if I absolutely need a GUI, but for everything else, tty. I use links2 for Wikipedia, online resources and browsing memes which is already a big chunk of my internet usage. I was really giddy when I saw Tor browser had a 32-bit version, it runs surprisingly well even with less than 1 gigabyte of memory (unless I visit some really bloated sites)
I can't play videos though, that's the one major thing it can't do. The integrated GPU is unsupported so playing videos or 3d-gaming is out of the question.
BTW is there a lemmy instance/frontend I can use via CLI or links2?
51 Comments
FQQD@lemmy.ohaa.xyz · 91 pts · 1y
Ew, R*ddit
maliciousonion@lemmy.ml · 60 pts · 1y
Forgive me father, for I have sinned 🛐
electricprism@lemmy.ml · 9 pts · 1y
It's even funnier because the title uses the word "useful" and then shows a screenshot including reddit -- lol
maliciousonion@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 1y
Gee, I'm sorry alright? Just wanted to show off Tor browser, old.reddit.com was the first thing that came to mind that I'd use with Tor 😅
electricprism@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 1y
No worries, really, just made me smirk on seeing lol
TwinTusks@bitforged.space · 3 pts · 1y
To be fair, I have also ventured to reddit several times last few days, mainly for my episode discussion of old tv shows.
woelkchen@lemmy.world · 38 pts · 1y
Nothing screams "Workstation" louder than Reddit Mobile.
maliciousonion@lemmy.ml · 9 pts · 1y
Poor choice of word eh? 😅
GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml · 27 pts · 1y
Reddit spotted. 2.5/10 setup.
halm@leminal.space · 20 pts · 1y
For your last question, there's the Lemmy terminal viewer — I think it's unmaintained, but it's a start?
superkret@feddit.org · 13 pts · 1y
The old.lemmy.world frontend (also old... on other instances) works in links2.
There's currently no other way to browse Lemmy in a text browser on a TTY that actually works, I've tried them all recently (including browsh, carbonyl, neonmodem).
GlenTheFrog@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 1y
With the amount of Linux nerds on Lemmy, I'm shocked there's an a TUI client for it.
Maybe I'll have to make one someday.
superkret@feddit.org · 1 pts · 1y
There is one (Neonmodem), and it seems to work for some, but it never showed any posts when I tried it, and I tried it on several different distros, client versions, Lemmy accounts and home instances.
maliciousonion@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 1y
This works. Thanks a lot!
sleen@lemmy.zip · 12 pts · 1y
maliciousonion@lemmy.ml · 9 pts · 1y
It's a CLI program that can browse websites (only reads HTML). It can even display images, download files, etc... A lightweight and fast little webpage loader, I love it :)
notthebees@reddthat.com · 7 pts · 1y
There's quite a few. I have bunsenlabs helium installed on a 32 bit pentium M laptop. It's very usable, for a 20 yo single core machine. For basic things, it's still fine. I do have some gpu acceleration though which is a benefit.
theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
I believe you could use qemu for 64-bit emulation on a 32-bit system
Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 1y
I also have an old shitty computer from Acer with 4gb of RAM lying around.
I feel a bit guilty about not using it, but I’m already sharing my time between my Surface Go 1 (daily driver) and my girlfriend’s 2012 MacBook Pro, so I wouldn’t know what to do with it.
If anyone has an idea, I’m listening 👂
maliciousonion@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 1y
If it can play video at a reasonable quality, hook it up to a TV, fill it with torrented movies you want to watch and you'll have your own home entertainment system.
That's one idea. If it can't play high quality videos there are still a lot more uses for it.
qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website · 4 pts · 1y
Remote backup server would be my suggestion.
Configure it with a VPN to talk to your home network and set it up at a trusted friend's or family's place.
I do this with a raspberry pi and an external HDD that takes daily/weekly/monthly snapshots, with daily rsync. Works nicely for me.
Hule@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Backup server?
nickb333@fedia.io · 8 pts · 1y
Debian is good for this. Enjoy it while there is still 32-bit support though. Edit- do you have any swap configured?
maliciousonion@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 1y
1 extra gig of swap was configured by Debian automatically on install. Should I add more?
notthebees@reddthat.com · 7 pts · 1y
Id make it 2 or 3 gb. That being said, 1 gb is fine for such a light install. I have a similarly specced pentium M machine running modern debian with OpenBox. For heavier tasks, it was hitting swap (using a web browser). Upping it to 2 gb ram fixed that.
Edit: this also came with an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 gpu which probably has a bit more support than the PowerVR gpu in the Atom.
neonred@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
FQQD@lemmy.ohaa.xyz · 2 pts · 1y
I think that seems like a good idea
Aatube@kbin.melroy.org · 7 pts · 1y
You might wanna try out Pale Moon. It's optimized for single-thread performance and takes up a bit less memory.
muhyb@programming.dev · 1 pts · 1y
Nah, Pale Moon won't cut it. Even Dillo is quite slow on that hardware. qutebrowser maybe. To be fair using TUI-everything (or CLI) is the only viable way.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 7 pts · 1y
sudo apt-get install intel-media-va-driver-non-freeVideo will still be clunky but less clunky.
notthebees@reddthat.com · 8 pts · 1y
The atom cpu in this has a powervr sgx545 gpu which is barely supported by anything. Ubuntu 12.04 has some support but it's only 2d acceleration.
shekau@lemmy.today · 7 pts · 1y
maliciousonion@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 1y
That's just htop, a pretty well-known cli system monitor
schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business · 6 pts · 1y
Also, if you like htop, youre going to love btop.
neonred@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
zaphod@sopuli.xyz · 4 pts · 1y
Looks like htop.
mesamunefire@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Htop or top
Hupf@feddit.org · 7 pts · 1y
It does support 64-bit though?
maliciousonion@lemmy.ml · 8 pts · 1y
Yeah, the processor does. The laptop as a whole doesn't.
I did some searching and this may be because Asus has disabled the functionality in the BIOS, or much of the peripherals don't support 32-bit. I have no idea what it is tbh, and I don't really care at this point.
silverdiamond@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 1y
there might be an BIOS update you could try i don't think it will fix 64 bit and even if it did 32bit apps probably take less memory for storing addresses.
on my AOD255E 64bit just works :tm:
Hupf@feddit.org · 4 pts · 1y
I have an Asus EeePC where the latest BIOS update straight up removed the option for AHCI and hard wired IDE compat mode. Luckily, I had kept the previous version and downgrade was possible.
TheL321@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 1y
I have a netbook with the same CPU and it works, but there are no GPU drivers, even on Windows for x64
gramgan@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 1y
I’m curious why
links2over, say,w3m? It feels like none of the terminal browsers are as nice as they could be these days…maliciousonion@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 1y
I had both installed and was using them side-by-side. links2 was easier to learn and configure so I chose it over w3m, then uninstalled w3m.
Also edit: terminal browsers(at least links2) are surprisingly good if you just want read Wikipedia, browse memes, use search engines, and other static stuff once you get the hang of it.
notTheCat@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 1y
SitD@lemy.lol · 5 pts · 1y
well, you heard the website 😂 now install waydroid and their mobile app
ICastFist@programming.dev · 5 pts · 1y
Are you still using the original HDD it came with, or did you change it? I have an old All-in-one, 2012 Celeron with 2GB RAM which was supposed to be my nephew's first computer, I installed Xubuntu 18 on it, everything works fine, even some online video watching, but dear lord the R/W speeds are atrociously low, which makes starting up any program a small test of patience.
maliciousonion@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 1y
It's the original, slow HDD. And yeah, loading GUI programs is a pain but I don't notice any unresponsiveness in tty, which is how I use it for 90% of its uptime.
bruhsoulz@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 1y
Man, this is sick.
Ardyssian@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1y
Hmm, wonder if I should attempt to do the same for my old Intel Laptop; currently not using because the Disk Read / Write seems pretty slow (HDD, constantly at 100%)
bruhduh@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Try icewm
maliciousonion@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 1y
No, I prefer i3
bruhduh@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y
maliciousonion@lemmy.ml · 10 pts · 1y
Hey, IceWM is awesome! I'd use it but I prefer not to have an extra mouse cluttering up my desk :)
bruhduh@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
Thank you)
seeyouatthepartyrichter@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Did you