This Pentium 4 is Surprisingly Usable

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Today we're installing modern linux on a very, very old machine. How usable could it possibly be?
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#Pentium #Linux #P4

[@ActionRetro]

Click my trainwell (formerly CoPilot) link go.trainwell.net/ActionRetro to get 14 days FREE with your own personal trainer!

[@justwolfslife]

thank god for sponsorblock

[@ThePredator1997]

Can you do a video using t/2 linux sometime? It works on a lot of old machines.

[@docwhogr]

if you have installed windows it would be more usable.... 7 or 10...

[@theParticleGod]

That's not a Pentium 4. Pentium M is based on the Pentium III, that's why it's not terrible. An actual P4 laptop would definitely have been unusable.

[@vilfarnavari1661]

@@docwhogr gods no, as someone struggling with a 2012 AMD C-60 on a side laptop lol. It barely runs 7, and 10 is an utter slideshow even with everything ripped out. It's XP and Linux or bust.

[@NullReference119]

FWIW I think you were missing 3D acceleration the entire time, classiccube should have run much better than that (it does just fine on a 233MHz PPC for example) it appears there is some kernel fiddling needed to get that specific GPU to work properly. Kernel bug 206697, comment 14 may be helpful if you want to continue that adventure.

[@Ниггерфиш]

FWIW means...?

[@AnthonyScandurra]

@@Ниггерфиш FWIW = For What It's Worth

[@panopolis8051]

Agreed, the ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 in that laptop is certainly no powerhouse, but it does support OpenGL 1.3 and should be enough to play Classicube or 144p video with proper acceleration.

[@NullReference119]

​@@panopolis8051 Unfortunately the Radeon 7500 is just too old for support by lib va-api as written. There is a fallback opengl driver for h.264, but generally youtube uses vp9 these days. It also hasn't been actively maintained for two years. The TLDR: video acceleration is just likely not on the table. Not going to say it can't happen. Just I suspect nobody has put the effort for this specific hardware as old as it is.

[@panopolis8051]

@@NullReference119 that makes sense, thanks for clearing that up.

[@loserguy4358]

We are lucky to have linux

[@3rdalbum]

​@@ThePgR777 I do basic video editing, and I do music composition and recording, on Linux. My father has written some books and he uses Linux for that. I don't currently have a home server, but when I did it was on Linux, streaming my movie collection to multiple TVs in the house. There's plenty you can do with Linux and these days it's really not difficult to do any of this stuff.

[@apfeltaart]

​@@ThePgR777 wdym there is a plenty of useful things that you can do on linux

[@leerobinson8709]

​@@ThePgR777 I write in my spare time so it would be fine for me. Anyway, it's clearly proof of concept rather than a practical solution but there are a surprising amount of people with old laptops lying around.

[@ThePgR777]

​@@Jeromeeb I mean you cant do anything useful on this machine, this is why lots of people hate Linux fanboy users

[@benzan6704]

​@@Jeromeebmost of the time spent too many tinkering for the software to work, instead of doing productive with it, and don't even try to argue if you just doing some basic crap and not something more intensive, linux it's free if you don't value your time

[@andresbravo2003]

Side-Note: Using XFCE is very important, and can make things better and more faster.

[@rmcdudmk212]

I agree. I'm using Mint XFCE and it's keeping my 3rd Gen I3 laptop running like a top. 👍

[@noone927-o6j]

also lxde is more lightweight than xfce but still lacks some xfce features

[@anon-55-t2x]

Lxde works if xfce is too slow

[@verzagen7550]

​@@noone927-o6j hasn't LXDE been replaced with LXQt?

[@replikvltyoutube3727]

I'd use like open box or joeswm on something like that

[@resonancerim]

Make sure to run glxinfo to check if gpu acceleration is there. Probably you're running on cpu. Classicube also shows error at 11:56 libglerror: failed to load driver: radeon

[@miaugato93]

maybe an old gpu like that is expecting fglrx

[@huntercz1226]

@@miaugato93No, fglrx is really not recommended. It should run on r600 or radeon driver, which for him is not working. It could be the kernel lacking the radeon kernel module or Mesa is compiled without radeon and r600 gallium drivers.

[@RoverFlushed]

yeah classicube says software rendering is being used at 12:05

[@flydiscohuebr]

@@huntercz1226 8:05 Radeon 7500 is only supported by r200 which is only available on mesa amber

[@huntercz1226]

@@flydiscohuebr Really? Damn...

[@3rdalbum]

The heat from Pentium Can warm a mid-sized town

[@TheSuperiorQuickscoper]

FX-8150 and i9-14900K be like: Bush league.

[@InfernosReaper]

@@TheSuperiorQuickscoper while the P4 is like: You underestimate my power!"

[@JohnZombi88]

The only CPU that overheats through Arctic thermal paste and a massive copper heatsink.

[@Michael-Archonaeus]

Pentium 4 in particular, yes.

[@MattExzy]

In ye old times, Pentium 4 + SETI@Home = space heater.

[@soli-ethd]

I absolutely love these mad science experiments. Also love how surprisingly usable this is for really light stuff, especially as a low-distraction device for something like writing that can do some things on the Internet but nothing particularly well.

[@raven4k998]

jeez that's a lite weight os to only use 2% of a Pentium 4 cpu

[@uppishcub1617]

Not as low distraction as you might think. Most of the time I used to spend doom scrolling youtube on my phone, I now spend switching between threads on 4chan on my P4 machine.

[@iiisaac1312]

Web pages are HARDER FOR A COMPUTER TO RUN than a 3D VIDEO GAME. Says a lot about SOCIETY

[@bjarne431]

So many websites are pure garbage when it comes to efficiency/optimization.

[@robonator2945]

I don't disagree that modern websites are shit, but the issue was most likely that the video drivers weren't working properly for some reason. (I mean the fact that *_anything_* on that thing *_was_* working is a miracle in it's own right, so it's not surprising) Also, while "modern websites/software use too many resources!" is true, IMO the thing more people should be focussing on is why the 500 tabs you're not focussed on even need to be loaded at all. At any given time you're only using maybe 3-5 tabs. One that's active in whatever window(s) you have focussed, and one or two that might be active doing something in the background like playing a video or music. Every. Single. Other. One. can just be dumped onto the disk, and restored the next time you click on it. (note : *_NOT THROWN AWAY AND REDOWNLOADED_* ) Most websites can be stored with something like singlefile at ~5mb, which means a thousand tabs dumped to the disk would take 5 gigabytes. (I acutally just used singlefile on this very page, it's 3mb. Granted, that doesn't store the video itself, and that is one area where this does get a bit more complicated, but still) What's the difference between restoring 5000 tabs and restoring 1 tab? Fucking. Nothing. *_So why the fuck is it a problem?_* So, yes, websites (and most software) is incredibly wasteful, buuuuut if we just stopped tolerating that browsers load dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of tabs into-memory and actively give them CPU cycles when they're doing *_nothing,_* the problem would be a hell of a lot better. Whether this says something deeply meaningful about society, or just tells us what we already know, (people are lazy and don't really think about shit, letalone bother to improve it even if doing so would be greatly beneficial for everyone including themselves) is an exercise left for the reader.

[@gamagama69]

JS IS IN EVERYTHING! I OPEN MY WEB BROWSER, THERES JAVASCRIPT. I OPEN MY PHONE, THERES REACT. I DOWNLOAD A DESKTOP APP, ITS ALL FUCKING ELECTRON

[@wujekstalina]

It says that this society has a lot of compute avalible

[@flyaviator7864]

@@wujekstalina With a lot of those computers being put in the bin even when they work fine.

[@bryans8656]

That Panasonic is a good looking laptop (for its time). It's good to see it running a modern OS so well.

[@raven4k998]

wait wait wait hold on yes the Pentium 4 is still useable in 2024 oh my god😱

[@perinoid]

My first laptop had a Pentium4 2.4GHz CPU and an NVidia GeForce 4 440MX graphics adapter. It was large, heavy but pretty powerfull. 11:50 Looks like you were missing the Radeon library for 3D. You'd need to add proper Mesa library packages.

[@ThePortuguesePlayer]

Yo, that's the specs of my midtower! Got a HP Compaq D310 Evo with that same CPU and GPU (MX440 64MB DDR). It used to be my main PC back in around 2010 or 11. I still keep it connected to the TV.

[@wujekstalina]

I also had the Geforce 4 MX 440 but i wouldn't call it a good card. It's a straight downgrade from the GeForce 3. Half the render output units, half the texture mapping units, 1.5 times lower texture fill rate, 25% lower clock speed.

[@AvWijk85]

I absolutely love your videos about antique laptops with Linux on them! Please do a comparison of lightweight distros like these.

[@andrewr1355]

I’ve been bouncing in and out for the Linux content for a while but this one made me subscribe. I LOVE making old hardware do new hardware things through the power of modern Linux.

[@emmanuelbreton5431]

I own a 2003 Pentium 4 with 1.5 Go of ram and a 120 Ide Hard Drive, It works on Pepermint Linux and can use it sometimes in my garage to watch some videos or download technical PDF. Of course on you tube you need to download the videos as online it is too slow but it works fine. One day I 'll add a ssd drive to see if that makes sense but not sure. Otherwise I own many computers on different linux distros like Bohdi Linux for I3 or Linux mint Mate for 1 st and 2 nd I5 Generations, everything works fine. You can also use your old pentium 4 as a storage device from time to time, it might still help. Thx for keeping old hardwares alive, I really like your channel. A french guy !

[@monkeyman767]

"let's find another game that runs a little better" I don't know how, but I KNEW it was going to be Sauerbraten

[@monkeyman767]

Shame it didn't work though

[@fabricio4794]

Play Assault Cube

[@mckelepic]

such a good game

[@monkeyman767]

@@mckelepic sound track is great

[@LandRiders7th]

if only is was playable [._.]

[@nbarrager]

Years after humanity drives itself to extinction there will still be a few Pentium 4 machines dotted about the world cluelessly executing whatever automated tasks they're programmed to execute. They will outlive their power sources.

[@raven4k998]

is the Pentium 4 usable nope but maybe yes OH... MY.... GOD.... NO NO NO GOD NO!!!

[@jamesdecross1035]

These operating systems that don't 'push the processor so hard' are not just great for older machines, but they are great for 'Going Green', too. With a power meter, I was shocked to discover that Windows 3.1 uses a full 10 watts more power than the exact-same computer running DOS 6.11.

[@cyberdusttv]

Everything before haswell has run its course and takes way too much power to be considered green since these machines lack basic power save features we come accustomed to. These are also on their way to be 10 years old so...

[@netkv]

yeah using such systems on modern hardware not only makes the system fly, but eats not much power too

[@TT-pi8ww]

just use computers with ARM SoC or power saving CPU's. Mac Mini with M Processor needs 4 watts in idle, 10 watts for web browsing/watching videos, etc. 20 Watts for Gaming. That's the whole computer, not just the CPU. Same applies ti mini PC with Intel P100. They are just slower than Arm/Mac.

[@notNajimi]

@user-lo4zj5dw1xthey didn’t say they used a P4 lmao

[@FireFoxDestroyer]

@@cyberdusttvivy bridge laptops are still good today for usb 3 support and generally good potential

[@Jabjabs]

KZbin playback on this thing reminds me of streaming video on dial up in the 90's. Fire up Real Player!

[@Gato303co]

Oh yeah, Real Player! God! Many hours I used it back in late 90s and early 2000s 🙂

[@e7yu]

Thank you for posting this. I've been trying peppermint with no success I will definitely try this. 👍😄

[@tunkunrunk]

everybody is saying Pentium 4 in their videos and videos' title , but they forget something very important to mention , the socket . There's pentium 4 for socket 478 and pentium 4 for socket LGA775

[@chrisripley154]

I still use AntiX Base on an old P3 IBM Think Pad for coding myself to sleep sometimes. It's more square, and I like the keyboard.

[@SeishukuS12]

You can do better than a P4! I have a Pentium 133 (non-MMX) running Slackware 11 on a kernel 2.6 with a PCI Radeon 9250 running full 3D. :) Gets 250FPS in glxgears, though I can't get much else running because I only have 64MB of RAM, barely enough to run X with FVWM/TWM.

[@rmcdudmk212]

Very nice

[@EirikrTinkerTries]

Why not a modern OS like OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, or ArchLinux32? Even the x86 Raspberry Pi OS? And then do some kernel customization to strip it down to only what’s needed, and using busybox… can go totally wild. That being said, so long as you activate swap for ArchLinux32 you can install it just fine. Usually. Or used to.

[@SeishukuS12]

@@EirikrTinkerTries RPi OS might work, but usually everything else requires a minimum of at least 128MB to even load the installer. Mainly because of the huge initfs everyone likes to use. I do use a custom 2.6 kernel though, the "stock" one that comes with Slackware 11 is far too bloated to run on 64MB.

[@themadmallard]

@@EirikrTinkerTries between what they are running and the newer stuff, is there any improvements that a p133 could take advantage of or that runs better?

[@eDoc2020]

@@EirikrTinkerTries I don't know about OpenSUSE but ArchLinux32 (and most other 32-bit distros) require a 686 (Pentium Pro) CPU.

[@joshuaanothereraseddad]

I am far and away not a "computer guy", but this was an absolutely intriguing video. That was nifty watching what all that old thing could handle running a Linux distro. I've only been dabbling with Linux, specifically Mint 22, for about a month now, and it has changed my life. I'm so glad I dropped windows. Linux is the best rabbit hole I've gone down in a long time. The devs for Mint 22 did a great job making the install very user friendly. And now, seeing there's a potential to revive "ancient" computers is so groovy. The world of Ubuntu/Linux is brilliant! Thanks for a fantastic lil vid sir!

[@teeteetuu94]

I never thought P4 would be usable in this day and age even with Linux, until I tried it and surprised myself a couple years ago (with Lubuntu). Albeit with a somewhat modern PCIe GPU and SSD, and 4GB RAM. With the compositing and video decoding (1440p no less) offloaded to the GPU, it is actually more than serviceable. Not having to write to swap on spinning rust all the time also helps greatly. I can have a handful of KZbin video tabs open at once and still have memory to spare.

[@MJ-uk6lu]

My old Athlon 64 3400+ could run 360p YT videos on CPU alone

[@wisteela]

Fantastic. I'll have to see what I can get it running on. And yes, that Toughbook looks fantastic.

[@leylandlynxvlog]

This was awesome to watch. That distro can give old computers a new lease on life. Not sure quite how much you could do compared to what you could do with an old version of Windows but it's will at least be much more secure.

[@Pantherman1979]

Have you tried Void Linux? It's specifically made for older systems like this, they have a Pentium 4 build as a matter of fact

[@raven4k998]

Welcome to the void kids💀💀

[@myleft9397]

Great video. Never heard of this distro before so I'm downloading it. I just think the pace of PC HW improvements has slowed. In my lifetime, I went from PCs not existing to the first i3/i5/i7 and it all seemed so fast, but then all these 13 generations since then, tiny changes each gen.

[@bookofdaveandsteve]

8th gen was a big jump, but generally - yeah

[@juliusapweiler1465]

Yeah, absolutely. Imagine trying to 'daily drive' a typical computer from 1992 (386, 4 MB RAM sort of thing) in 2002. On the other hand, try using something from 2014 in 2024 - it won't run the latest AAA games but it shouldn't be too painful overall. I used a 2010 MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo, not even any Core iX) as my main computer until 2021. It was definitely struggling at the end, but it was still keeping up with basic email/browsing/productivity stuff.

[@Fay7666]

​@@bookofdaveandsteve Was it? It was just "oshiiit Ryzen is addin more cores, here staple these cores in"

[@bookofdaveandsteve]

@@juliusapweiler1465 still got my 2010 MacBook pro - mainly use it as an iTunes and iPod host now ☺️

[@bookofdaveandsteve]

@@Fay7666 for intel systems it's something I'll think about when I get my next computer - but I am hoping that won't be for some years yet ☺️

[@teklife]

wow never heard of Adelie Linux, but massive props to them!

[@honkhonkler7732]

I put full fat Fedora on an old Core 2 Quad machine from 2007 with 8GB RAM and a Radeon HD 7770. Its definitely not a gaming rig but it does everything you could ask a casual daily driver PC to do. 1080P youtube is no problem.

[@Pasi123]

My HTPC still has a C2Q Q6600 @ 3.0GHz, 8GB DDR2 and a Radeon HD 6570. It runs Ubuntu 18.04 which is a bit old by now

[@Francois_L_7933]

During the last heatwave, I installed PeppermintOS on an old 32 bit laptop. I also have Antix running on an old 32 bit netbook. And with Falkon as a browser, I have absolutely no problem going on the Internet.

[@Getoverhere666]

What about KZbin?

[@satellitegiallo]

@@Getoverhere666 Puppy Linux can run KZbin fast on a Pentium

[@Getoverhere666]

@@satellitegiallo really? Pentium has no modern hardware codecs

[@Explorer982]

Is Fallon still secure though?

[@hankhill-]

This video is a good demonstration on how optimized and supportive Linux is for older and slower machines

[@djlucasd]

Just installed Q4OS on an Inspiron 1150 with a Pentium 4. Running good!

[@Konic_and_Snuckles]

I know it was mainly for a sponsor segue, but congrats on your weight loss! I hope it's still going strong. Good luck on your health and wellness journey.

[@gothesouthway]

I do believe that laptop was cleaner than the day it was new. I almost mistaken in for CGI'd.

[@ricky2k3_]

I noticed while Sean was loading ClassiCube the terminal complained about not being able to load the radeon accelerator driver so it's completely running on software rendering

[@samshort365]

Great video, Ty. Back in the day I managed to get VCDs to work on my daughter's Pentium I PC with only 16mb of ram, which were much better than your low resolution of 140. The problem isn't the video per se, its sadly the streaming platform and all of the additional bloatware and telemetry that comes with it that slows things down.

[@matthewdropco]

Glad you brought up your fitness journey dude. Yeah, during rona times, I got the Rona 20. lol! mid 2022 got into the keto/carnivore thing (watched Dr. Ken Berry's stuff) and without changing my running stuff I was already doing, I dropped almost 30. and SLEEP was a big deal. My reduction in sleep apena (that was brought on by "fatty tongue", I'd heard about fatty liver, but?) was great for all aspects of my life. Less groggy, more energy and all that. Keep up the great work! sugar, carbs and seed oils, and alcohol(which is sugar bascially) can basically be eliminated. I'm not a doctor and this is not advice. Like in Crypto/stocks DYOR. :-)

[@fawnathefox9600]

I used this video as a guide to get my own P4 Pc working on Linux, (P4 2.4 w 512 mb of ram) and it was very useful! Thanks!

[@BuildWall]

I'd like to see you try out René Rebe's T/2 SDE distro in a future episode. It supports like a dozen architectures and just had a major new release.

[@laurencejohnson4106]

An interesting experiment!👍👍 LMDE 6 is also offered in a 32 bit version and I have an 18 year old Core Duo (not core 2 duo) Dell Inspiron 9400, 2 gig of ram., 120 gig ssd., and it works surprising well with that OS., installed, as does my 19 year old Dell Inspiron 9300, 1.73 GHz., single core CPU., 2 gig of ram., 160 gig IDE HD.. Firefox ESR., is pre installed and both laptops are fine for most basic tasks, obviously they are slower and YT., videos have to be played at the lowest settings. Currently there are at least 15 Linux distros which still support 32 bit systems.

[@FADNaR]

I tried to explore and find all 32 bit distributions. anyway, more than half of it is essentially based on Debian, and at the end of last year they were already discussing plans to phase out x86

[@laurencejohnson4106]

@@FADNaR Yes, many are based on Debian, but not all and the current It's Foss list is worth checking out.

[@arnox4554]

It's a very good thing that many of them are using Debian Stable actually. For computers that are probably going to be offline most of the time, maximum stability is preferred. Or hell, even if they were online a lot, maximum stability is still incredibly desirable. I would personally recommend AntiX of all those 32-bit distros.

[@arnox4554]

@@FADNaR "at the end of last year they were already discussing plans to phase out x86" Debian will support any hardware as long as there are people willing and able to support it. I suspect that will be true of 32-bit hardware for a long time. It's, after all, still in very widespread use with industrial and business systems.

[@adjusted-bunny]

I could see that you were peeking at your cheat sheet during the trainwell "interview".

[@michaelheimbrand5424]

Nice! I have to look into Adélie Linux. But I wonder if you were in software rendering mode the whole time. I got that "feeling" and the game you tested even showed "Software rendering". Maybe want to have a look at that.

[@theseabass]

Browsing modern Javascript wesbites on that P4 machine reminds me of what it was like browsing the internet with dial up when most had moved on to broadband in the early 2000's. Funny part is, I probably would have been using a similarly specced machine! Flash games would have me going to lunch while you waited for them to load. I remember browsing the IGN forums, and light browsing like that wasn't too bad, as long as the page didn't have any photos to load.

[@eduardoavila646]

Also for youtube playback on anything older than 2016, i would reccomend h264ify or any way to force the old h264 codec over the AV1 and VP8/VP9 codecs that most hardware can't decode, so it has to do by "brute force"

[@ptonpc]

I had a Fujitsu Siemens laptop that used a desktop P4 CPU. It was lightning fast but after a minute or so, the fans came on at full speed. The hefty battery lasted about 15 to 30 minutes. Still darn useful.

[@KratsminschSkunk1]

I found an HP Compaq 8510P at a charity shop and adopted it. It is now running Lubuntu. It dates to 2007. It did need work, but I needed the distraction.

[@TouhouGaijin]

I have a Sony Vaio pcv-rs630g with a Pentium 4 3.2ghz. It is somehow very quick and even internet browsing is snappy!

[@TheBigBazzy]

I revived my girlfriends Sony Vaio she had from highschool. It had WIndows Vista on it and wouldnt boot up at all. I installed an SSD and put Pop OS on it and she used it for a solid year until she got a new Lenovo Yoga. Linux on old hardware is such a sweet spot in tech.

[@Vlad-1986]

Maybe using something like jwm or fvwm will help: XFCE4 is using already about 50% of your RAM! Those extra hundreds of MB of RAM can help a bit with performance

[@gnarlin4964]

Is 768 the max amount of RAM this machine supports? Also, if you want to play KZbin videos on ancient hardware you're better off using yt-dlp to download them and then using mplayer or mpv to play them locally.

[@povilasstaniulis9484]

I remember running a 1Ghz Pentium 3 as my home server with Debian until late 2010s. It ran surprisingly well headless, given it's age. I even threw in a NEC USB 2.0 card and Intel Gigabit Ethernet. Still have all the parts in my stash of old hardware. BTW, Debian still supports i386, might be interesting to give it a try on a system like this.

[@stuaxo]

DVD playback should be possible, we managed it back in the day.

[@lucasrem]

on 7 inch it's good enough for you ? Where you found disks ?

[@Litepaw]

Ah yes, pentium 4. Heats up like a nuclear reactor and struggled to run even cs source.

[@8antipode9]

Always very cool watching what you do. I have a flat panel "iLamp" 800MHz that I've tried installing Adelie, Gentoo, Arch, Mint...but I'm a Linux N00B and it's clear there are video driver compatibility issues and I'm not sure how to get the right drivers in there (or even if I can find the right drivers) for the Linux install to work. I have many other older machines I've successfully installed Linux on too, although mainly because it installed without issue. There are a number of 20-so year old machines you can get for next to free which will run modern Linux just fine!

[@MishraArtificer]

Yeah, I'm having the same problem figuring out how to install GPU drivers for PuppyLinux on my old IBM Thinkpad T41...noob gonna noob, I guess.

[@SeattleSoulFan]

In line with Linux's penguin theme, I'm sure Adélie Linux alludes to the Adélie penguin.

[@TechTonic420]

From my own i can tell you that Debian 12 on Pentium 4 Northwood 2.0GHz with no dedicated GPU and 385mb of DDR1 ram it runs okay with the Openbox desktop environment. Maybe it would run even better with DWM

[@genblob]

I'll defiantly be putting adelie Linux on my thinkpad T41 which is a Pentium M laptop that can barely handle Debian with LXQt. It's crazy how smooth those windows move on a Pentium 4!

[@Nickydos666]

I have a laptop with a Pentium T4500 and 4GB of RAM, it used win7 before but now I've installed Arch Linux and i3wm on it, it goes pretty smoothly

[@solomongrundysfoot]

Ooh, a toughbook CF-48. Over the last 13 years, I have used the CF-52, CF-53, CF-54, and now the FZ-55.

[@SomeBlokeOrWhatever]

You opening that particular episode of Doctor Who on this machine _sent me_ Because I have some very fond memories of watching DW curled up in a corner of my room with a laptop _very similar to that_. Not as pretty, not from the same brand, but P4 based and such. PS: I wonder how well (or badly) it would go if one tried to play KZbin through SMPlayer on this machine, without all the web stuff, just stream the video.

[@Jackpkmn]

Had a similar experience installing a distro called antix on a dell netbook. Pretty nice. But 8gb of hard drive space just isn't enough to comfortably run a full fat modern linux distro of any kind it seems.

[@arnox4554]

It only had 8 GB of HDD space!? Bruh. Spend a few dollars on Ebay and upgrade that damn HDD already. Also, just a note. AntiX runs extremely light. It's not a full fat modern Linux distro at all. That would be MX Linux, its cousin.

[@Jackpkmn]

@@arnox4554 Problem is that it uses an SSD in a mPCIe slot format. But it's not a SATA one, its a PATA SSD. Almost no one made SSDs like that and no one makes them like that today. So the used stock on ebay for 16gb is pretty expensive in all honesty. If you want more info look up the Dell Mini 9 or Dell Inspiron 910.

[@perpetualcollapse]

Something good to watch while I fix my install of Artix which I migrated to Parabola. I’ll get startx working eventually. 😅

[@csolisr]

Wait wouldn't you switch to Hyperbola instead?

[@perpetualcollapse]

@@csolisr They have different goals with computers than I do… Besides, those guys are shifting development efforts to their own BSD OS.

[@josephcooter5763]

I recognize that episode of Doctor Who you just played. It's from SEries three and is called Gridlock if I'm not mistaken.

[@mrcaboosevg6089]

Look at all those ports, floppy drive, DVD drive... My laptop has two USB ports, headphone jack (even that's a big ask) and an Ethernet port. I miss chunky laptops, give me all the ports over being thin any day

[@Minty1337]

10:25 I know firefox is everyone's favorite Linux browser, but I strongly recommend chromium on a system this low spec, from my own experience it runs significantly faster, multiple times faster on certain systems. I don't know if it's something about the core count or the ram or what, but older systems run chromium better than firefox pretty consistently.

[@lucasrem]

Just get yourself a 2020 HP refurbished please ! $ 100 max !

[@arnox4554]

As much as I hate Chromium... Yeah, you're right about that. :( Pale Moon may be much more optimized though.

[@Minty1337]

@@arnox4554 i may take a look at that, but chromium already does everything i need and runs great on even my oldest laptops.

[@MJ-uk6lu]

uBlock Origiin + FF is beastly combo.

[@Minty1337]

@@lucasrem ...thats not applicable, i have a powerful main PC and decent laptops, those can run firefox fine, but what if im using an old machine because i need some hardware related to that, but i also need an internet connection to debug or send the output. for example, i have an old (but really good) printer that only uses parallel for communication, so what i usually do is email myself documents to then print on my old laptop with a parallel port. this process would suck if i used firefox, that computer lagged to a halt last time i tried, but chromium runs like butter, no hitches of any kind. your point is probably applicable to some people, but i feel like most people who could use a cheap $100 laptop, already has a cheap $100 laptop, most people with problems running firefox have those problems since they have to use older machines for various reasons. chromium is a great option for computers with below average hardware.

[@thecorruptedbit5585]

I've got a Panasonic CF-47 - very reminiscent of this one, but older (p2 era) and its specced as a Toughbook. The lack of information on machines like that on the internet is really surprising though, especially from a big manufacturer like Panasonic...

[@HaefentheZebra]

I'd so love to see one of these vids showing the best OS to run on an old 2007 MacBook. Picked a black one up for $10 from the pawnshop that incredibly still works and I'm just curious what the heck to do with it!

[@RichSzerman]

Nice demo. Why didn't you upgrade the memory at the same time as the hdrive?

[@ottolehikoinen6193]

I don't of this bios, but some older bioses can't handle much memory. And newer bioses might not fit in.

[@DrRChandra]

Some Pentium IV parts have EM64T. They're 64 bit processors, so they're compatible with even most modern Linuxes

[@Txm_Dxr_Bxss]

Yeah, but only LGA 775 desktop chips and a few very rare 478 Prescotts made for IBM.

[@FADNaR]

a pentium 4 user with a lot of experience, I can say that using 64 bits makes it slower, and limiting the addressing to 3 GB makes the venture pointless. 32 bits provides a more optimal use of resources .

[@DrRChandra]

@@FADNaR , while it may be true that a Pentium IV EM64T processor is slower using 64 bit (mode? not sure if there are modes to this thing other than real and protected), it's a support-ability issue. The number of Linux distros supporting 32 bit are getting few and far between, at least compared to total number of distros. If you use a system with a "normal," non-EM64T processor, you can be basically on your own trying to patch all your software (including kernel) and likely rebuilding it, versus someone doing all the building for you and you just doing dnf update, apt-get update/upgrade, etc. So it's the difference between finding a distro (like I believe Debian) willing to support 32 bit, versus choosing just about any distro you like, versus doing a LOT of work yourself (and having the IT chops to do that), versus contributing to e-waste because noone's supporting 32 bit anymore. And there are still plenty of applications which don't require the "OOMF" of modern-day, 64 bit processing...routers and data collection immediately spring to mind.

[@mistrotech8894]

I ended up using a Pentium M until 2020... Video calling on Zoom and Google Meet worked, but it just got too slow to do anything else simultaneously. KZbin worked in 480p pretty well and I didn't see a need to upgrade. 2GB RAM felt like plenty though.

[@FADNaR]

Hehe, bro! I also used my pentium m until 2020, until the laptop hinge broke, but the computer is quite working. I also did not deny myself the browser and the zoom for XP. The price of the issue is $3 per item, so I'm not writing it off.

[@Pasi123]

My parents used a Celeron M 370 laptop up to 2014 or 2015. When it was bought in 2006 it was basically the family computer If it had been upgraded to a Pentium M 755 or 765 it probably could have been used for a year or two more

[@eDoc2020]

Same, I was using my Inspiron 8600 as a "too old to be worst stealing" laptop.

[@elyzsabethahne2116]

I always thought that Adelie Linux supported only the old pre-Intel Macs. Good to know! Has the RAM already been upgraded and maxed out?

[@GeoStreber]

Just use AntiX linux. Runs fine on my Pentium III Dell Latitude with 384 MB of RAM and a 32GB SSD.

[@hydroponicgard]

Gonna be "that guy", apologies in forward. AntiX doesn't use SystemD, it has runit and another option for it, which is not the most used sysinit... Might be why ARetro went with it. Just my 2 cents. ^^;

[@thesidneychan]

@@hydroponicgard What makes SystemD the better option for this old computer? I ran Antix and Q4os (which has systemD) on my old netbook - and felt Antix performed faster. I'd think that the desktop interface might be a bigger factor. Both run Debian 32bit, Antix uses fluxbox and Q4os uses the trinity destkop environment.

[@forbiddentictactoe1734]

@@hydroponicgard >"AntiX doesn't use systemD" That's the whole point

[@netkv]

nahh gentoo

[@matthewwilson3924]

I found AntiX a little lackluster. Plain Debian or Q4OS FTW

[@liviurosca]

My first and last traditional PC was a Celeron D Prescott on 478 socket. A single core 2.4 ghz if i’m remember right. What a time to be alive, 512 MB of RAM, AGP ATI video card and trusty 80 GB Maxtor HDD. That CPU get overclocked to 3.2 ghz with stock cooler and i was trying all linux distros that can run on that. It might still working, last time i was trying in 2017, get a grub error and turned off.

[@lucasrem]

why you post that here ????

[@gordonofgecko]

13:37 I wonder how well it could play youtube if you used yt-dlp and mpv/vlc. Surely 360p would work?

[@TheDigitalOne]

Cool shirt. The Adelie Linux OS, might have to test it out, sometime. Thanks. Cool Laptop Linux OS Tune Up! 😺💻🥰💎

[@kienanvella]

Alpine (which Adelie is based on) is pretty great, but the musl C library makes it a bit of a pain compatibility wise. Seamonkey used to be the browser of choice on old systems - for a long time it was the default on puppylinux, not sure if that's changed, or if it was available in Adelie. You might have a better experience with using Dillo-plus.

[@VSteam81]

alpine is very light. ive been using another distro called postmarketos which is based off of alpine. like you said, the musl C library makes it quite a bit of a pain for certain things, but it can work

[@DanijelTurina973]

For perspective, such computers ran Windows 98 and XP quite smoothly, so I don't know why it's such a surprise that they run a thin linux distro.

[@GeminoSmothers]

It isn't. People are just stupid.

[@SantiagoSalse]

@@GeminoSmothers Yep. Specially since we all watched 360p KZbin on XP on Pentiums

[@MJ-uk6lu]

@@SantiagoSalse KZbin used to be way lighter and didn't use AV1 or VP9. My own Athlon 64 3400+ could run 360p video tops and in video Pentium is much weaker.

[@fhunter1test]

Main problem here is ati mobility video card. same as on thinkpad t41 - it does not support modern opengl (ever since switch to kms), and as it is an old card - the r100 revision was basically abandoned. if laptop would have had intel integrated card - things would have been much faster with the browser

[@iwatchforknowledge2766]

Wow. OK. I bought the same laptop about a month ago from a local thrift store. I have been wondering what OS to run. This is a timely video.

[@LellePrinter82]

Never heard of Adelie Linux before, looks similar to Xubuntu that I use on my Fujitsu Celsius H700 laptop. Nice that Adelie supports other architectures aswell, I'll maybe try it on my HP ZD8000 laptop, aswell as a dual PIII 1.4ghz 2gb ram system that I have. Also have a G3, G4 and a G5. Thanks so much for showing us this, it brings new life to older pc's and macs.

[@crgintx]

Tiny Core Linux or Puppu Linux is what you meed tor that. JWM should be uses much less RAM thna XFCE.

[@crgintx]

Use the KZbin downloader app under puppy for smooth viewing.

[@dantecabr1532]

You should try to run Scrcpy to use it as a monitor for a phone. I ran Scrcpy( on q4os) on a laptop with an atom n570 and 2 GB ram. I could mirror my phone screen at 480p perfectly fine, which is amazing considering how the laptop struggles to run KZbin at the same resolution

[@classicpcgaming4194]

Maybe someone has already suggested you need to monitor with something a lot more flat, but FYI it's 'booming' a heck of a lot: somewhere in the upper-lows to low-mids. I'm listening on TRUTH B2023A reference monitors, everything else across all types of content sounds very flat.

[@minty_Joe]

Love the shirt there, Sean. In the words of Admiral Akbar, "It's an unimplemented trap!" 😂

[@granitepenguin]

I still have gentoo on a Dell of the same vintage with the same P4m in it (got it in 2001). That system has played many hours of Unreal Tournament. The main difference is it has a dedicated Nvidia Geforce2 go GPU so I don't have software rendering for everything. It's in the "desktop replacement" category of laptops of the day, and did a reasonable job of living up to the claim. :-)

[@notNajimi]

This is very cool! I’d be curious to see FreeBSD or NetBSD on this machine too, since they’re also modern OSes with i386 support. Probably not as zippy out of the box as adelie though

[@Genecaster]

My first CPU was a laptop Pentium 4, not out of choice, but because it's what I got secondhand. Believe it or not I was playing Spore on that machine with only 512MB of RAM.

[@geoffk777]

The P4 is surprisingly usable--as a space heater. I remember leaving a peice of chocolate too close to he fan outlet on a P4 laptop and seeing it melted to a puddle. On any P4, the fas will be running constantly like incoming jet planes. I used my P4 systems until they broke, and when I replced them with Core2Duos, I was amazed by how much quietr and cooler they ran (and faster too). The P4 was a real dead-end for Intel, and I'm very glad to say goodbye to them for good.

[@SchioAlves]

You now made me want to take my HP Astra Pentium III out of the closet and try it out… I was using it in the late 2010s including for KZbin Tip valid for every PC that is not from 2015 onwards: install h264ify or disable VP8/9 on about:config

[@KomradeMikhail]

You might want to try AntiX linux. It's a lightweight Debian, with a full APT package manager. And also DSL (Damn Small Linux) has made a recent comeback after like 12 years hiatus... DSL is now basically an even more lightweight AntiX, and will run on a potatoe.

[@AvWijk85]

Too bad AntiX had to involve woke and (anti)facist ideology on their website. Just leave politics out of it. Linux is for everbody.

[@LoneWolf-wp9dn]

single core is cruel and unusual punishment at this point

[@jeffyp2483]

would you add Urban Terror to your suite of 'games to try'? its a stand alone game based on quake 3

[@bendibell]

@ActionRetro I doubt Adelie is doing much different. I suspect much of the difference will be fewer running services and a lighter init system (OpenRC). A lot of packages, like Xfce, also have a lot of often invisible optional features that can be turned off at compile time, features that add weight. I've built several Linux systems from tarballs back in the day, you'll be surprised how small you can get a full-blown desktop system if you don't turn on all the less-useful features, including with Xfce.

[@ipponyc]

Hmm LXQT is lighter than XFCE. KZbin may have ran a little smoother on that version. No guarantees though on a 20 year old laptop. I'm surprised it even ran. Nice work !

[@metalwolf112002]

I have a couple of P4 computers i use. They all run debian linux on them. Some of them have been dedicated to server status (they only boot up when needed. my power bill can handle the 100W for a few hours every month) and a few of them are basically thin clients. I install remmina and use that to rdp into my "general purpose" VM that has plenty of resources. One of my P4 computers i use as a thin client is a panasonic CF-U1. I have debian boot off a SD card. I have been throwing around the idea of putting a raspberry pi CM4 or something like that in the SSD bay and seeing if i can get that to be usable for modern software.

[@bobsurface908]

Not really surprising to me. I used to DYNE:Bolic live studio recording distro off a RW/DVD with a gig of memory...and do proper multitrack recording using Ardor and Hydrogen. In fact, I still do on a modern PC, but with TB of storage.

[@hebgamingtime9505]

I believe you may have given me hope yet for my 2003 compaq to dual xp and adelie as every "lightweight" distro ive tried crawls and just pins the cpu and ssd doing swap

[@RichSzerman]

What is your plan for it's use if youtube doesn't work? Maybe a micro computer emulator for a Zx Spectrum?

[@Mineman268]

I was really impressed with my 2GHz Pentium 4 laptop when I got it to play 240p KZbin at around 20fps recently. I was using the K-Meleon browser under windows xp.

[@jondorthebrinkinator]

Man, in 2000 I got my first PC to go off to college with and it was a Celeron. Later on I got a Slot A Athlon. The Pentium 4 coming out at the same time just seems insane to me now. But budgets will budget.