Would Linux Work on a Couple Year Old Compaq?

Your right

 

Actually it's running Vista. It has 3GB of RAM I think and a dual-core AMD processor. It's not resources that are a problem, it's just Vista is buggy and annoying.

 

You could try Vista SP2 if you haven't installed that; I've heard it fixes a lot of the bugs. OTOH, it can also cause Vista to suddenly think it's an illegal copy, so

As for Linux. One thing you should not expect with Linux is a bug-free OS. Linux has a lot of bugs. Generally they're annoying little GUI problems; the worst one generally encounters is a kernel bug that prevents some piece of hardware from working. Gruesome security holes are pretty rare, but GNU/Linux has as at least as many bugs as Windows; they're just more evenly distributed, IMHO.

Also, there's a lot of features lacking - not a horrible feature vacuum, but lots of minor stuff that Microsoft doesn't miss but Linux developers can't really focus on.

Finally the learning curve is kind of steep. A lot of CLI functionality has no GUI equivalent. Linux can be suitable for end users, but under the hood it's much less friendly to novices.

Edit: I would also warn you that, because of the steep learning curve, Linux can be hugely time-consuming. My discovering Linux when I was in high school basically ended up defining my entire career path.

 

Yep yep, UNIX Linux are all bug heaven, stay away from them if you value your life, let us Linux geeks rot in that bug infested cesspool.

 

Really? I thought Linux was the Micro$oft destroyer? So stable and bug free, you don't know why everyone doesn't use it?

 

Nope, that title aptly belongs to the BSOD king aka M$ People like the blue sky, it has a calming effect on the nerves.

 

Hmm do I detect sarcasm?

Seriously - I don't think Linux is any buggier than Windows. However, all OSes are buggy, and I think many of the bugs on Linux are more obvious since they're typically in stuff like GUIs.

Oh BTW, that "BSOD King" comment was dumb. I've seen a lot more unrecoverable X crashes on Linux due to poor hardware support than BSODs on Win2k and XP. And on Vista and 7 the graphical server can crash and be restarted without losing any running applications - X11 simply cannot do that. The Linux kernel is as stable as a rock. The Linux desktop is no more stable than any other desktop, and on poorly supported hardware can be a good deal less stable.

Don't take this as me trashing Linux FWIW; I use Linux wherever I can, and I like it a lot more than Windows. (Especially when I have to compile stuff.) But in my own experience it definitely has its share of bugs.

 

We humans are buggy and we create bugs, once thats accepted, things go back to normal.

I use Linux not to compile but to empower.

 

Perhaps another topic could be started on just how buggy operating systems are?

This one is a pretty standard one about whether a specific computer will run "Linux".

 

If BSOD king is a dumb comment, dumber is ~ Snipped as per TOS ~ making a generalized statement like LINUX is buggy. Thats downright silly in every sense. The beauty is that in Linux, all community work together to take the bugs out, in Windows, you pay to get a bug ridden system and then pay more to fix it. If hardware drivers are properly installed, a ctrl+alt+backspace is all you need to restart the x server, don't be goin spreadin anti Linux FUD here.

 

no OS is bug free not even linux mac windows or BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution)


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As I said, we humans have bugs so we create bugs, except in one case, it easy to fumigate while in the others heavy expense has to be paid to do so and even then some remain no matter what.

 

Umm. Using ctrl-alt-backspace to restart the X server will kill all open programs, which is why most distros disable it by default. "Let's lose our unsaved data" is not an acceptable out for whenever something hangs the graphical server.

(In the case of X, the acceptable out is to not hang, ever. Which generally works - until you find yourself with a piece of badly supported hardware.)

BTW... Last night I discovered that after changing the desktop fonts on a Windows XP install and logging out, I could not log back in, and had to restart the computer. This is the second annoying desktop bug I've found in XP... ever. Doesn't change that XP does some horribly stupid things from a security standpoint (e.g. ownership of a file overriding lack of admin credentials, wowza!) but there you are.

Meanwhile, some of the more annoying Linux bugs I've seen...

- Consolekit breakage, where Consolekit fails to grant credentials, and as a result the user is unable to mount USB sticks or use power management. This is more annoying for the "power users" who start X from the command line, but it's there and it's been a problem in some distros.

- Failure of laptop backlights to turn on after suspend. That's pretty common, and can usually be fixed with one of the ACPI related kernel parameters - but novices don't know stuff like that.

- Kernel panic on startup due to a regression in support for some hardware or other. Again, solvable, and quite excusable on a free volunteer-developed OS, but still a bug.

- HAL crashing when you partition an unmounted USB stick. This is a regression from older versions, which did not crash.

- Xorg Intel drivers segfaulting when started with the "Shadow" option. "Shadow" is an option that turns off 2D acceleration as a stability measure, and really should not crash Xorg.

- Xorg lockups when plugging in an external monitor, again with Intel drivers. This was due to the kernel modesetting feature, which was new and unstable at the time, but had been shoved into an Ubuntu release anyway.

... And the list goes on. I still consider Linux a far better bargain than Windows in terms of functionality/price, but IMHO right now it is not an OS for those without some level of software troubleshooting skills!

 

Hey, GJ!

Why don't you just start a new thread?

Do you have a problem starting a new thread?

 

The post is about whether or not linux is viable on old laptop, not about a third rate rip off OS being better than Linux, if you wish to worship Windows, this isnt the thread for it.
And since we are talking about Windows, how about the definition of the word SLOW, thats how it runs on hardware challenged machines and of course, since you like to highlight Linux bugs here are some Win7 ones for you.

1) When the USB bus gets tied up it crashes windows into a reboot, not blue
screen of death, this can occur when rebooting the system after a prolonged
shutdown period, and also if I unplug and replug my USB Alcatel modem (USB
1.1 i/f) into a USB port whilst Windows 7 is running.

2) Explorer stops responding. I have read many other people have this
problem too, I checked my addons in IE and cannot see any rogue addons to
cause this problem; and its so random when it chooses to lockup, typically
just trying to open explorer or right clicking on the taskbar will do it.
Although Win7 recovers from it by restarting explorer, this has the very
annoying habit of losing the active icons in the tray on the taskabar, which
cannot be recovered.

I could go on but that would deviate this thread.

 

Err, my bad. Got a little annoyed.

Back to the OP: yes, chances are Linux will run on the laptop, especially if it has an Intel or nVidia graphics chipset. Just realize that you may have to work around some... quirks in order to get it running properly, and may end up putting more time than you expect into making it work. OTOH, if Vista's issues are a timewaster in their own right, it might well be worth it to try Linux.

 

About Bodhi Linux, i tried it a couple of weeks ago and i know they recently released a upgrade. Being a total novice, my impressions where:
- a smooth install, with the option to choose the desktop that best fit with your kind of machine.
- very fast boot
- very responsive system
- a very beautiful desktop, what is surprising considering the low system requirements
- i was able to connect trough wireless and mobile broadband without problems
- almost any program pre-installed
- very easy to install new programs directly through the browser, in their website (using midori or firefox)
- my only drawback was that you can't place shortcuts or files in the desktop, and it that it was not too easy to me to manage files, folders, desktop configurations, etc. but i'm no expert and i certainly didn't took the enough time to learn.

 

Linux will now run fine with ATI as well, you can even get video hardware acceleration and I have posted the method in this forum to enable video acceleration via VAAPI.

 

No mention of WineHQ? I believe that runs a lot of Windows software more efficiently than virtual machines.

 

Rather than deal with the slowness of using a Live CD, and not being able to customize it, I just reinstalled VirtualBox. I created an openSUSE machine and am impressed. It looks sleek with the KDE Plasma interface, and supported my 2048x1152 resolution without any configuration! Everything seems to be easy to get to, and it's only using half a gig of RAM. I think I'll consider this for my Mom as well. I'm basically trying a bunch of the higher distros on distrowatch.com.

I do have a question though; does the menu and taskbar setup depend on the distribution, or the desktop environment? I ask because the menu setup is the same in PCLinuxOS and openSUSE, even though they are not based on the same distribution, but they are both KDE. Sorry if my question is worded poorly.

Also, I'd like to try PCLinuxOS because of the hardware support and interface, and Bodhi because it uses Enlightenment, but there's no 64-bit versions. I know I can run the 32-bit versions on my VM but it's not the same. Lastly, I also wanted to try freeBSD, but my download hangs then fails at 342MB, even on different computers and different mirrors. Anyone know why?

One more thing. Which network setting would I use to test if the Linux distro can get the correct wireless driver? NAT, bridged adapter, internal network, host-only, generic driver, or don't enable the adapter at all?

 

You're not using virtual machines on the years old Compaq right?

I'd choose NAT, the distro should get Virtual Box's driver.

 

Lol, no. Virtualbox is on my PC. And you say NAT would give it Virtualbox's driver, but would that test if openSUSE has a driver for my network adapter, or is it just borrowing my physical machine's connection?

 

It's borrowing.

 

I guess it doesn't matter too much since my wireless adapter came with a Linux driver.

 

FWIW, if you want to test OpenSuSE at near hard drive speed using a live medium, you can put it on a blank USB stick using UNetbootin. Just be warned that this will erase everything on the USB stick.