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Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC?

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  Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) - 2021-08-30 18:21 -0500
    Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> - 2021-08-30 16:35 -0700
      Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> - 2021-09-01 15:09 -0700
        Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) - 2021-09-01 18:37 -0500
        OT Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? jrg <jeff.g.group@att.net> - 2021-09-02 10:11 -0700
        Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> - 2021-09-02 10:50 -0700
          Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> - 2021-09-02 11:48 -0700
          Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> - 2021-09-02 12:04 -0700
          Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> - 2021-09-02 18:10 -0700
    Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> - 2021-08-30 20:45 -0700
      Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> - 2021-09-01 09:18 -0700
    Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? "J.O. Aho" <user@example.net> - 2021-08-31 07:59 +0200
      Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? Soviet_Mario <SovietMario@CCCP.MIR> - 2021-09-01 11:23 +0200
        Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? "J.O. Aho" <user@example.net> - 2021-09-01 14:08 +0200
    Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2021-08-31 06:02 -0400
      Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? jrg <jeff.g.group@att.net> - 2021-08-31 09:44 -0700
        Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2021-08-31 19:14 -0400
    Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> - 2021-09-03 03:03 -0700
      Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> - 2021-09-03 12:09 -0700
        Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> - 2021-09-03 12:19 -0700
          Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? Aragorn <thorongil@telenet.be> - 2021-09-03 22:27 +0200
            Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> - 2021-09-03 14:31 -0700
        Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC? Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> - 2021-09-05 11:12 -0700

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#3 — Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC?

I'll be mainly doing basic stuff like web browsing, e-mails, newsgroups, 
downloads, listening to audio, watching videos, simple SSH2 server, etc. 
I currently run updated Debian Jessie v8's KDE which is fine but it 
doesn't get updates for years so it's time to move on for a clean/new 
Linux installation. Will getting Bullseye v11 be OK?

Setup details:

Intel Core 2 Q8200 (quad-core; default clock speeds; Socket 775 LGA; 
Yorkfield) with a Scythe Andy Master 120mm CPU cooler (SCASM-1000), 
Antec Sonata Proto mid tower ATX case, MSI P43 NEO3-F (MSI-7514) 
motherboard (latest BIOS), two 1 GB of Crucial RAM (Samsung DDR2 800 
(PC2-6400; 400 MHz), EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT PCIE video card (512 MB 
of VRAM), onboard RealTek RTL8168C(P)/8111C(P) PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet 
and Intel High Digital Audio (HDA), 600 watts Sea Sonic S12 PSU, ASUS TV 
Tuner Card 880 NTSC (cx23880), Pioneer CD/DVD Burner Black SATA Model 
DVR-218LBK LabelFlash Support, 3.5" floppy disk drive, Corsair Force 
Series F115 Solid-State Disk (SSD) (115 GB; CSSD-F115GB2-BRKT-A), two 
internal 3.5" SATA hard disk drives (HDDs) [Seagate ST3320620AS 320 GB 
and Western Digital Purple Surveillance 2 TB (6 Gbs; 50 MB cache; WDC 
WD20PURX-64P6ZY0)], Sabrent USB2+memory card reader front panel, and an 
Intel InBusiness 10/100 (82559) NIC (not connected). Running 64-bit 
Debian (Linux; oldoldstable v8/Jessie; kernel v3.16... x86_64) and 
updated 64-bit Windows 7 HPE SP1 (installed on 10/22/2016).

Connected to an old (Y2K) Belkin Omni Cube (2-port; PS/2 and VGA) KVM to 
share a 23.6" 16:9 1920x1080 pixels ASUS VS247H-P monitor (LED; 2 ms, 
9/2014, etc.), a Dell 104-key PS/2 keyboard, and a three-buttons PS/2 
optical Logitech mouse.

Thank you for reading and hopefully answering soon. :)
-- 
Too many issues, allergies, videos, and free huge sized game trials!
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
  /\___/\   Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org.
 / /\ /\ \                      Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
| |o   o| |
   \ _ /
    ( )

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#4

Ant wrote:
> Will getting Bullseye v11 be OK?
> 
> Setup details:

The way I would investigate the hardware situation would be to dl a Deb 
live and boot it up and investigate all of the hardware relationships w/ 
the live.

Personally I would dl the torrent for the KDE live 
debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-kde.iso.torrent and then 
debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-kde.iso and check its hash & auth w/ 
SHA256SUMS.sign & SHA256SUMS and then write it to USB w/ whatever 
utility you usually use for that.  The Deb instructions are command 
based; I generally do it graphically if Win or a text interface if I'm 
doing live w/ persistence w/ mkusb.

Then I boot the live from the USB and investigate any hardware qx.

https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/bt-hybrid/
from here https://www.debian.org/CD/live/

-- 
Mike Easter

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#13

Mike Easter wrote:
> Ant wrote:
>> Will getting Bullseye v11 be OK?
>>
>> Setup details:
> 
> The way I would investigate the hardware situation would be to dl a Deb 
> live and boot it up and investigate all of the hardware relationships w/ 
> the live.
> 
Any luck w/ booting the Deb live?

I've booted the nonfree KDE Deb 11 on 2 different hardwares, but both of 
them had 8G ram.  It is currently up on a desktop w/ AMD cpu, radeon gfx 
& broadcom nic.

I was able to workaround the old 2G machine's balky optical tray, but 
for some reason the Plop manager to boot from USB is failing for that. 
It is possible that the old CD is beaten up from abuse I've accidentally 
given it wrestling w/ the tray misbehavior.  I'm going to write a new CD 
(instead of what I should do about putting plop on the hdd) and see if 
that works better.

Here's the problem w/ the optical tray:  apparently opticals employ a 
magnet to hold things in place during operation of spinning the disk. 
If the magnet is functioning too strongly, it doesn't/ can't 'let go' so 
that the tray can open.  I read an article about how to fix that by 
spacing it further, but that is more trouble than replacing the optical 
and I don't feel like replacing the optical on a 15 y/o machine.  It 
wouldn't even be necessary if it would natively boot from usb, but it 
can't do that.  Catch 22.


-- 
Mike Easter

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#14

In alt.linux Mike Easter <MikeE@ster.invalid> wrote:
> Mike Easter wrote:
> > Ant wrote:
> >> Will getting Bullseye v11 be OK?
> >>
> >> Setup details:
> > 
> > The way I would investigate the hardware situation would be to dl a Deb 
> > live and boot it up and investigate all of the hardware relationships w/ 
> > the live.
> > 
> Any luck w/ booting the Deb live?

No, I haven't had time. My old PC just had a kernel panic this late 
morning too so I need to figure out what that was from. :(
-- 
Sept. already? 2 many illnesses, issues, videos, & free huge sized game trials (didn't hit 1 TB total 4 Aug.)!
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
  /\___/\   Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org.
 / /\ /\ \                      Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
| |o   o| |
   \ _ /
    ( )

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#15 — OT Re: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC?

On 9/1/21 3:09 PM, Mike Easter wrote:

> I read an article about how to fix that by spacing it further

Sounds like the clutch position sensor on my old Jeep - has a magnet 
that wears out and car stops - dead.  Replacement has thin paper on tip 
to keep it separate from flywheel surface to maintain distance of magnet 
w/o contact.

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#16

Mike Easter wrote:
> I was able to workaround the old 2G machine's balky optical tray, but 
> for some reason the Plop manager to boot from USB is failing for that. 

Bro-ther.  Working around the optical tray problem AND the plop boot 
manager crashing problem was a mess.  I resolved it by *removing* the 
USB to prevent the plop from crashing right after it said 'loading ehci 
drivers'.  W/ no usb stick, then plop came up w/ an error msg about no 
media try again.  Then I inserted the stick and got the plop boot screen 
to select the USB and then it succeeded.

I finally got the Deb 11 KDE non-free booted on the old low resource 
machine, which boot was very slow and actually used even more resources 
live to the desktop than on the boxen w/ 8G ram.

The Deb doesn't have a default nntp agent, nor inxi, so I installed inxi 
and I'll sneakernet the inxi hardware info into this msg.  That machine 
has resources similar to Ant's old cpu, low speed, low ram.  I would say 
that Deb KDE would be 'marginal' on Ant's hardware.  Notice how much of 
the ram is used doing nothing but running inxi.

If one were going to run live on an older slow machine w/ only 2G ram, 
you would surely need to give it some kind of swap on something.

If I wanted a modern Deb, I would choose a Sparky + a WM like OpenBox. 
The community Sparkies have a wide variety of WMs if you have a fave.

$ inxi -F
System:
  Host: debian Kernel: 5.10.0-8-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64
  Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.20.5 Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)
Machine:
  Type: Desktop System: Compaq Presario 061
  product: RK554AA-ABA SR2027X NA680 v: 0nx1411RE101NAOS 00
  serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: ASUSTek model: NAOS v: 1.05 serial: <superuser required>
  BIOS: Phoenix v: 3.00 date: 06/30/2006
CPU:
  Info: Single Core model: AMD Athlon 64 3500+ bits: 64 type: UP
  L2 cache: 512 KiB
  Speed: 2200 MHz min/max: 1000/2200 MHz Core speed (MHz): 1: 2200
Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA G84 [GeForce 8400 GS] driver: nouveau v: kernel
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: loaded: modesetting
  unloaded: fbdev,vesa resolution: 1366x768~60Hz
  OpenGL: renderer: NV84 v: 3.3 Mesa 20.3.5
Audio:
  Device-1: NVIDIA MCP51 High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.10.0-8-amd64
Network:
  Device-1: NVIDIA MCP51 Ethernet type: network bridge driver: forcedeth
  IF: enp0s20 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full
  mac: 00:18:f3:f1:b5:44
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 115.52 GiB used: 3.62 GiB (3.1%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST3120213AS size: 111.79 GiB
  ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB vendor: Lexar model: JD FireFly
  size: 3.73 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 990.9 MiB used: 398.7 MiB (40.2%) fs: overlay
  source: ERR-102
Swap:
  Alert: No Swap data was found.
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 40.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: nouveau temp: 98.0 C
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A gpu: nouveau fan: 0
Info:
  Processes: 166 Uptime: 20m Memory: 1.94 GiB used: 1.81 GiB (93.5%)
  Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.01



-- 
Mike Easter

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#17

Mike Easter wrote:
> If I wanted a modern Deb, I would choose a Sparky + a WM like OpenBox.

I dl/ed the Sparky minimal GUI which is OpenBox; it runs *MUCH* better 
on the old 2G hardware; free -m to the desktop is only 241 instead of 
the various high numbers seen w/ the KDE.  The Deb KDE is NOT lean like 
KDE Neon's is.

I believe you would have to tweak the system and graphics so that you 
minimize the load on the graphics and ram to be able to run a 'frisky' 
live on just 2G.  Sparky has an option in boot to run in ram which it 
can do even w/ just 2G ram, but somehow Deb KDE uses all that ram up 
doing 'something' w/ it.  I don't have experience w/ leaning down the 
running processes.  Theoretically one should be able to make a Debian 
KDE leaner than a Ubuntu KDE, but I don't know how to do that.

-- 
Mike Easter

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#18

Mike Easter wrote:
> That machine has resources similar to Ant's old cpu, low speed, low ram.

I found a benchmark site; Ant's cpu is significantly faster than my AMD; 
the single core is faster and then when you do more cores it is much 
faster.  But, the bottleneck is the 2G ram if you don't 'baby' that 
part.  You wouldn't want to use a 'fat' DE like Gnome or even Cinnamon. 
Personally I find some KDE is as lean as XFCE, but most are not as lean 
as Neon's, certainly not Deb's.  Even modern LXQt is not all that lean; 
if you want to go lean you need to drop down to a WM.  I like OB and 
some distro/s couple it w/ pieces from such as LXDE

-- 
Mike Easter

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#19

Mike Easter wrote:
> I finally got the Deb 11 KDE non-free booted on the old low resource 
> machine, which boot was very slow and actually used even more resources 
> live to the desktop than on the boxen w/ 8G ram.

Debian also has a LXDE (as well as LXQt) in its non-free v/s.   It suits 
the 2G much better than the KDE did.  It uses 280 meg live to the 
desktop and seems like a better fit for a low resource machine.  It has 
enough hundreds of megs free after the system and desktop to do something.

-- 
Mike Easter

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#5

Ant wrote:

> Will getting Bullseye v11 be OK?
> 
> Setup details:
> 
> Intel Core 2 Q8200 (quad-core; 

> two 1 GB of Crucial RAM (Samsung DDR2 800
> (PC2-6400; 400 MHz), EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT PCIE video card (512 MB
> of VRAM), onboard RealTek RTL8168C(P)/8111C(P) PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet

I dl/ed the Deb 11 KDE & wrote it to USB.  It failed to boot, seeming to 
me to choke on trying to load the ware for the ethernet.

So, then I dl/ed the Deb 11 KDE nonfree and wrote it.  It booted fine. 
It uses more ram to the live desktop than KDE Neon by about 50%, 675 vs 
450.  That system I booted had 8G ram; I also have a machine w/ lower 
resources like yours, 2G ram but a 15 y/o AMD instead of Intel.

I have some trouble booting it from USB because i have to use a Plop CD 
to do that and its optical tray is very balky.  I should put the plop on 
its hdd; right now I'm working on the optical tray problem.


-- 
Mike Easter

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#12

Mike Easter wrote:
> I dl/ed the Deb 11 KDE & wrote it to USB.  It failed to boot, seeming to 
> me to choke on trying to load the ware for the ethernet.
> 
> So, then I dl/ed the Deb 11 KDE nonfree and wrote it.  It booted fine. 
> It uses more ram to the live desktop than KDE Neon by about 50%, 675 vs 
> 450.

One of my favorite Debian distro/s is Sparky, because of the choices it 
offers me.

One branch is based on stable which comes in several DEs incl a minimal 
GUI, and the other is a semi-rolling based on testing also in several 
DEs.  There are also 32 bits.

Another is MX Linux, based on stable, which now comes in a KDE v. as 
well as XFCE and also has a 32 bit.

For some reason, whenever I go looking for the Debian non-free, I have 
trouble finding it at first.

-- 
Mike Easter

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#6

On 31/08/2021 01.21, Ant wrote:
> I'll be mainly doing basic stuff like web browsing, e-mails, newsgroups,
> downloads, listening to audio, watching videos, simple SSH2 server, etc.
> I currently run updated Debian Jessie v8's KDE which is fine but it
> doesn't get updates for years so it's time to move on for a clean/new
> Linux installation. Will getting Bullseye v11 be OK?

As a server (no gui), the machine should be ok, the only thing that 
could be an issue could be the tv-tuner card (last time I used one is 
quite many years ago and back then all Linux users went for a Hauppauge 
tuner as those were always supported).

If you want to use graphical interface, then go for something light like 
Enlightenment or IceWM, this leaves you with more free RAM and do not 
load your CPU as much.


-- 

  //Aho

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#10

Il 31/08/21 07:59, J.O. Aho ha scritto:
> On 31/08/2021 01.21, Ant wrote:
>> I'll be mainly doing basic stuff like web browsing, 
>> e-mails, newsgroups,
>> downloads, listening to audio, watching videos, simple 
>> SSH2 server, etc.
>> I currently run updated Debian Jessie v8's KDE which is 
>> fine but it
>> doesn't get updates for years so it's time to move on for 
>> a clean/new
>> Linux installation. Will getting Bullseye v11 be OK?
> 
> As a server (no gui), the machine should be ok, the only 
> thing that could be an issue could be the tv-tuner card 
> (last time I used one is quite many years ago and back then 
> all Linux users went for a Hauppauge tuner as those were 
> always supported).
> 
> If you want to use graphical interface, then go for 
> something light like Enlightenment 

but is the aforesaid a DM or a graphic login manager ?

> or IceWM,

I agree it is light.
In MX and Devuan (a debian buster with another init system) 
I also tried Fluxbox and LXQt (formerly LXDE). All af these 
are sensibly lighter and faster than the "medium" weight 
XFCE (that I regularly use).

The actual problem are other SW, like the web browser, grown 
crazily huge and heavy ...

> this leaves you 
> with more free RAM and do not load your CPU as much.
> 
> 


-- 
1) Resistere, resistere, resistere.
2) Se tutti pagano le tasse, le tasse le pagano tutti
Soviet_Mario - (aka Gatto_Vizzato)

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#11

On 01/09/2021 11.23, Soviet_Mario wrote:
> Il 31/08/21 07:59, J.O. Aho ha scritto:

>> If you want to use graphical interface, then go for something light 
>> like Enlightenment 
> 
> but is the aforesaid a DM or a graphic login manager ?

It's a DE, for DM just go with the default, they don't take too much CPU 
and memory.


>> or IceWM,
> 
> I agree it is light.
> In MX and Devuan (a debian buster with another init system) I also tried 
> Fluxbox and LXQt (formerly LXDE). All af these are sensibly lighter and 
> faster than the "medium" weight XFCE (that I regularly use).
> 
> The actual problem are other SW, like the web browser, grown crazily 
> huge and heavy ...

There are a good chunk of light weight browsers too, sure you will lack 
some features, but at least better than ms-win-xp with an long time 
outdated msie.

-- 

  //Aho

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#7

Ant wrote:
> I'll be mainly doing basic stuff like web browsing, e-mails, newsgroups, 
> downloads, listening to audio, watching videos, simple SSH2 server, etc. 
> I currently run updated Debian Jessie v8's KDE which is fine but it 
> doesn't get updates for years so it's time to move on for a clean/new 
> Linux installation. Will getting Bullseye v11 be OK?
> 
> Setup details:
> 
> Intel Core 2 Q8200 (quad-core; default clock speeds; Socket 775 LGA; 
> Yorkfield) with a Scythe Andy Master 120mm CPU cooler (SCASM-1000), 
> Antec Sonata Proto mid tower ATX case, MSI P43 NEO3-F (MSI-7514) 
> motherboard (latest BIOS), two 1 GB of Crucial RAM (Samsung DDR2 800 
> (PC2-6400; 400 MHz), EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT PCIE video card (512 MB 
> of VRAM), onboard RealTek RTL8168C(P)/8111C(P) PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet 
> and Intel High Digital Audio (HDA), 600 watts Sea Sonic S12 PSU, ASUS TV 
> Tuner Card 880 NTSC (cx23880), Pioneer CD/DVD Burner Black SATA Model 
> DVR-218LBK LabelFlash Support, 3.5" floppy disk drive, Corsair Force 
> Series F115 Solid-State Disk (SSD) (115 GB; CSSD-F115GB2-BRKT-A), two 
> internal 3.5" SATA hard disk drives (HDDs) [Seagate ST3320620AS 320 GB 
> and Western Digital Purple Surveillance 2 TB (6 Gbs; 50 MB cache; WDC 
> WD20PURX-64P6ZY0)], Sabrent USB2+memory card reader front panel, and an 
> Intel InBusiness 10/100 (82559) NIC (not connected). Running 64-bit 
> Debian (Linux; oldoldstable v8/Jessie; kernel v3.16... x86_64) and 
> updated 64-bit Windows 7 HPE SP1 (installed on 10/22/2016).
> 
> Connected to an old (Y2K) Belkin Omni Cube (2-port; PS/2 and VGA) KVM to 
> share a 23.6" 16:9 1920x1080 pixels ASUS VS247H-P monitor (LED; 2 ms, 
> 9/2014, etc.), a Dell 104-key PS/2 keyboard, and a three-buttons PS/2 
> optical Logitech mouse.
> 
> Thank you for reading and hopefully answering soon. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8_series#8800_GT

    "The 8800 GT, unlike other 8800 cards, is
     equipped with the PureVideo HD VP2 engine
     for GPU assisted decoding of the H.264 and VC-1 codecs."

https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/VideoAcceleration.html

           H.264
    VP2    Done *2,4,5

    (5)  G92 chips appear to hang when decoding H.264 videos.
         See this bug for more info.

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=82835

    "Andrew Randrianasulu 2017-11-25 12:24:46 UTC

     In kernel 4.14 workaround was added for disabling h264
     decoding until root cause of this bug will be uncovered
     and fixed (may be never):

     https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?h=v4.14&id=194d68dd051c2dd5ac2b522ae16100e774e8d869

     drm/nouveau/bsp/g92: disable by default
    "

Normally, you'd switch to the NVidia driver, but
the DKMS for those is defined for a kernel range,
and once the kernel number advances, you lose
a lot of support on the NVidia side.

It means your CPU is likely to be used during
movie playback.

The retail video card market is ruled by the same
considerations. You want a card which is "freshly
released", so that the DKMS kernel range stretches
further, and the acceleration features of the card
give you a return on money invested. You can get
GT1030 as a re-released card and GT710, but then you
need to research what NVidia drivers for older cards
would still work. The GT1030 is newer than the 710.
The GT1030 has NVENC and NVDEC removed. I guess we're
talking about VDPAU decoding, for things like movie
players or a pane in Firefox. The 1050 is the
lowest card in the 10-series with NVENC and NVDEC.

GT-710 for $50

https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-geforce-gt-710-gv-n710d3-2gl-1-0/p/N82E16814125844

GT1030 for $120 (and might need an adapter for VGA)

https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-geforce-gt-1030-gv-n1030d4-2gl/p/N82E16814932060


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_10_series

    GT1030   May 17, 2017  GP-108 Pascal   Purevideo VP8

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_700_series

    GT 710   Jan 29, 2016  GK-208 Kepler   Purevideo VP5

The year of introduction is intended to show the
potential for driver support.

You could install the OS in question, test video playback,
and if you didn't like it, pick up a video card.

The P43 chipset has something like 16GB of address space
to work with. You could fit 12GB of RAM and a 2GB video
card on P43 for example, assuming 4GB DDR2 modules worked
on a P43. I have an X48, same family, and it is sporting
4x2GB (I've never researched 4GB modules for it) and a
gutless video card.

I tried to install an 8GB 1080 in it for fun, and
it beeped and would not start. I was basically testing the
response to "the address space being full". I was hoping it
would just toss away some system RAM, and fit the 1080 into
the 16GB address space, but that did not happen. I would
probably not try installing more than 8GB total of
RAM in machines like this, plus your choice of
cheap video card. Some motherboards are designed
with only 2 DIMM slots, in which case the limitations
on RAM are pretty severe.

The $50 option, doesn't move your version of PureVideo
along all that much, but it might be sufficient to get
around the G92 not living up to its feature set (on
Nouveau).

NVidia is also not adverse to chiseling away at the
PCI Express lane count. You might think you're seeing
a x16 edge connector, but the worst of video cards now
wires only x4 of the lanes on that x16 connector.

I even saw a video card with an x1 lane interface
on it. And there hasn't been one of those for sale
for yonks. I suppose that would save on ceramic
caps or something (as a measure of cheapness).

Your 2GB of RAM is "too small for modern Firefox" :-)
Even a dual socket Epyc with 4TB of RAM is too small
for Firefox now.

*******

This is an example of a (relatively whizzy for year 2021)
DDR2 offering. F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK

Assuming you can adjust VDimm in the BIOS. My board
doesn't work exactly right when selecting certain
bus settings, and my first DIMMs were running 1066 with
no extra voltage at all :-) I suspect these chipsets (P43/X48)
might have a lower CAS limitation (CAS4 might be the
limit). These are CAS5 at 1066, and might afford lower
CAS numbers at lower speeds. I also have a VIA chipset
from this era, that accepts CAS3 at least (but at
such a low speed, there is nothing to celebrate).

https://www.newegg.ca/g-skill-4gb-240-pin-ddr2-sdram/p/N82E16820231166

A few years back, I was looking for DDR2, and all I could
find was DDR2-800 CAS6 (non-enthusiast). And I thought
DDR2 would be dead or disappear by now.

    Paul

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#8

On 8/31/21 3:02 AM, Paul wrote:
> Ant wrote:
>> I'll be mainly doing basic stuff like web browsing, e-mails, 

<snip boatload>

> A few years back, I was looking for DDR2, and all I could
> find was DDR2-800 CAS6 (non-enthusiast). And I thought
> DDR2 would be dead or disappear by now.
> 
>     Paul



that'll keep ant busy for an hour or so :)

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#9

jrg wrote:
> On 8/31/21 3:02 AM, Paul wrote:
>> Ant wrote:
>>> I'll be mainly doing basic stuff like web browsing, e-mails, 
> 
> <snip boatload>
> 
>> A few years back, I was looking for DDR2, and all I could
>> find was DDR2-800 CAS6 (non-enthusiast). And I thought
>> DDR2 would be dead or disappear by now.
>>
>>     Paul
> 
> 
> 
> that'll keep ant busy for an hour or so :)

Well, Ant could treat himself some day.
Once the prices fall back to Earth.

Even Skybuck could use a new PC.
The Dream PC must be getting close to
fifteen years old now.

There's only so much bandaiding you can
do to PCs, before the wheels fall off.

    Paul

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#20

> Subject: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC?

I don't think the Deb 11 KDE is a good fit for a low resource 2G machine 
unless you are more skilled than I am to reduce its resource usage.

If I were set on stable Debian 11 as the base, then I would choose some 
other DE/WM environment which uses less resources, either from Debian or 
Sparky or even MX Linux.

If I were in love w/ the KDE environment, I would choose a 'better' 
implementation of KDE which uses less resources than Debian's, 
particularly KDE Neon, based on Ubuntu LTS which is based on Debian testing.


-- 
Mike Easter

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#21

Mike Easter wrote:
>> Subject: Is Debian still good for GUI stuff in an over 12 yrs. old PC?
> 
> I don't think the Deb 11 KDE is a good fit for a low resource 2G machine 
> unless you are more skilled than I am to reduce its resource usage.
> 
> If I were set on stable Debian 11 as the base, then I would choose some 
> other DE/WM environment which uses less resources, either from Debian or 
> Sparky or even MX Linux.
> 
> If I were in love w/ the KDE environment, I would choose a 'better' 
> implementation of KDE which uses less resources than Debian's, 
> particularly KDE Neon, based on Ubuntu LTS which is based on Debian 
> testing.
> 
I booted the current Sep 2 KDE Neon on my low resource 2G desktop which 
could 'barely run' (as in quite sluggishly) the Debian 11 KDE nonfree. 
It took under 3 min to boot live to the desktop; free -m reports 382 
megs used.  The KDE Neon runs just fine.

That would be a satisfactory and VERY current KDE to use on a 15 y/o 2G 
machine.

The Neon KDE .iso does not come w/ a full complement of apps by default, 
so you would add those from the repo/s, which are of course Ub-based off 
Debian. The default package manager is Discover, but I prefer to add 
Synaptic.  The repo/s are the Ub Focal, main, universe, multiverse, and 
restricted as well as flathub and snap.

If I were going to use that KDE on that old hardware, I would do it w/ 
Neon's, not Debian, and use the package manager (synaptic for me, or 
apt) to add the necessary app/s for the activities you want to do w/ it. 
  You can add the mail and/or news agent of your choice; I see you use 
tin which is v. 1.2.4 in its universe repo/s.

One advantage of Ub over Deb in terms of packages is the availability of 
.ppa/s for the specific Ub Focal release.  Because Ub has a somewhat 
different release strategy than Deb, the balance of advantages and 
disadvantages to rolling vs point releases should be considered.

-- 
Mike Easter

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#22

Mike Easter wrote:
> One advantage of Ub over Deb in terms of packages is the availability of 
> .ppa/s for the specific Ub Focal release.

An example of this is the LibreOffice situation.

The Ub repo/s have LO as 6,.4.7 as conventional .deb, default repo/s, 
whereas LO dev is recently in the 7/s.  The Discover package manager 
shows the availability of 7.2 because it is available as a flatpak. 
Personally I would prefer to use conventional .deb packages which are 
available as a .ppa repo to Ubuntu.  I'm not sure exactly what .deb 
package is currently available for the stable Deb repo/s, but I'll bet 
that it isn't as new as those for Ub.

-- 
Mike Easter

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