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| Tweet Topic Started: Feb 3 2010, 10:26 AM (163 Views) | |
| Phaedrus | Feb 3 2010, 10:26 AM Post #1 |
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I set up a new pc for a neighbour. He was going to throw his old one on the tip. I felt sorry for it and took it in Its a Celeron 2ghz with poor onboard graphics. It had XP on running like an absolute donkey.First thing I did was format the drive. I tried several flavours of linux: Mint - went on ok, but the max screen res is 700x something? No 3D drivers for the puny onboard graphics. UE 2.3 - went on ok, but similar resolution and no 3D driver. Open Suse - installed, but wouldn`t load the desktop past the wallpaper...I guess due to the lack of graphics ability? Puppy Linux. - I was surprised at this. As soon an my youngest saw the desktop he said WoW!! Can I have it !! Res is still only 800 x 600, but it looks ok with Puppy.. Kind of suits it. Looks like my youngest is having this one ![]() I`m posting this using Puppy via Seamonkey. I`m thinking of putting XP back on alongside Puppy. Maybe I could put a cheap graphics card in
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| Gina | Feb 3 2010, 03:22 PM Post #2 |
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Puppy Linux is about the smallest, least resource needing Linux available I gather. It is much better than Xubuntu for ultra low end PCs OTOH, XP though old itself, needs younger PCs to run on!
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| Phaedrus | Feb 4 2010, 10:06 AM Post #3 |
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Been trying to get a better resolution with this machine. In Mint and Ubuntu it seems to be 800 x 600 is maximum. Windows XP can`t seem to get the monitor to go past 640 x 480? I can change the setting to a higher res, but the desktop just gets bigger than the screen (if that makes sense?). Just to check the monitor I connected it to an old pc running Linux Mandrake 10. It booted the desktop to 1024 x 768. ![]() How odd that more recent versions of Linux and Windows XP cant get the same resolution as a 10 year old distro? |
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| Gina | Feb 4 2010, 10:21 AM Post #4 |
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Computers and software are MAGIC!! TBH I'm not impressed by recent versions of Ubuntu and it's derivatives. Though Lucid does seem to be addressing some of the long standing issues and works much better than Intrepid onwards! Well it does ATM on most of my boxes. Karmic is Kr*p!! IMO anyway! The web page designer/editor I use, Kompozer, keeps crashing and I'm having to resort to editing the source code manually - tedious!! The GUI just causes instant shutdown of the app when doing the most mundane things, yet others are OK! I must get round to posting about it on Ubuntu Forums! On a personal note - way off topic - I'm suffering from a cold and the depressing weather! I'm thinking of going back to bed!
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| Phaedrus | Feb 4 2010, 09:01 PM Post #5 |
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Ubuntu is I guess a very dynamic distro, and has definitely suffered the past few releases. Mint 8 is easily my favourite distro right now. Distros I have recently played with: Ubuntu Jaunty UE 2.3 and 2.4 Mint 8 Mint 5 Mandrake 10 Mandriva One (2010) Puppy Open SUSE. Back on the old machine, I have had all kinds of problems just trying to get a usable screen resolution! I spent the best part of the last two days trying to get XP on with the right drivers for the intel i845, before realizing didn`t even want XP in the first place. I tried all the above linux distros with varying degrees of failure. Finally I burned a Mint 5 Elyssa disc and installed that. I went into synaptic and installed some older intel xorg drivers and bingo! Resolution sorted! ![]() I`m posting from it now and even compiz is working ![]() Weather has been horrible eh? Hope the cold clears up quick Gina. |
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| Gina | Feb 4 2010, 10:25 PM Post #6 |
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Thanks Trev It was decidedly "not good" this morning and I went back to bed for a while. I was going out to a coffee morning with the WI but just didn't fancy it - or the weather! When I got up again I checked the post aand found my Python "tome" had arrived, plus the RJ11 coupler I'd ordered to extend my wind sensors cable. That cheered me up a bit and I've been reading quite a bit today ![]() The weather cleared up a bit this afternoon and I extended the wind sensors to tx/temp/humidity unit ready to extend the pole later - tomorrow if the forecast sunshine materialises. The let-up in the weather didn't last long and it's been raining since. ATM it's raining quite heavily and quite a strong wind at times. The Python book looks very good, being designed for beginners and more expert programmers alike. I need to brush up on my general programming principles so I'm starting from the beginning. The topics covered are amazing and it goes from simple programming to producing your own GUI front ends, bulletin board software, networking, CGI and other server-side software, chat apps, peer-to-peer apps, complete website using XML and games... and more It covers packaging your creations ready to install by others - on the various platforms. It's in an easy to read style, too It runs to some 650 odd pages.I gather most of Ubuntu is written in Python and it seems there is virtually nothing you can't do in it. The code is a lot more human readable than other languages. It is an interpreted language like BASIC but much more powerful and where speed is paramount you can include C or other compiled language code modules to alleviate bottle-necks. |
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Its a Celeron 2ghz with poor onboard graphics. It had XP on running like an absolute donkey.



I'm thinking of going back to bed!


12:20 AM Jul 11