how to rescue recycle old computer from the dumpster and install Debian 8 32Bit aka ideal linux on (partly VERY) old hardware – for music and basic browsing

20.Jul.2020

alternatives, Debian, GNU-Linux, Hardware / Reviews

today installed (1:1 copy with USB2IDE Adapter) Debian 8 32Bit aka ideal linux on Compaq “Evo D500”

and: IT JUST WORKS 🙂

works slow but it works (it is a Single Core Celeron, what do users expect?) X-D

512 MB RAM is not the problem also harddisk speed is okay, the CPU/maybe Chipset is the slow buddy on the team

======== DATE 2020-07-20
======== lscpu
Architecture:          i686
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                1
On-line CPU(s) list:   0
Thread(s) per core:    1
Core(s) per socket:    1
Socket(s):             1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 11
Model name:            Intel(R) Celeron(TM) CPU                1300MHz
Stepping:              1
CPU MHz:               1296.102
BogoMIPS:              2592.20

full hardware specs Compaq Evo D500.txt generated by /scripts/hardware_detection.sh script

does it browse?

Firefox refuses to start because CPU has no SSE2 instruction set, but QupZilla browser works (Youtube ain’t working the CPU is too slow X-D)

“Falkon (formerly QupZilla^[4]) is a free and open-source web browser. It is built on the Qt WebEngine^[5]^[6] which is a wrapper for the Chromium browser core.^[7]

As of July 2019, openMandriva uses Falkon as the default browser instead of Firefox.^[3]”

src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkon#History

QupZilla is actually a pretty nice and resource efficient browser, that does some basic JavaScript 🙂

does it music?

yes! audio and VLC player work out of the box and the sound is decent 🙂

downloads:

users can download it here:

https://dwaves.de/downloads/ideal-linux-usbstick_32GByte_2019-06-16.img.gz

https://dwaves.de/downloads/ideal-linux-usbstick_32GByte_2019-06-16.img.gz.sha512sum.txt

download
unpack it
then 1:1 copying image.img to harddisk or bootable usb stick
run fsck on it: fsck -y -v -f /dev/sdaX
then putting that harddisk into a computer should work too (make sure bios is set correctly to boot from it))

what user will need: an adapter IDE2USB to attach the (IDE in this case) harddisk directly to an already working GNU Linux PC:

# tested on
hostnamectl 
   Static hostname: giada
         Icon name: computer-desktop
           Chassis: desktop
  Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
            Kernel: Linux 4.19.0-8-amd64
      Architecture: x86-64

# install pv (monitor progress)
# and pigz (multi core gzip decompression)
apt update;
apt install pv pigz;

# UNPLUG THE ADAPTER
# analyse what harddisk are there
lsblk -o 'NAME,MAJ:MIN,RM,SIZE,RO,FSTYPE,MOUNTPOINT,UUID'
# PLUG IN THE ADAPTER
# what harddisk was added? (that is most likely the target harddisk)
lsblk -o 'NAME,MAJ:MIN,RM,SIZE,RO,FSTYPE,MOUNTPOINT,UUID'

# write image to the usb attached harddisk
pigz -dc /path/to/the/image/file/ideal-linux-usbstick_32GByte_2019-06-16.img.gz | pv | dd bs=1M of=/dev/sdX;
# script it if one wants
vim /scripts/make_linux_ideal_stick.sh

#!/bin/bash
if [ -z "$1" ]
  then
    echo "please pass device like this: /dev/sdb
          TARGET THE WHOLE DEVICE (sdb)
          NOT A PARTITION! (sdb1)"
  else
    echo "========== creating stick with device "$1
    umount $1*;
    pigz -dc /path/to/the/image/file/ideal-linux-usbstick_32GByte_2019-06-16.img.gz | pv | dd bs=1M of=$1; # write image to usb stick
    # gunzip -c /path/to/the/image/file/ideal-linux-usbstick_32GByte_2019-06-16.img.gz | pv | dd of=$1; # write image to usb stick
    sync;
fi

NICE WORK! ALL INVOLVED 🙂

a nice example, that even very old hardware is still useful, resources and the planet saved a bit more!

what could be improved?

yes more more lightweight desktops such as LXDE would have used less resources than MATE Gnome2,

but MATE Gnome2 is actually not that resource hungry either

it is really the CPU that is causing the holdup X-D

and the BIOS that counts every bit of RAM during startup X-D (takes ages X-D)