Distro suggestion for P4 3.06/2GB

kirbyrj

kirbyrj

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Feb 1, 2005
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I'm resurrecting the first computer I ever built, and am going to attempt to actually use it (a little). Originally used WinXP which isn't really an option anymore.

So here are the specs:
Processor: Intel P4 3.06 w/HT (upgraded from my original 2.53 Northwood)
RAM: 2GB DDR 400 (I think I originally had 2x512mb)
Video: Radeon 9800 Pro (upgraded from my original Ti4200)
HDD: 120GB Seagate IDE

I don't really mess with Linux too much, but I've used Linux Mint a little bit. I downloaded Linux Mint 19.1 MATE 32-bit to play around with, but it's still pretty laggy.

Any other suggestions? Lubuntu? Mint with XFCE?
 
Pretty much any distro running XFCE should be fine. I wouldn't suggest anything heavier then that. Gnome and KDE would both eat half or close to half of your ram just running.

XFCE is a nice mix of still modern looking and not being heavy.

The main issue you will run into running Linux on an old P4 or Core based system will be the massive performance penalty from all the security on the new kernels to patch intels terrible hyper threading flaws.

The easy fix there is to turn them off in your kernel parameters.

When your up and running.... when you see the grub boot screen. push the "e" key to edit your boot options.

You will see a bunch of stuff here you likely won't recognise if your new to Linux the boot options for most major distros you'll see something like this;
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
What you want to do is basically turn off Specter and meltdown protections. (yes you won't be protected I assume you won't really be doing your banking or anything on a P4 :) )
To do that you need to add some extra parameters to your kernel boot....
pti=off spectre_v2=off l1tf=off nospec_store_bypass_disable no_stf_barrier
So scroll to the grub cmdlin call and add those....
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash pti=off spectre_v2=off l1tf=off nospec_store_bypass_disable no_stf_barrier"
Once you have added that you can boot (I think its F3 or F5 from that screen its been awhile but it should list your options on screen)

I would boot that way once and see if its still sluggish... if that does the trick to make it permanent you will have to add those parameters to your grub file at;
/etc/default/grub
Then rebuild your boot image... (that will vary by distro... you will have to look that up.) When ever you chanage kernels Linux builds a grub boot image that pulls all that config data in... so if you make changes to kernel boot options you have to rebuild that image.
 
I appreciate your input. I will give that a try later today. Thanks.
 
Upgrading to a cheap SATA SSD would be a big improvement. Another 2GB of RAM wouldn't hurt either.
 
acascianelli said:
Upgrading to a cheap SATA SSD would be a big improvement. Another 2GB of RAM wouldn't hurt either.
Click to expand...

Probably 3GB is as much as I can get as it is an old 845 chipset with only 3 RAM slots. My board does have a Highpoint 374 controller on it so I could run a SSD at SATA150 speed. I'll look into it.
 
I had a ton of that generation hardware up until 2ish years ago. I threw out anything that wasn't 64bit and dual core. That was my favorite era of PC hardware so far, I had a number of i865/i875 with heavily overclocked CPU's.

I had a Northwood Pentium 4 2.4C running at 3.4ghz, and a Prescott Celeron D 2.4ghz running at 4.0ghz. That 2.4C was the only CPU I ever killed by overclocked. It ran for years 100% stable at 3.4ghz, then over the coarse of a couple months it slowly started become more and more unstable at overclocked speeds until it was unstable at even stock speeds. That's when I switched to the Celeron D because it was the only extra CPU I had laying around at the time.

I had a lot of fun with 440BX and Coppermine/Tualatin Celerons too. I had a Celeron 600mhz running at 1ghz, and a Tualatin Celeron 1.3ghz running at 1.6ghz in a modified Slotket on a 440BX.
 
While no longer officially supported by Arch there is still a community keeping 32-bit arch alive.

https://archlinux32.org/

If I needed a 32 bit Linux system I'd probably use that as I could keep it streamlined and relatively fast.
 
Try puppy linux, runs entirely in ram and boots from usb
 
I'd also vote for XFCE. I have a P4 box at work with xubuntu on it. Comes in handy for those rare times someone manifests some 5 1/4 floppies or a zip disk that needs reading. Yet I don't have to worry about it exploding as soon as it gets on the internet.

edit: unless you go to youtube or something. Then it could work to explode in a cpu load sense. The web is a faaaaaaaaarrrr chunkier place than it used to be.
 
acascianelli said:
I had a ton of that generation hardware up until 2ish years ago. I threw out anything that wasn't 64bit and dual core. That was my favorite era of PC hardware so far, I had a number of i865/i875 with heavily overclocked CPU's.

I had a Northwood Pentium 4 2.4C running at 3.4ghz, and a Prescott Celeron D 2.4ghz running at 4.0ghz. That 2.4C was the only CPU I ever killed by overclocked. It ran for years 100% stable at 3.4ghz, then over the coarse of a couple months it slowly started become more and more unstable at overclocked speeds until it was unstable at even stock speeds. That's when I switched to the Celeron D because it was the only extra CPU I had laying around at the time.

I had a lot of fun with 440BX and Coppermine/Tualatin Celerons too. I had a Celeron 600mhz running at 1ghz, and a Tualatin Celeron 1.3ghz running at 1.6ghz in a modified Slotket on a 440BX.
Click to expand...

Ahh, how memories are stirred.
 
I have almost the exact same hardware that (was) running Debian 6 with XFCE flawlessly. I say was as it's currently in storage after the Indiana to Arizona move and we're still living in a room in my mother-in-law's house...
 
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