Can Linux save this old laptop from obsolescence?
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- čas přidán 24. 08. 2023
- Today, I'll be attempting to revive this 16-year-old ThinkPad with Linux. In doing so, I'll try to answer the question: Have computers of this age entered a state of complete obsolescence, or can they still prove useful for everyday tasks when paired with the right operating system?
Thanks for watching!
Excellent Video by This Does Not Compute that discusses the ThinkPad X61 in-depth: • ThinkPad X61: The Subn...
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"Mining by Moonlight" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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"Sidewalk Shade" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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"George Street Shuffle" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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"Shades of Spring" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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creativecommons.org/licenses/b... - Věda a technologie
Replacing the HDD with an SSD would do far more for performance than the 4GB of ram. That's by far the most important upgrade you can make.
I know that most later model Core 2 CPUs had a 8 GB RAM limit, but 8GB and an SSD ( it's a SATA interface, right?) would make it seem modern with the right Linux install.
The problem is that if you want to go online there is so much bloatware on the web that basically everything eats RAM.
I have 32 GB of RAM and with 10-20 tabs open it goes to 90% and sometimes crashes the entire PC on all browsers I tried it's the same. CPU is usually up to around 50% sometimes even 10% while RAM I am afraid that it will fry one day ...
Ever since 2019 I kept updating my RAM but what I learned it's useless. There is so much garbage with lots of apps and websites running in background that all act like datamining viruses. Every time I start my PC I waste my time end-tasking bunch of s--t 1st before I can do anything ...
Before 2019 I could run everything on a potato PC with just 8GB RAM and SSD. Today it's like I don't have any of that.
Even now writing this message stutters like a mofo ... can't keep up with my fast typing at all text on screen lagging behind like crazy.
@@minmogrovingstrongandhealthy I have like 50 tabs open in Chrome on my 32GB Win10 PC and only 31% of the RAM is consumed - what kind of pages do you keep open to reach 90%?
So this. Basically I stopped watching the video at the point when he mentioned that he used a traditional HDD although an SSD would have been dirt cheap. Rule #1 with old laptops: get an SSD.
@@minmogrovingstrongandhealthy Dude, something is wrong on your end. Yeah, the web is bloated AF, but what you described is an order of magnitude worse than the norm. 32 GB of RAM is plenty enough for most people. I run multiple browsers at the same time (I'm a web developer), each with dozens of tabs, and still most of the time I'm at 34 GB out of my 64 GB. And I have other programs opened too. And I'm on Windows 10 too!
The keyboards on these were amazing. You could type forever on them and they just felt great. A hidden benefit from older, less powerful hardware is since it's slower, you are limited in your multitasking and are basically forced to focus on what you're doing.
I still use a Thinkpad T22 from around 2003 with a Pentium III CPU running at 700 MHz with 512 MB RAM and an IDE SSD on which Gentoo Linux is installed with an i3 desktop.
A couple of times a month, I SSH into my home server to write BASH or Python code with a couple of terminal sessions open, I have my email open in mutt on a second desktop and a console music player going on the third desktop - with overhead left to run a few other things too.
It has a great keyboard and it is just a very peaceful and distraction-free way to enjoy my computing occasionally.
i just never multitask myself
You can buy a desktop keyboard like the thinkpad, trackpoint and everything, lenovo sells them.
Best method is to just not install a graphical environment at all. I understand that's not always an option depending on what you're don't ng but if you can do it it's great for avoiding distractions. Second best option is xterm in full screen mode. Alt+Enter and it goes borderless full screen.
Lots of good lightweight choices out there - Alpine, TinyCore, Slax and many more. It's been fun to watch computing evolve. I started in 1974. Yeah, I'm that old.
Same here, in fact I still have a C64, 1040ST and a 2600 hooked up and use. Main rig is my RHEL/Fedora dual boot workstation. But those oldies are great. And another fella here that keeps hardware until the magic smoke angel takes it to hardware heaven. Linux and BSD make that possible while still staying current (SSL on ancient OSes is painful to make happen --- looking at you SunOS and Workbench).
Then I hope you still have an old terminal and some punch cards!
Exactly what I dream of when I get old, be a tech veteran without losing his touches.
Pong doesn't count.
You're only a bit older than me - I programmed my first computer back in 1983 on a college day release course with my first job in the telecoms industry. It was assembly language programming on a Z80 CPU.
But I did maintain a very creaky DEC PDP-11 running RSX-11 in a customer's call centre for a while!
I'm beyond thankful for lightweight linux distros because they saved my old 2012 laptop from becoming landfill. I had to move a few years back and I didn't want to rely on my phone all the time for media so I dug up my old inspiron from a decade ago and put in an old cheapo SSD I had lying around. Given that my financial situation collapsed in the 2010s I now can use that laptop as my TV, music player, and even a secondary PC when my friends need tech support. I legit can't imagine life without it and had it not been for enthusiasts' hard work I would've never been able to have the life I have now.
My daily driver is a 2012 T430 3rd gen i7 working perfectly at the same speed as my last company notebook with 8th gen i5 (both 4 cores / 8 Threads), the only benefit of the newer laptop was a better power efficiency. Even the 2nd gen i7 was equally fast, but has worse build in GPU. also the coreduo is working good with enough performance. The biggest problem you have with the old laptops is with the accu (no problem if used with the powerbrick anyway) and perhaps a weak bios battery. Push the RAM to the limit and if possible use a SSD and you will never understand why you needed a "modern" laptop. for 100 to 200$ (including all upgrades like RAM, SSD and 3rd party battery) you will have a powerful notebook with Win7, win 10, Linux or as a hackintosh.
Don't forget to update your thermal paste which will be dryed out for sure.
@purplegill10 hopefully your financial situation is better now!
It’s amazing what an ssd can do
My daily driver is a 2012 T430s 3rd Gen i5 running Windows 10. I also play some games on it too (3d AAA games up until early 2010s), I cap them at 30 fps because it only has integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics.
Back in two oh one two?
What made this video watchable to the end, for me, was the clear, slower talking, instead of the fast talking on most other channels. This is amazing for an older laptop to just use for linux, maybe an SSD would make it even more useful. Great video
I watched this video and expected to see 500k - 1mil subscribers. Very high quality video and editing. Great job!
Thnaks!
This year CZcams startet to recommend me small channels like these more often and I love it because there are a lot of gems
Everyone needs to start somewhere also there is the factor of luck too. Years ago I use to be a partner and while YT promised me promotions I got nothing, matter of fact my subs didn't even got notifications of my activities and sometime even crashed the page when they clicked on my video or channel. It's like I was shadow-banned.
Other friends reported the same things. To the point all smaller channels basically got erased out of existance. We use to actually make content and got nuked while some reaction bots and other nonsense people were spammed everywhere.
YT spammed those more so as bots spammed them too. Most of the channels today that have millions of subs are all thanks to bots and not real people. Usually 100k or even bellow are people the other numbers are bots and or dead accounts. The view counts are also fake.
I just bought the X220 for the price of $15. It's in the rough shape but it's still functional and just needed a keyboard replacement. I put whatever SSD and RAM I have at my disposal and with $30 I have a very functional laptop that I can use whenever I need a Windows/Linux machine (I use Mac as my daily driver). These old computers really don't deserve to be on the e-waste, they just need a better software to keep on chugging.
I just bought a t480 untested for $60. fingers crossed it works. even if it doesn't work it was still worth it, the ram and ssd alone are worth 60
The X220 is basically in a perfect spot. in 2011 it already had very modern hardware, supporting modern OSes, but is still a proper business machine that can be user serviced.
Void Linux is a solid choice. My T420 uses Void Linux and I've never had an issue with it. Ever. Once configured, it just works.
hows the battery life? im thinking about installing void on my x1 carbon
@@damientjeh Well, this t420 came with an old, original battery and it still holds nearly a 2 hour charge under basic use; watching YT videos and such.
@@adibemaxwell6111 thats great
I just put Linux on an old 3rd gen CORE Pentium laptop with 8GB. It is doing great at college for the web based stuff he has to do.
I have one of these I use fairly frequently, personally im running mint on an ssd. The 4:3 aspect ratio makes it ideal for torrenting old anime and cable shows. It also proved a novel way of experiencing the SM64 PC Port. As you mentioned they work quite well for schoolwork. Glad to see some appreciation for these old machines
I also have an oldass thinkpad for watching vintage anime
it's so cozy, I happened to give it an IPS screen and while my modern laptop's color destroys it, the thinkpad is still great even though it's ancient
I use rtorrent on one of my Thinkpads and basically use it as a seedbox in addition to just being a home server. I've never tried watching anything on it, because the display is quite bad, but is possible to upgrade. So, typically I just download stuff to it, seed for a while, and clone it to my main PC when I want to watch it. Do you have to worry about what torrents you download? I'm surprised that Thinkpad T-61 can handle the codec, will it work with h264 in standard def? What happens if you try to watch something like a 720p or a 1080p video in h264? I'm guessing h265 is likely out the window; although most of these old shows and DVD rips probably aren't in h265.
@@youreyesarebleeding1368 idk man mines a 220, plenty of power to render 1080p video
Thanks for doing this. It’s nice to see getting more use of older hardware and keeping it out of landfills.
I would also like to mention Puppy Linux. It is available as 64 and 32 Bit version and runs fine on almost any old hardware, e.g. on the small netbooks with Intel Atom CPU and 1 or 2 GB of RAM, which are otherwise almost useless today. Use it on my Lenovo Ideapad S10 with a 256GB SSD and it works perfect.
Agree, Puppy Linux runs on lots of older hardware
Tried Puppy on an old Asus EeePC, and while it worked from a USB, it didn't when I installed it for some reason. Had to find a lightweight homebrew XP for that one...
I installed Linux Mint 21 (2022 version) on a laptop made in 2006. Fortunately, the laptop had 4Gb Ram, SATA, and Gigabit LAN. The only upgrade required was a SSD. Linux Mint installed and updated like a dream. Job done 10/2022.
There is something so satisfying about these very simple and casual videos that is just so bingeable!
Thanks! First time seeing your videos and has a short, precise, calm environment
Real life tests, real life use cases, not only based on using 100% of power all the time
Subscribed!
I wish that Lenovo (or anyone) would make new computers just like this.
It depends on what aspects about the computer you like, but Framework makes a good laptop. You can swap the ports out on the side, it's very easy to repair and all replacement parts are available, and they released full board schematics as well as 3D prints so you could give the laptop mobo new life as a SFF desktop. They're coming out (or perhaps already released, I'm not up to date) with a new model that has 6 expansion ports, plus an additional large one on the back that could be used to install a GPU, more Battery, more Storage, or anything. There is also a third-party scene around making expansion cards for the laptop.
They do. Business laptops (like this one used to be) are very upgradable and use modern hardware. They're really expensive though just like this would have been when it came out.
You really don't value a portable laptop being thin and light? Or the 16:9 aspect ratio?
@@youreyesarebleeding1368 only having 4 ports on the framework is very limiting, my old 12" ThinkPad has 3usb 3.0, Displayport, VGA (that can go), Ethernet (surprisingly useful when working with routers and old tech as I do occasionally) a card reader and charge port, plus another 3 usb ports thru an expresscard expansion module. If someone came up with a dual USB A or C expansion card I'd be a lot happier with the framework concept, but it seems they sized it just barely too small for that :(
@@MJ_M There are other things besides watching movies on it.
One things is very crucial to understand regarding hardware. You absolutely cannot compare computers from different era. For instance if you say 15 years old top of the line processor X is on par as model entry level model Y from like two years ago. They can be comparable when measuring some direct calculation based with some benchmark program etc. HOWEVER things can turn completely around if comparing for instance playing CZcams videos. Now that couple year old entry level model can do playback possibly with like 5% processor load on 4K 60hz where older X model could struggle to run even 1080p 30Hz video. This is where many processor features come in and if someone is wondering why that example I just mentioned is possible if processors are essentially same when comparing calculation vise. But this newer model can easily support hardware encoding. This is very critical to understand when wondering why some older hardware seems to struggle with seemingly trivial task. Like that Chromebook in video can easily playback pretty much every single media without issues, where the old X61 absolutely can't. Don't get me wrong, I use a lot of old and new hardware and in many cases old hardware can do all the necessary stuff. But you can easily run into seemingly odd performance issues.
They might have similar performance for some tests, but add tasks that make use of newer instructions and the things change quickly. Same with video decoding.
idk why but since 2023 youtube started recommend me small youtuber and im glad of that, there is lot of good little youtuber like you, also im watching you on a linux mint, 13years old laptop (originally 2gb ram upgraded to 4) with intel pentium t4500 x), well thanks for this quality video, i hope you get a lot of subscriber, you already get me with this video ;)
Great video man this quality is what id expect from a channel with 2 mil subs
I have a 15+ years old all-in-one pc with approximately the same specs. It uses manjaro kde with no problems. Plasma KDE uses up approx. 700 Mb. My mother used it for work and web browsing for more than 10 years. She even records audio with USB DaC and microphone. That's the magic of Linux.
But Linux is not only for old pc revivals. Try it on newer hardware and it becomes a blast.
How can you watch CZcams😅.
@@myfranci560 ??
@@rawmaterials3909 ur so is lighter than youtube lol
@@myfranci560 ... and?
My Desktop PC with a Ryzen 5800x, a Radeon 5700XT, 32gigs of RAM, and 14TB in assorted SSDs and HDDs has been running Garuda Linux for well over a year and I absolutely love it, haven't bothered to open Windows 10 on the small old SSD it's still installed to for more than a few minutes just to convert a few files and swap back.
Heck, I've enjoyed it so much I have Garuda XFCE running on my 2013 Laptop and even that old underpowered thing runs like a charm.
I've had a handful of issues over my time as a new Linux user but nothing that I couldn't overcome with a little searching and patience, and were mostly brought on by user error, having backups accessible from the Grub bootloader has helped massively for this too as I can be back up and running to the point right before my mistake in less than 5 minutes which saves mountains of frustration I would have needed to deal with on Windows including but not limited to a full re-install
Great video of a valuable project. Old Lenovo ThinkPad bricks just can't be beat!
I really like this form factor, I wish laptop manufacturers made more like it. The closest things I can find on the market today are 3:2 ultrabooks but these always lack ports and are not upgradeable.
Love the vid. Concise, straight to the point, and everything is clearly explained and elaborated upon. Love, from a 2012 Dell.
Thanks!
I upgraded a 16 or 17-year-old Dell. I replaced the hard drive with an SSD and upgraded the RAM to 4G. It's running the standard Linux Mint, and it runs quite well.
Thanks for the video.
Absolutely. If you can pick up and old Core 2 Duo machine from 2006-2007-ish with a 64-bit CPU with 4GB RAM and an SSD containing Linux, it can be a perfectly viable daily driver machine.
can you tell me how to upgrade my 2007 Dell Vostros 1500 with an SSD?
@@lauriroberts322 you take out the old drive and put in the new one. Obviously assuming it uses SATA, which is most likely.
I still have my old Asus EeePC 904HD. It's slow asf but I put Xubuntu on it and it helps me wherever I go to fix other computers problems. It also serves me as a spare PC if I do something stupid with my main PC. I'm not a fan of Linux (way too complicated for me, I'm a Windows guy) but I have to admit it's very light and ultra stable. Perfect for what I do with it =)
These really were awesome machines and fun to mod too! My wife is still using my old X61s that I modded back in the day with a beautiful 1400x1050 IPS screen, a hidden dip switch under the battery to overclock the FSB from 200MHz to 266MHz when required, a modded BIOS to enable full SATA2 speed among other things and the usual upgrades like a SSD and 6GB of RAM (8GB would be the max). The most important upgrade (at least back then) IMHO was the screen because the original 1024x768 TN panel was an absolute deal breaker since I actually had to get some work done on it. The upgraded screen came from a X60 tablet and even to this day it looks just amazing :)
I can't believe you don't even have a thousand subscribers! I really liked this video. Subscribed
Congarts for the editing man ! You definitely deserves more subscribers !
In 2013 I got an Acer C710 Chrome book. I flashed the bios with seabios. Installed a 500 gigabyte Samsung Evo 960 Sata SSD, 6 gigs of ram. I use Bodhi Linux, with the Moksha desktop environment. Still using it in 2023. ♥️😊
I like using Lubuntu for these cases. It's current version is 23.04, based on Lunar Lobster, and uses the LXQt desktop.
Also, it is well known that we hardly need current CPU performance for simple office applications, which is what gave birth to the Intel N* and *U CPUs that essentially are stealthy time traveling devices bringen the user back to the mid 2000's.
The N95/N100 are about equal in performance to the I7-3770 from 2012.
@@oldtwinsna8347 Close to the i7-3770T, yes. But it was launched Q1'23 which means we are talking -11 years here.
An example for 2005 would be the Intel Core Duo T2050, or 2008 the Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 - 255/342 to 1191/1237 CPU Mark.
Intel sold that level of total performance until 2014 with the Intel Pentium N3520, and single thread performance until 2017 with the Intel Pentium Silver N5000. Another example of that range is 2015's "Intel Core i3-5010U" .
That is 7 to 9 years back in time, and I am even ignoring the Celerons and Atoms there - New CPUs intentionally on the very low performance end ( and using misleading names hiding the fact on top of things ).
LXDE/LXQt and xfce are indeed incredibly lightweight, but still feature rich.
Some of the ultra light environments take out so much, that it becomes hard to use them as daily driver.
love the cinematic shots with the forest background!
Nice quality video! Welcome back!
"Better keyboard " I quote this so much! I sadly moved to a Chromebook from a Thinkpad T430 so I felt really the difference.
I definitely took the Chromebook as a daily drive just for it's weight and better battery life (and the usb-c charger, but someone told me you can find adapters for most of the barrel jacks)
Chrome OS, like Google Android, just turns a portable computing device into a surveillance tool for Google.
Something I noticed with old laptops as well. Was setting up two old machines, a Dell Latitude from 2001 and an Inspiron from ca 2005, and the Latitude had the better keyboard and better display even after so many years of use. (Sadly it's other specs make it more than obsolete)
Truly shows how well built those old business machines were.
I love how Void is slowly becoming the new Arch.
My man really hit up the Three Mile Incident as a test 🤯🤯🤯
Great video!! I have the same pc and was wondering what to do with it for a long time - this was super informative and gave me a lot of ideas, thank you so much!! :]
Great video! My friend taught me to make sure these oldies but goodies have 2+ cores for decent performance and you mentioned that right off the bat. My first choice for an older computer is Bodhi Linux because of it's EFL (Enlightenment Foundation Libraries) pedigree. Max out the RAM+SSD and you're good to go!
Yeah great video and more testing than usual. I find collecting old ThinkPads is addictive and the most interesting ones, certainly the best keyboards, are on the older ones. They also have a fascinating design history throughout, even the later Lenovo ThinkPad products which continue high-quality design not always found on their other lines. After using SSDs for a few years I find mechanical drives more reliable if not too worn. Windows 10 is not too bad on some of the 2012-era ThinkPads. I have also tried the desktop ThinkCentres but they aren't as durable as the ThinkPads.
I just recently helped a customer with a Dell Mini 2012 he had lying round. Single core cpu, 1 GB ram and 160 GB mechanical sata hdd. He just needed something to browse the web with and maybe watch CZcams with. After all the testing I've done in VirtualBox I decided on Bodhi Linux. It exceeded my expectations once we actually installed it on his machine. Would recommend. I think it would run even better on your thinkpad.
such a great informative video! looking forward for more ! 😎
It's crazy as hell to see that you have only 706 subscribers! This feels back at home, with a ton of the good ol' tech essay videos about old tech being used in nowaday purposes, and it's shocking to see that you're so underrated!
I have a zero % attention span, but I always watch good content to the end to give the channel an analytics boost.
I have a 25 year old HP/Compaq "laptop" with a "Made for Windows Vista" sticker. (The sticker no longer matches the OS). I autoboot into an Atari ST emulator, and use it as a16 bit gaming computer. It's a Core 2 Duo with 4GB of memory (DDR2, so going to 8bg is out of my snack bracket - at $200 to $500 for an 8GB kit.) but it works fine for emulating a 68000 based system. I never throw out old tech, India already has enough of our tech-waste (and the associated health issues effect us all). I always find good reasons to keep stuff.
Hell, I still have my very first computer (a TI-99/4A purchased in 1982!) Gets booted up at least a couple times a week.
Thrusting obsolescence on things that no longer suit their original build purpose, is a deficit of the imagination. (Pushing 70 myself, so that has particular personal relevance)
Great video - thanks for making this. Really pertinent and realistic points about how more mature ;-) hardware can still be useful when used intelligently with Linux and a lighter desktop. Classics! 🙂Very well made and watchable video too!
I've got an X61 Tablet that I absolutely refuse to part ways with. It's a slightly slower T7700 CPU, but getting it to 6GB of RAM and a 240GB SSD turned it into something that can, like you said, really easily beat the plague of N4020-based 11.6" members of the Future e-waste of America Society. I've used a debloated Windows 10 on it successfully, but settled on Mint XFCE for the reasons you described, although I am kind of tempted to dig it out and give Void a shot now. That bump to 6GB was pricey, around $25 for a 4GB DDR2 SODIMM, but the added headroom was worth every penny. That's really what made Windows 10 usable.
I’ve had an ASUs 11.6 N4020 laptop for about a year and a half now. It has some sort of Windows on a emmc but it is upgradable with NVME. I popped in some generic 256GB NVME and ran Kali Linux on it for over a year, but recently changed to Devuan and couldn’t be happier. Battery lasts for about 10h when I just browse internet and use it for programming and server maintenance via ssh. It is not my only computer, so for gaming or compiling I can use my i5-13600kf based PC. For the rest the N4020 is fine.
Obsolete after 16 years? I'm sorry, I thought this was America.
Windows 10 is not usable. An OS that requires you to check and possibly re-enter your settings every time a Microsoft update is forced upon you is not one you can trust.
Instead of fighting against Windows to de-bloat it, your time would be much better spent learning more about Linux.
@@terrydaktyllus1320 How well is support for BattlEye and EAC nowadays?
@@HappyBeezerStudios I've no idea what BattlEye is, I've never used it and therefore it's unimportant in my computer world to the point where I don't plan on spending time doing "homework" to find out what it is. If you want a better response to that part of the question then you'll need to provide more detail.
The only "EAC" I know of is "Exact Audio Copy" which was a freeware tool that I used many years ago to rip CDs into FLAC format on Windows. I no longer use Windows and therefore don't use this tool either - there are perfectly good tools on Linux which do the same thing.
Again, if that's not what you meant by "EAC" then you'll have to improve your communication skills and explain yourself better if you want more definitive and accurate responses from me.
Over to you...
Linux is beautiful both for old and new machines. I have a laptop w/ Ryzen 5 5600H and 16 GB of DDR4 and this bad guy was CHOKING in Windows bloat.
Have Arch on it now.
Tbh when i first opened your video i was thinkjng ah another old laptop and a linux to renew it video what a new video idea but when i saw what amazing rhings you are talking about i was amazed by the amount of detail which you went over with each topic you speaked about.
Amazing work keep it up
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it
This is such a good video
My parents actually gave me an old toshiba satellite from 2007 with the same cpu as this think pad. This video has given me the inspiration to upgrade it and run link on it to do some typing and som programming
Awesome!
I still use my Inspiron N4110 running windows 7 as my daily. I don't do much more than use it as a TV running you tube 90+% of the time, but it's still quicker than my wife's windows 10 laptop, and plays you tube videos over HDMI without skipping unlike my kids windows 11 laptop.
I still use a T420 (with a SSD). Perfectly fine for all my mobile computing needs, for more demanding tasks I'd want to use a desktop PC anyway. It doesn't even feel slow, XFCE runs great.
I have a T420 and the keyboard is awesome. I wish Lenovo hadn't switched to the chicklet design.
@@johnmadison3472 That's true, the keyboard feels great, not nearly as fatiguing as modern style laptop keyboards. Sometimes I feel like modern laptops are too thin and elegant for their own good. Many have heat and battery issues.
Haha yeah. I have a t430s and its great. I even dock it to use as a desktop. Cinnamon is fine on it and its what I'm currently using but I may switch to xfce just out of preference.
I had used an old Acer Travelmate from 2005 until early 2024, 150GB HDD, 2GB RAM, Celeron dual-core 1.67GHz CPU, as my mail mule, running MX Linux 32-bit without a problem. Until the keyboard malfunctioned.
Looking forward to your transit content 😎
Thinkpads and linux. My fav duo!
Agreed.. mine too :)
I still using my old PC with a i3 3220, 8gbs of ram and a intel hd 2500. On windows the performance is not that good, so I've been using linux exclusively for few years now. Today I use Window Managers(Wayland compositors) and the experience and performance are amazing for such an old hardware. I recently installed cachyos and it made watching videos on youtube a lot better with less cpu usage, something that I could never figure it out how to make it work under vanilla arch even though I follow carefully the wiki. About gaming, I been recently doing a lot of retro gaming with retroarch and the performance its good on the majority of cores available, except PS2 core, but some games do work using the PCSX2 emulator.
Weird, a computer with any i3 should run great on Windows 10. Have you tried an SSD?
Loved the video! Great work!
Glad you liked it and thanks!
Great video man. Its thought out. I enjoyed it.
Thanks!
Void is one of my all time favorite distros, love that sudo xbps-install. Great video!
I used to use a laptop like that for a while, and it only had one GB of ram the three adtional GBs really helped it
Very nice video, man!!! I just subbed!
Just found this and this is amazing!
A well presented video!👍👍Perhaps you could install an SSD., and make another video which shows how much the performance has improved. Linux Mint Mate version is my daily driver and I often restore and upgrade older computers and Linux gives them a whole new lease of life.
It shouldn't really do much with actual performance, but help a lot with perceived performance. GIMP won't apply filters faster, but it will launch and load images faster. Games won't reach higher fps, but navigating the file system will be much snappier.
These are fun to tinker with and revive with linux. Theres a ton of games that can be run with these.
I've watched about 1 minute of this video so far :). Amazing cinematography for a video about a laptop! Please upload in 4K, even if you don't film in that res. Since CZcams has introduced '1080p Enhanced Bitrate' regular 1080 looks like garbage. Uploading in 4K will force a higher bitrate and make your videos look much better for everyone, even non-premium accounts.
Just revived my old (2014) laptop using Zorin Lite. Watching your video on it right now! Im really excited! And this was also the most tech savvy thing Ive done haha
Nice! What laptop is it?
@@TheBostonUrbanist Acer Aspire e5-571g. It had a black screen with moveable cursor when booting up Windows 10. Would freeze during re-installation of Windows 10 from the machine itself. Would freeze after reinstalling Windows 10 from an USB drive. Installed Zorin Lite from an USB drive and it runs smooth!
Edit: btw its the i7, 8GB RAM, Nvidea 840m graphics card, and 500GB HDD (136 bad sectors, whatever that means) version
Glad you were able to make it useable again@@viktorvondoom9119
Helps a lot that this is 64-bit. You can run Debian on something older, but browsers etc. ore limited for 32-bit.
If you get yourself a T60, it comes with an IPS screen, which was superior to the screens that came with Thinkpads for the next 10 or 12 years, until a few years back Lenovo had to re-introduce the IPS screens by popular demand. The T61 already came with a crap screen. I'm not sure about the X61, but I don't think it's an IPS. The problem with the T60 is the motherboard limits you to 3 GB of memory, even if you install 4, and even if it's a 64-bit architecture. So your choice is between the 60s with a nice screen but limited to 3 GB of memory, or the 61s, with an inferior screen but more memory.
If you're a real Thinkpad enthusiast, you can make yourself a Frankenpad, which is a hybrid between the T60 and T61, with the benefits of both. You will also want to update the BIOS to the Middleton BIOS, which removes the original BIOS's wi-fi card whitelist, allowing you to install a modern wi-fi 6 card. Suitable T61 motherboards are extremely rare and hard to find, though. Not sure they're worth the money unless you're addicted to the Thinkpad keyboard and screen (like I am).
T61, 8gb, 128gb, win11, usb2x3, usb3x4, the usb3 speed is 150mbps via express card, T9500cpu. Working perfectly, task manager always on to monitor cpu usage, handles everything very very well.
Wow you maxed that thing out
@@TheBostonUrbanist it's great for web browsing and playing movies etc, it's not very powerful compared to modern ThinkPads but it's really special in looks and in use, the SSD was the biggest upgrade, boots windows 11 in seconds.
It's not my attention span, it's the way this video is filmed, some videos are so bothersome to watch while in this video, everything just makes sense. great video.
The old Thinkpads had several standout features that still, to this day don't seem to have been emulated by other laptop makers:
- Indestructible hinge design. Never breaks away from the base of the case. Screen stays in the position you adjust it to.
- Pointing stick. I hate touchpads, then because they were garbage and now because I have a hand tremor.
- Exterior of the case had a "rubberized" texture which made it easier to hang on to and less prone to skate off a surface to certain damage on impact.
- Reasonable keyboard design. My 2cents anyway.
The problem with rubberized texture is that after a decade or so it gets all sticky. Not sure about ThinkPads, though, I had a Dell with that problem. Awful.
Was a massive fan of the pointing stick on Thinkpads, but the trackpad on modern MacBooks is a winner, large surface and super accurate. Haven't seen anything come close on non-Apple laptops though. Even use the external trackpad on desktop over a traditional optical mouse now.
The texture on Thinkpads holds smells really easily, which can be an issue with the used market of Thinkpads, very easy to tell if a previous owner was a smoker.
@@sp0el I have an IBM Thinkpad from 1998, and two Lenovo T420s from 2012, and none of them suffer from the sticky coating syndrome.
I have plenty of other devices that _do_ suffer from it...
@@sarkybugger5009 Good to hear that IBM/Lenovo have some magic ingredient in their formula then. Some models still suffer from the stickness, as quick google search shows, though. And some people on YT use magic erasers and polish to restore their laptops. Didn't think about doing that for my Dell.
Always fun to bring some new life to an old machine. I often have some old laptops around - been using a C2D laptop for a while during the lockdowns. Lubuntu, libre office, 720p CZcams and emulation up to the first PlayStation is plenty of activities! Worked with 1080p monitor without any problems. I also revieved 2nd gen i5 Sony VAIO with Mint XFCE not so long ago. Now it is a web browsing and writing machine for an aspiring poet.
Obviously, most of these things are only worth it if you got the laptop for free, as 100$ can get you a postleasing Ryzen 2300U/3300U (so, 4 cores, pretty powerful Vega iGPU) ThinkPad with 8GB RAM. And there is no upgrade to an old C2D laptop that can beat that, no matter the budget :) Multiple generations of dual core i5 laptops are even cheaper.
Dual booting an older Windows (for x86 retro gaming compatibility) and modern light Linux distro (for safe web experience) might be a fun use case for a C2D laptop like that.
Can you clarify what C2D means?
@@nezatrebovan Sure! Core 2 Duo - an older type of Intel CPU, popular over a decade ago. Thinkpad from the video uses one as well, a C2D T8100.
New CPUs are not only faster, but sometimes support different instructions sets or lack proper drivers for older operating systems. So some software is easier to run on older CPUs. For example Ryzen CPUs officially only support Windows 10 and newer (aside for Linux, obviously).
Good review !
Thanks!
Linux put new life into my 2011 MacBook Pro that FINALLY in late 2022 stopped getting security updates and started to not be able to update LibreOffice or Firefox.
It is AMAZING what Linux can make useable... I have a laptop that came with VISTA running Linux for the kids and playing retro games and it works actually really well for that and basic web browsing.
You don't even need linux. Windows 10 runs just fine on these laptops.
The displays on these older laptops are also sometimes better looking than those of sub-$200 laptops. I have a Vaio from 2002 that I use for period correct photo editing using cameras from that era, and the built-in display, while only being 1024x768, looks far better than the cheap panels used on low-end Chromebooks and S-mode machines.
In computer sales, I order refurbished business computers for customers over letting them walk out with ultra-cheap new laptops. They are just...bad. Really bad. I'll usually put them with 6th or 7th gen Intel machines, though you can comfortably go back to 2nd gen and be good to go in Win10 for most tasks (good rec on the X220).
The displays on business laptops are generally a letdown, especially for this vintage. Although nice high-res options exist, companies used to default to the cheapest TN garbage on offer. I have a X61s which is a nice machine, but I never use it for its awful, dim, 1024x768 screen.
I think mobile core 2 duos are socketed so it may be possible to upgrade it slightly. And it may have an express or pc card slot or maybe you could use the wifi card slot
They’re socketed on thicker machines like the T61, but the X series has always had soldered CPUs.
@@SebisRandomTech yo even sebi is here! nice!
The T7100 in it came on socket P and FCBGA6. The first is socketed and replacable, the latter is soldered.
But the X61 has two miniPCI express slots and a CardBus slot. There are even official wifi cards for it. Two of them even offering 802.11n
Looking at the thinkpad wiki, there are BIOS mods that allow SATA 2 speed (which is there hardware-wise, but disabled by software), a CPU pinmod that allows up to 3.6 GHz (by running 266 MHz/1066 MT instead of 200 MHz/800 MT FSB) and one person even soldered a T9500 into it.
This dropped almost 10 to 15 times from my bed over the year but still it survived with one inch and works to this day. I use it as a file transfer server
This thing is the ideal low end programming needed for IOT or any sort of Arduino programming, I was thinking of getting something like a t420 or X220, but this video convinced me that even a good old X61 can get the work done, this one goes to my electronics bench, all for the 4:3.
The core 2 line is still highly usable. I have a desktop and a laptop that are of this line. I also have a core 2 quad that can give even 1st and second gen i5 systems a challenge. Till we hit the point that software needs something in the instruction set not found in this chip (like what happened to the Pentium 3 line several years ago), for basic single tasks they will be just fine.
The 1st gen Core i weren't really faster CPU wise, the changes were mostly in the frontend.
I also have a Core 2 era machine, but with a Xeon and oc'ed to 4.1 GHz and that can even keep up with the smaller 2nd gen i5
I had good results with antiX Linux running IceWM on a similar old LG laptop - it feels a little bare but it works fine. I even added xfce4-power-manager to dim the screen :)
AntiX is awesome, it's just about the only thing capable of making old Atom powered netbooks somewhat responsive.
Cool Video. And spot on by many points. Distros like Zorin OS Lite, Xubuntu, LXLE, and Lubuntu also come to mind.
I'm running debian with xlde on my webserver on a machine with 1 GB RAM. Impressive how light distros can be without taking away usability.
i also bought a x220i for 50€ last year for the exact same reasons - nice video :)
Hey... great job on the video. Mint+XFCE has worked for me on similar projects but based on what you have shown here I'm going to give Void Linux a shot. I would be interested in finding the sweet spot of old/cheap and high quality display and inexpensive batteries if that is a topic you would like to explore ;-) Anyway... subscribed!
Ubuntu based distributions tend to have a little too much running in the background for really underpowered hardware even when you use a lightweight desktop flavor. You might be able to use Ubuntu server and build up a desktop as long as you stay away from the flavored versions of the desktops like "xubuntu-desktop" and go with the barebones "xfce4" or another lightweight desktop instead. I find it easier to just use Debian on old hardware if I want an apt based distribution.
Just to be clear, Xubuntu and other lightweight versions of Ubuntu are still light by today's hardware standards, just not by 2007's standards. Still, even Xubuntu or Mint+XFCE will not be that bad on a Core 2 Duo. Just don't put them on one of the pre-Ryzen low powered AMD APUs from the mid 2010s. Those things make everything but the GPU on the machine in this video look pretty snappy.
For old, cheap and "high" quality display maybe the ThinkPad T60/T61 with the 4:3 FlexView panel would fit the bill as long as the seller doesn't know what they're selling 😅 Best regards!
think the thinkpad x230 has some fullhd screen options while having two user upgradable ram slots, and at least one external battery.
I can say that current RHEL and Fedora perform great too on old hardware. The three parts to making it work is first an ssd, second setup tuned, lastly use a lightweight DE. I personally went with i3 ages ago on my main rig so its natural to plop that on my older rigs too (slight mod to the config for single monitor).
What is DE? Differential Equations or Development Environment?
@@jasonenns5076Desktop environment
Good video! I am typing this on my 2014 fujitsu lifebook with core i3 4th gen.i installed linux mint xfce with dual boot. i have a father who forced me to CS but never bought a good laptop instead i have this old machine.but im actually kinda happy cause i got to experience linux environment.
Nice!
What attracted me to the video is Void Linux's logo on the thumbnail, butI add my voice to the guy who said high quality video, similar to those channels of 500k-1m subs
fun fact: watched that vid while changing termal paste in my maptop (2019) that also runs on linux :)
i've got one of those things, it runs surprisingly well with arch and can even handle KDE semi ok with 4GB of RAM,
windows 10 is flat out unusable on this device though and even windows vista seemed to struggle somewhat (although that's more down to the HDD i had in mine initially)
That crazy idea of getting much more powerful card-sized subcomputer and linking it with X61 (using X11 forwarding or other thing) to make it daily driveable comes to my mind really often. x61s are too beautiful to become obsolete ;c
Its such a nice form factor. A couple years back, some people in China made custom, modern components for the X61 and called it the X62.
I like your video! I have a IBM Thinkpad T42p with Linux that I rarely use…
I subscribe to your channel as the 1000th subscriber 😂 so congratulations 🎉 and keep going with the good content! Greetings from Switzerland 🇨🇭
Yooooo
Until recently, I was daily driving this exact laptop at my work as a research assistant. i went for a used 128GB SSD, and a ghost-spectre Windows 10 install.
It surprisingly does well to process documents, edit excel sheets, and even some slight multitasking (I used an external monitor for dual screen use.). it is still running, but the screen gave up, so will leave it on hand until I can repair it. (it has sentimental value.) just don't expect modeling and the like with it.
1:28 pay close attention to the chips on these cheap no brand Chinese ram sticks. If the markings on the chip is not crystal clear(smudged or worn off), or if the numbers don't match between chips, then it means these chips are recycled and are from different batch. I would not buy these rams sticks. The Chinese people will not miss any opportunity to extract every last bit of value from junk. There is the business of harvesting old ram chips from junk and then use them to make "new" ram sticks.
Interesting. The ram seems to be working fine so far but I'll keep that in mind.
Great video laddie
Great video. I have a T400 wich is almost equaly as old and it runs really well, and even better after I instaled an 480GB SSD.
bro is the definition of underated
you have earnt a sub and watcher
Unfortunately the web is a bloated mess
Alpine on my Lenovo T60 is an actual joy to use, mostly for writing and watching some older videos
Really great video. The part comparing decade old laptops to Chromebooks is great. Chromebooks feel like products made just to end up in a landfill within five years.
I have a windows surface laptop 2 that I recently put Mint on because windows was bloating way too much and was behaving very poorly. For a completely unupgradeable laptop, it's the best way to keep it alive for a much longer time.
Yeah. As my friend pointed out recently though, Chromebooks are gonna play a much bigger role in the future of computing whether we like it or not since some many things are moving towards being web-based these days.
Literally could of just bought a 12 dollar SSD and ran Windows 10 just fine. Depending on the speed of that HDD even 11 could of been possible without an SSD since 11 is easier on disk operations.
Dont even need to upgrade the RAM if you're somehow that cheap. Windows memory management will take good care of that 2GB. Unlike Linux's piss poor MM, of course. You wont be running more than a handful of tabs, regardless of the OS, with that CPU anyways.
linux ate my ram moment
smells like someone who doesn't know what they're talking about
Gosh, almost like windows bloatware and spyware shouldn't be considered a default. Enjoy having candy crush preinstalled on your toddler OS.
@@yeetyfreety6938 You're literally complaining about there being a shortcut to candy crush in your programs list in your thesis of why Windows bad; Linux good!. Ya'll mad funny clown 💀
@@yeetyfreety6938 Why would I want to install PedoLinux?
Cool video, thanks
Love to see some interest in void. It's been my favourite distro for a good while.
I'm still using an HP NC6400 as my workbench laptop - it works, has a 900p panel for displaying schematics and YT videos and more importantly still works fine despite leading a tough life. With a lightweight distro the T2500, ATI X1300, 4gb ram and SSD are plenty fast enough.
It's still pretty easy to upgrade components on laptops. The surface pro for instance was soldered on a few years back but now you can upgrade it more easily.