Trusty installs beautifully on 10 year old laptop!

[whatthefunk]

If you dont like the default panel in Crunchbang, tint2, Id recommend installing lxpanel. It gives a bit more functionality but is still very good with resources.

[GreyGeek]

Thanks, whatthefunk! I'm going to dl crunchbang and install it on that 12 year old Gateway.

[whatthefunk]

I have a 12 year old Sony Vaio running Crunchbang. Runs brilliantly. I used to have Lubuntu on it, but it was a little slow and I couldnt have more than one program open at a time. Installing Crunchbang solved that. I can now have up to three programs open before I start running into problems.

[GreyGeek]

I realized that the Gateway m675 has a single pentium core but also includes a hyperthread core, so it appears to the 32 bit Trusty as a dual core..

As I type I am installing Xubuntu 14.04 on a 12 year old Gateway laptop (from the same fellow, which he gave to his daughter when it was new). It, too, is a Pentium 4 but it has only 512Kb of RAM. It also has a Radeon video chip AND a 3.5" floppy disk port, plus a dual PCI port! (Into which a DLink DWL-G650 wlan card is inserted) It's build like a rock. The keys on the keyboard look unused. There is no wear on the bezel top where one puts his/her hand heels when typing. However, I do hear an occasional HD whine, which might indicate bearing going out.

I think Xubuntu may be pushing the envelope on this one ...

EDIT: 30 minutes later -- Installation complete, spent some time playing around. Xubuntu 14.04 IS useful on a 12 year old Gateway laptop. Accepted defaults on all installation parameters. After reboot, apps start reasonably quickly from the 20GB HD with a 1GB swap file. One BIG don't do: run two or more apps at the same time. I started the Ubuntu updater and while it was working I fired up a terminal. The updater complained aborted with "not enough resources" or something like that.
Fired up FireFox and browsed YouTube and watched some videos with no problems.

Bottom line: Kubuntu Trusty works great on the 10 year old Gateway with 1GB of RAM and 50GB HD. Xubuntu Trusty works acceptably on the 12 year old Gateway.

Both laptops would be acceptable for browsing the Internet, doing email, and writing documents.

It would run even better using a lighter desktop or window manager.

[Silent Observer]

Nice. I'm tempted to try a Live USB of Lubuntu on my 1997 vintage Pentium II laptop; it's currently running very well on antiX 13.2/Fluxbox, but it's within the hardware spec for Lubuntu, as I recall. Runs a good bit better with antiX than it did on Win98 when it was new; that might well be true of Lubuntu, as well.

[GreyGeek]

I friend gave me his old 17" Gateway m675 laptop, sans battery, which he purchased in 2004.
I put Kubuntu 14.04 on it and used b43legacy on the BMC4603 wireless.
The install selected the Radeon driver for the video chip and Stellarium gives me 30 fps.
Everything works. For a single core Pentium 4 device it runs remarkely fast and well.