• 2009 Tech running KDE Neon

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    Microfix
    AskWoody MVP
    September 27, 2021 at 12:47 pm #2392136

    Ref: https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/lg-laptop-12-years-2021-kde-neon.html

    Came across the above linked article by Dedoimedo today reporting he has had success running KDE Neon on his old 2009 LG Laptop with a C2Duo CPU and 5400rpm HDD with full disk encryption.
    Slow yes by today’s standards, although functional with good support with a reliable patching framework. Just goes to show, one can find use for that legacy device in the tech-junk-drawer.

    Dedoimedo concludes:

    Anyway, good results today, and a phenomenal testimony to the flexibility of the Plasma desktop.

    Agreed and not only that, saves waste disposal. Nice exercise for homeusers who have an old device laying about doing diddlysquat?
    I still use my old 12YO C2Duo Laptop and 11YO atom based netbook for taking distro’s for a spin which, for me, is far more enjoyable than the alternatives.

    Windows - commercial by definition and now function...
    1 user thanked author for this post.
    DrBonzo
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    • DrBonzo
      AskWoody Plus
      September 27, 2021 at 2:26 pm #2392144

      I’ve got 3 laptops from 2009 running Mint 19.2 Cinnamon.

      The HP has an AMD processor, 4GB RAM, and with a newly installed SSD is a zingy little machine.

      The Acer has a Centrino processor, 4GB RAM, and is totally stock (5400 HDD). It holds it’s own, meaning it’s not gonna win any speed contests but it’s serviceable without frustration for a daily driver (it’s not my daily driver but it could be).

      The Gateway netbook has an Atom processor, 1GB RAM, and a 250 GB HDD (totally stock). It dual boots with Win 7 Starter. Honestly, it’s kind of a slug but with some patience it gets the job done. I used it as a Win 7 test machine for patches, and still use it as such for Mint patches.

      The first 2 computers had become extremely sluggish running Vista, and were going to be trashed (actually recycled) when I decided to try my hand at Linux; glad I did.

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    • anonymous
      Guest
      September 27, 2021 at 3:23 pm #2392147

      For those who can afford it, about $50-90 for a 512GB SSD, it is pretty amazing even on Windows 10 how well old laptops run with an SSD.  And with Windows 7 or Linux they fly.  (For most workloads.)

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    • SallyBrown
      AskWoody Lounger
      September 27, 2021 at 4:26 pm #2392170

      I ran KDE neon on a 2011 dell with i5, 8GB RAM, Nvidia 5?? card and an old HDD for 6 months or so.  Wasn’t ever the greatest laptop but neon ran fine, totally surprised, with Plasma.  At idle it used about 800 MB RAM.  I think because neon is a very basic distro to which you have to add whatever you want.  I bloated it out at one point to see what would happen and it got slow but as a base distro, neon is very good.

      To the comment about adding a SSD, yes, it really sped up the oldie laptop, big bang for the buck.

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    • Ascaris
      AskWoody MVP
      September 28, 2021 at 9:02 pm #2392420

      I ran Neon on my 2008 Asus F8Sn laptop too, right until I finally retired it as a daily use machine about three years ago. It ran fine on the Asus, as it did on the Asus’ replacement, the Acer Swift 1, which wasn’t really any faster despite being 11 years newer.

      Now the Swift 1 is also retired as a daily use PC, replaced by my Dell XPS 13 (9310), but I still use Neon on that and my other two daily use PCs, a Dell G3 (3579) and my desktop, with its 2012-ish motherboard (Sandy Bridge, P8P67 Deluxe). All three have 16 GB of RAM, but the F8Sn had 8GB, and the Swift 1 only 4GB, and they still worked really well. I had the Swift set up to use the virtual memory early and often, and it was able to handle a lot more than you might think at first.

      KDE Plasma works better than you might think on slower hardware. It has a reputation for being resource intensive, and that was once fairly accurate, but KDE has come a long way in reducing Plasma’s footprint in RAM as well as CPU time.

      Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
      XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
      Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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