Linux Hardware, LTS versions, and Kernel 4.17

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I am gathering the hardware for a Linux desktop. I understand that Intel Coffee Lake CPUs will not have full Intel Graphics UHD support until the release Kernel 4.17, although I have read how it can be enabled. My distro of choice is Linux Mint Cinnamon or maybe Mate.

As I plan to be on an LTS distro, is it worth sticking with Kaby Lake which is supported or go for the 6 Core Coffee Lake and go under the hood. I was going to go straight to an nVidia GPU, but thanks to miners, they are skyhigh right now, although that may ease with release of the 1100 Series cards. That means an interim use of the on board Intel graphics. I do intent to try Steam gaming on this new Linux box once it has a GPU.

I am not really looking for a hard solution, just some insights from the Linux folks here.

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If your choice is Linux Mint, I would recommend Cinnamon desktop for any recent hardware builds.  I have found Mate is almost as good in a VM environment where GPU acceleration is limited.

But if you are directly installing Mint on modern hardware, where graphics acceleration is available either through integrated graphics or a GPU, I would stick with Cinnamon.

I have had good experiences with installing Mint Cinnamon on 3rd gen (Ivy Bridge) Intel Core i3 hardware, both with Intel HD graphics, as well as nvidia GPUs.  I don’t think you will have any issues with Kaby Lake or Coffee Lake as far as performance. 

Linux runs great on older hardware, having the latest should be a treat! 

Have fun!

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

1 user thanked author for this post.

Bill C.

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@ Bill C

LM 19.0 LTS with kernel 4.15 LTS is coming out in early June 2018. It should have full device driver support for the 8th-gen Intel Coffee Lake processor and HD 6X0 graphics card.

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Bill C.

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Thanks! The info about Coffee Lake support is very good, as I really want that 6 core for certain video tasks. The article I was reading was referring to the 4.17 merge process ongoing, Intel 6X0 graphics and Coffee Lake, but I just reread it and it did say about support in 4.15.

My biggest problem is the ALA syndrome so common with car performance mods. ALS = “as long as”. It go like this: “as long as I am doing X and have the engine out, I should also do Y”. Getting those urges with a PC is far cheaper, but is still a rabbit hole to be avoided.

I am going to do some testing with the new Ubuntu on live images when it releases. I do really like Mint Cinnamon, while my wife prefers the 18.3 LTS Mate interface on her Lenovo laptop (a refurb 2nd Gen i7 and SSD) where it is like lightning. In fact a friend of hers thought it was Windows and was curious why her laptop started up so much faster when it was older. The new build will be a desktop and a long term general use machine where I will also attempt post-Windows gaming on Steam, so acceleration capabilities are key.

I have had great results on OLD first gen i7 Bloomfield and nVidia GTX660ti desktop with CInnamon live images, but that will be my Win7Pro fallback for as long as possible.

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Kernel 4.15 is now one of the supported kernels in Mint, installable from the Ubuntu repo by the official means.  I’m gonna give it a try and see how it goes!

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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I decided to build a dedicated Linux desktop to use as a daily driver for some computer science classes I was taking about 4 years ago, that required the use of hardware virtualization so I could run VMWare and Virtualbox appliances as VM guests.

I settled on Ubuntu (I believe it was 12.04 at the time) as my host OS.

It performed really well on a Core i3, 8GB RAM, and the integrated Intel HD graphics.

But that Unity desktop environment really started bugging me after about 6 months.  I eventually tried Ubuntu Mate, and Kubuntu, but ended up constantly troubleshooting silly bugs in the desktop with those.  The distractions were an even bigger annoyance than Unity ever was.

That is when I finally tried Mint after about a year.  I couldn’t believe how smooth it was out of the box, without much tweaking needed.  Never looked back!

I am glad that Canonical has moved away from Unity, but still not a fan of Gnome 3, which they are using for the Ubuntu default now.  I tried Gnome 3 with a few VMs, but still not my thing.

I recently tried a live distro of Kubuntu, and I like the look of the new KDE Plasma.  If it is finally stable, it may be worth another look.  But it would probably take a bit of testing before I would consider adopting it as a daily driver.  Fun to play with and tweak though!  Lots of options, though that may in itself be another distraction. 

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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johnf, Bill C.

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Kubuntu is pretty, but if you’re running VM’s, a lot of system resources are being used to make the desktop look nice.

Might want to check out the XFCE branch. Linux Lite, Linux Mint XFCE, and MX Linux are very stable (MX Linux is really impressive graphics wise), and use much less memory to run, which is nice when you’re running multiple VM’s. XFCE is sorta boring until you customise it, but I love that it “just works”, and that stability is very important for that Desktop Environment (DE).

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I agree, but if you read my post I was mentioning Kubuntu in the context of use on a bare metal installation on up to date hardware.  There should be no resource constraints in that use case.

And I do use Xubuntu (Xfce) as a VM on my laptop, for low memory use.

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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johnf

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Thanks. I also really liked Kubuntu and some other KDE flavors, but JohnW nailed it with the comment about desktop bugs on the older versions. It was sleek and beautiful, just like a classic Jaguar XKE, but for me KDE desktop was the Lucas electrics. (old British car joke).

I am looking at Mint-Cinnamon after a year now of my wifes Mint-Mate. I have heard good things about Cinnamon and gaming. We were both Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, but I needed to re-install her Linux and she liked the look of Mint-Mate. I still have my 16.04 LTS on a netbook with no problems. Mint updating is a lot easier with its levels.

I have looked at the XFCE desktop distros but was really impressed with LXLE distro in the 14.04 time. It seemed to grow buggy on my hardware after that.

Wtth Mint 19 imminent, I am excited. I have all the compnents except the MB/CPU combo. I even located a decent nVidia card that is not hyper-inflated by the miners.

When i built the WIn7Pro-64 build, the post hardware assembly of OS install and software took about a week (actually probably 12 hours). I am really looking forward to the Linux install. To date, I have never needed more that about 2 hours for the OS install including migrating my Firefox and Thunderbird profiles.

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johnf, JohnW

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If you like the MAC interface at all, then check out Elementary OS — based on Ubuntu, extremely light-weight, works well on my old, lame eMachines computer.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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anonymous wrote:

Kubuntu is pretty, but if you’re running VM’s, a lot of system resources are being used to make the desktop look nice.

That’s the conventional wisdom, but the KDE team has reportedly been putting a good deal of effort into reducing its footprint.  When I boot my KDE Neon live USB, the resource monitor shows a similar amount of memory being consumed by the KDE bits as with Cinnamon.

I have to admit that I’ve been tempted by KDE also (though less so now that Mint has announced that its KDE variant is on the chopping block)… I’ve long been of the opinion that software should have maximum customizability because one size doesn’t fit all, and KDE is the epitome of that.  Even so, the less customizable (through normal means; you can do a lot if you are willing to edit the theme files) Cinnamon ended up being my DE of choice for reasons that have been touched on here… various little things about KDE that didn’t work right, to the point that I kept looking and found Cinnamon.

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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johnf, Bill C., JohnW, Elly

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I think that Mint Cinnamon is a beautiful, fully functional, system that can perform well on recent hardware.  I think it is top of the line, but really excels with hardware acceleration.  It would be my top choice for a dedicated Linux desktop.

Mint Mate might be a better choice for slightly older systems, or those with integrated video only.  And of course Xfce is even better for really old stuff.

I think Mint offers something for everybody,  and I don’t blame them for dropping their flavor of KDE.  Probably better for Mint to just focus on supporting their core development efforts.  KDE was never really aligned with that focus.

Linux itself is rather small, so it is the desktop environment that you add on top of it that uses the resources.  If you have ever loaded a ‘headless’ Linux server (no DE installed), you know what I mean.  Flavors of the Linux kernel run Android, ChromeOs, Raspberry PI, embedded set top boxes, routers, various internet of things devices, etc.  So it can be as big or as small as you need.

Running it LARGE can be fun!!! 

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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johnf, Bill C., Elly

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JohnW wrote:

Mint Mate might be a better choice for slightly older systems, or those with integrated video only. And of course Xfce is even better for really old stuff.

You might be surprised at how well Cinnamon can run in those circumstances.  I’m using it on both my 10 year old Core 2 Duo laptop (with discrete GPU) and my “it’s really a Chromebook but it came with Windows” Dell laptop I bought new 5 months ago with integrated Braswell (Intel Atom derived; hardly a high performer) graphics.  It runs quite well on both… I may get slightly better battery life with something else on the Dell, but even as it is it goes for hours and hours.

As for my 12 year old HP AMD Turion (single core 2.2 GHz) laptop, it runs Mint Xfce (32 bit; all others mentioned above are 64 bit).

 

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)

2 users thanked author for this post.

johnf, Bill C.

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I was running Mint Cinnamon on an ASUS 1225 R252 Series eeePC Netbook. That has an AMD E450 (Dual core, 1.65GHz, 1M L2, 18W, embedded with Graphic AMD Radeon HD6320) and 4GB of onboard (soldered) RAM with a spinning 320GB HDD. NOT a powerhouse combo!

It came with Win7Pro-64_SP1. It was OK for Office stuff and video viewing. However it became slow and cludgy when the GWX fiasco started, so I put in a 250MB SSD and installed Mint Cinnamon. I kept the Windows HDD just in case, but Mint proved beautiful and fast.

Unfortunately, I did a custom install and then forgot the password and it was easier to blast a new OS since I had not even really used it other than a shakedown run. (Note to self, ALWAYS write down the password FIRST.

I was more familiar with Ubuntu installs, so it received Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (I like Unity on the small screen) It was a bit slower than the Cinnamon on video play, but has been Ok for its purposes. As its purpose has been eclipsed by the iPad Pro, i may put Mint Cinnamon back on it as I have really grown to like the Mint experience.

Some lessons I learned: write down the password, and the standard or default install on Mint is the best for an average user. This was reinforced with the wife’s Mint-Mate re-install. It was also my first experience with a Linux install on UEFI. Another is you may find even an older lower spec PC may be fine running on the standard desktop and you may not need to go with a light distro.

Bootable USB 3.0 thumbdrives have made live testing of distros an easy and fast task.

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Elly, johnf

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? says:

anyone tried Ubuntu 18.04LTS? I have been trying to get the live cd to boot since 4/26. made a stick still no boot. gets stuck at “A start job is running for holds Snappy daemon.” when i go to tty2 journalctl -b nothing jumps out as the problem. can I edit the cd? or put it on a stick and edit it? i’ve tried lots of boot options, and running it with wifi card and without. no good insights yet on the google. i will keep plugging away until i get it to run however; if someone has experience i would love some tips. old laptop but 11.04, 14.04 and 16.04 boot up with no problem(s). i think cannocial may be going the way of monster soft and dropping kernel support for “older,” equipment. kernel 4.04 is the last one to shut down cleanly on this laptop…

thanks!!!

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I’m currently evaluating Kubuntu 18.04 on a Kaby Lake laptop.

I am not able to use the Live USB mode… it freezes the moment I hit the button to preview Kubuntu.  The “install” option works, but after installing, it does not shut down cleanly; it hangs, and I think I had to force reset it manually.  I don’t remember the details.

This has been my experience with Ubuntu in general.  Mint “just works” far more often than Ubuntu… I’ve had these kinds of issues with Ubuntu before, including Kubuntu itself.  The very first time I tried Kubuntu back in 2015, it kept crashing during the installation process, and when it finally finished, it wasn’t any better.  I was a complete Linux neophyte then; after a request for assistance on the Ubuntu forum proved fruitless (which was as much a function of my own noobishness as anything else), I tried Mint KDE, and it worked flawlessly.

That said, though, I must also add that once Kubuntu 18.04 was able to boot from the SSD  normally and install all of its updates, it’s been running decently.

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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Cascadian

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? says:

the compiz segfault that keeps me from sucessfully booting to unity or gnome desktop on Ubuntu with kernels newer than 4.4 is in the “mesa,” package. if i lock them eg.: (libegl1-mesa, libegl1-mesa) to v11.2.0 it works as designed on my amd\ati radeon. when the kernels or mesa packages get updated i can’t get back to a working desktop on 16, 18 or 19 (no matter what fixes i try.) the ubuntu-unity-experience iso’s work out of the box or it i build them from netboot iso’s…

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anonymous wrote:

? says:

anyone tried Ubuntu 18.04LTS? I have been trying to get the live cd to boot since 4/26. made a stick still no boot. gets stuck at “A start job is running for holds Snappy daemon.” when i go to tty2 journalctl -b nothing jumps out as the problem. can I edit the cd? or put it on a stick and edit it? i’ve tried lots of boot options, and running it with wifi card and without. no good insights yet on the google. i will keep plugging away until i get it to run however; if someone has experience i would love some tips. old laptop but 11.04, 14.04 and 16.04 boot up with no problem(s). i think cannocial may be going the way of monster soft and dropping kernel support for “older,” equipment. kernel 4.04 is the last one to shut down cleanly on this laptop…

thanks!!!

I have successfully booted the following Ubuntu 18.04 LTS flavors on my desktop machine. It is an i7-960 CPU on an Intel DX58SO2 MB with 12GB of ram. It is iG ethernet wired network only. I did not do any real testing, but looked at what feature and software was available and how they felt and responded. I did not test any of the lightweight versions.

Ubuntu 18.04: It was fast to boot. The Gnome desktop resembles Unity in appearance with a lefthand sidebar of icons. I did not do any reconfigs of the bar or test settings. It was not bad and would be great if you have Unity and wanted to keep with a familiar look. It did however seen a bit slow on desktop responses compared to live Unity on 16.04 on my machine. I will keep testing, but am leaning away as I want to try Linux gaming and I am not sure if it will be a relatively easy task. (I am leaning to Mint Cinnamon, but want to see the 19.04 LTS version.)

Ubuntu Budgie 18.04: Initially looked very pleasing, but when looking at the installed software, I was unimpressed. I was disappointed in the browser being Chromium and it’s immediate nagging to create a Google account. It is off my list for future install.

Ubuntu Mate 18.04: Booted fast. Not bad looking, and would please many Windows users. I prefer the “dark” menu option (maybe because it resembles Mint-Cinnamon). Kept for future testing, as I like Linux Mint-Mate 16.04.

Kubuntu 18.04: Booted very fast. This is a beautiful looking desktop with a granularity of settings to please anyone. I liked it, but am also leery of such granularity as I suspect you could create issues with too mcuh tinkering. However, it is a definite keeper for more testing. I used to use Kubuntu way back in the single digit distributions. This seems far more stable and fast.

I hope this helps.

All of the above were created on generic USB 3.0 8GB thumbdrives using Universal-USB-Installer-1.9.8.1 from PendriveLinux. I booted them from a USB 2.0 port on the desktop (easy access), but will use the USB 3.0 port on the laptop testing and new build. I will burn a DVD or two to test on the old AMD machine that did not like Unity, however that PC is really just too old and is ready for EOL..

What CPU are you using?

I had problems with any Ubuntu after 14.04 on my AMD Athlon machine that was related to the old onboard graphics stack.not working right. It would give a flashing screen that moved around making it impossible to log-in or click on an item. I finally got that machine stable with LXLE 14.04 LTS, a beautiful desktop and feel, but it has some glitches when the certain updating wiped the user password. The LXLE 12.04 was great.

PS: The included LXLE backgrounds were so nice I saved them all for use on my other machines.

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For me the current version of Waterfox works very well so far with Ubuntu Budgie 18.04, it survived the release upgrade from 17.10. Chromium can be removed by starting the Software application, clicking Installed and scrolling down until you see it. You should easily be able to add the programs you might want with the Software program. I like the program dock Plank as it is easy to configure.

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A short update:

My plans for a USB3.0 boot came to naught as my old desktop motherboard only support USB3.0 under Windows. It is an early USB3 board and while I can use the ports as native USB2.0, the USB3.0 drivers are not loaded until the OS (Win7Pro-64_SP1) loads.

It is not an issue though as that is still lightyears faster than the old bootable CD or DVD installs.

SO, if you are doing an install on an older MB, this may be an issue. Fortunately USB3.0 sticks fall back to 2.0 or even 1.0.

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If you want the USB3 ports to be fully functional in the BIOS, for boot time, my suggestion would be to use a newer motherboard with the USB3 fully integrated with the native chipset.

I have a couple of solid motherboards from the Ivy Bridge 3rd gen Intel Core era, but the USB3 controller was supplied to Asus via a 3rd party chip.  So they glued it on and added it to their version of the BIOS.  I have never been able to get the custom integrated USB3 boot devices to work correctly on these boards.

Same thing with a 3rd party PCIe board for USB3 that I added myself. 

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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Yes, a new Coffee Lake CPU and an Asus MB are in the schedule to replace the X58 setup as the main PC.  Phoronix is reporting good results with Asus Z370 chipset boards and Linux.  I currently will run live USB versions of Linux distros on the old X58 decktop and the Haswell laptop to see if there are any issues.  I would like to get the new box and Laptop Prime (the wife’s) on the same distro.

Still trying to decide on the boot SSD and GPU.

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? says:

thank you Bill! yes, too old means the kernel(s) after 4.4 don’t support (don’t work) on late vista era stuff. these laptops have AMD tyler k8 tk-55 and tk-57’s with ATI/AMD RS690m. i think ubuntu 18.04 is using Xorg. the error is “Shows unrecoverable failure in org.gnome.Shell.desktop.” probably flogging a dead horse, hovever; i love the chase and an occasional victory. next step is to reload it to a stick and make it switch from xorg to unity with kde or something else in a tty. since monster soft began degenerating into what ever it is now, i’ve been running ubuntu (14.04 and 16.04 w/4.4 kernel) with no problems on the same old reliable lappy. i see linux lite has 4.12 kernel so i may try that if i can’t get 18.04 to run. anyway, thank you for taking the time to reply and offer more insights…

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anonymous wrote:

i see linux lite has 4.12 kernel so i may try that if i can’t get 18.04 to run.

I had problems seeing my shared drive from the Linux Lite computer. Elementary OS is another light distro, and I don’t have problems seeing the shared drive from that same computer when it is running Elementary OS. If you like the MAC interface, you will like Elementary OS, because that is the interface style it uses.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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? says:

thank you Jim. itsfoss has a nice list of linux distros including elementary:

https://itsfoss.com/best-linux-beginners/

i’ve been able to get bionic bevers to the log-in screen then to the desktop where it fails after a few seconds. i’m pretty sure ubuntu has stopped writing kernels for “aging” equipment. i can run 14.04 for a while and 16.04 for a longer while. i had to change 18.04 to unity and wayland to get past the stuck boot screen on tty 1. i did it running the live cd so i’m sure i can put it on a stick and make it run on this laptop.

on a weird side note i installed the may security only win 7 patch today and i see that it runs netcfg.exe during the install. haven’t seen that one for quite a while.

thanks again to you and bill c. for the helpful info…

 

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MrJimPhelps, columbia2011

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? says:

woody answered my question ,about netcfg.exe that was in my prefetch after running the may security only update today, in his computerworld article, i think it was probably part of the smb leak fixbecause it ran in that registry key or close by.

back to linux for a little more brain damage…

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This has been a really useful discussion.

I recently experimented setting up a dual boot (Linux on a separate SSD) which worked well on an Asus S99 mboard with Haswell-E (5th Gen) and Radeon R580, though I had some fiddling around with EasyBCD to sort the boot order to Win7 first rather than the GRUB loader.

I’ve been running Linux Mint Xfce on an ancient laptop for quite a while now but for this my main pc I used the Cinnamon desktop. It all went well, though I had to remove it in the end as I needed a new sata power extender for the new SSD (which I’ve just got) so will be getting this working again now. I was also undecided about which desktop use, I don’t want to keep chopping and changing

The one big question I had was whether to go with Cinnamon or Mate but reading the comments about hardware acceleration clearly Cinnamon looks to be the best choice.

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? says:

well,

i’ve been running ubuntu-unity-desktop 18.04 version for a few days. found the iso here:

http://people.ubuntu.com/~twocamels/?_ga=2.149497846.1161564998.1510407443-1546152944.1510407443

ubuntu like our (used-to-be-the-world’s-richest-man) people seems to have written my “old” K-8 out of the gnome-desktop picture. on a positive note ubuntu sent me some more (AMD) anti-spectre microcode yesterday for 14.04 and 16.04:

https://usn.ubuntu.com/

also did win7 june x86 and office 2010 patches, so far so good (until i get the P-3 type shove-off)

enjoy the first day of summer!

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Here’s another possibility: Pixel. https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/pixel-pc-mac/

Pixel is the Linux distro which was designed for the Raspberry Pi, and which has been made to work on the PC and the MAC. At this point, you can’t install it on the computer, but you can run it as Linux Live from a DVD or from a flash drive.

I tried to run it on my old eMachines computer, but I never could get it to work. I’m guessing that it simply won’t work on my particular computer. I have a Windows 98 Compaq laptop. I need to come up with either a DVD drive or some other way to install it on the old Compaq laptop. I want to see if any modern OS will run on it; maybe Pixel will work, maybe Elementary OS.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Just get plop boot manager from the developer – search for it – you can use a standard live usb – install plop in Windows, shut down, start up with live distro inserted, and use menu that comes up.

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I installed Pixel 1.1 in a VM with 4GB and found it quite responsive. Unfortunately I couldn’t find an option to adjust the screen resolution and available Preferences to tinker are limited in scope.

Pixel was a wee bit slow opening LibreOffice (4.3.3.2) for the first time but very fast after that. The Chromium browser was also very, very fast opening. It seems quite limited in what it can do at the moment but shows promise.

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? says:

thank you, Jim. maybe you can install the Compaq using the 5.25 floppy? i had a IBM PS/2 desktop that i updated to win’95 from 3.11 using the giant floppies. then i ran a Dell XPS T450 (PIII) win98SE, wow was that fast(er). still have a Dell 4300 845 board 2.8 processor 1024 ram and a Dell 4600 865 board 3.06 HT 4gb running dual boot xp and win7along with the 3 other amd k8 laptops. i just wanted to make ubuntu 18.04 run on my k8’s outta spite because i hate being told no. when monstersoft finally gives me the win7 boot i have faith that i will carry on-line somewhere somehow…

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I do have a few floppy drives (5.25 and 3.5) that I could install in my eMachines computer, so as to transfer stuff to and from the old Compaq laptop. But if I can get a USB port working on it, that will be even better.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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? says:

didn’t want to start another discussion so i’ll update from here, firstly i really miss playing with my win 7’s… collecting dust since february because of the security only\telemetry stuff. i guess ubuntu fixed the mesa graphics problem i was having on this ancient amd acer because it boots and runs ubuntu  (gnome) 20.04 lts and 20.04 ubuntu (unity) w\o any issues. they (Rudra Saraswat, el al) just released ubuntu unity 20.04.1 and i’m going to give it a spin. if interested take a look at:

https://ubuntuunity.org/

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