X31 and alternatives to XP

[mazzinia]

So,

I've found a good bargain (7,99) for a new sealed 120gb ide drive, and I'm thinking to try to give a bit of life back to the X31 (xp is not exactly a lot useful at the moment, the drive is going to be stored and the data preserved).
I've tried to do some research about what to put on it, be it linux or windows ... and here lie my questions:

For linux, what do you use? What do you find leaving more free ram (1.5gb installed)?
I've tried in a vm on my main pc 3 light distro : linux lite 3.8 , peppermint , peachosi . They all seem sharing the same roots... is there something better ?
How do you configure xfce power manager ? ( tried "suspend" on lid closed, and it never turns on once I reopen it... ) Is there a different power manager you recommend as in working better ?
What's the best video driver suggested ? What's suggested to enable all Fn combos ?

If going for windows... I've understood that there are various "light" tweaked iso in the wild, like tiny 7, that use very little ram ( I think could be as low as just 300mb used ). Have you used one ? Opinions ?

[CometCKO]

I have an x41 which is a different animal, but I've owned it from new and the world evolved to make it and me obsolete. I run mine with a mSATA card and a PATA/SATA converter board. Not sure if there is a hardware hack for the X31 that would do the same thing, but the SSD made a huge difference in performance, compared to the really slow tiny Hitachi hard drive that originally came in mine. The hack turned my X41 from a toy into a note-taking tool that I use frequently. I installed Peppermint Three Linux on mine which is very lightweight (there are even lighter versions, but trade off friendliness). It's quite snappy and probably worth your while to check out, although the version I use has just gone off long term support. Since I don't really use it connected, I'm not very concerned about running an obsolete version. YMMV.

[mazzinia]

You are the 2nd person mentioning Peppermint ( another being one person on irc that said that Linux Lite is good, but he finds peppermint to be better ).
To be honest I have tried both , so also Peppermint , in vmware, and I got in a way unsure about which one to try... both seem based on the same ubuntu, both access practically the same repositories. Even the ram usage sort of feels similar... differences I managed to see are in good part graphical. Peppermint seems more eyecandy, while lite has some extra tools to handle post installation updates and to take restore points.
In both cases I see 1.3gb of used ram ( buffers + system), feels a bit high

[Thinkpad4by3]

Windows 98 or 2K?
Puppy or darn Small Linux?

Have some fun discovering operating systems on a weekend! I used to do that on my T42!

Edit: The name is D A M N small Linux. Censorship problems.

[mazzinia]

puppy is a bit minimalist, but I guess I can peek at the other.
Peppermint weirdly doesn't find the bluetooth adapter

Nah, 98 and 2k are too old for what I've in mind. To go that way, I would just keep using xp ( or put back the original hd I bought the laptop with, with 2k in japanese ).
I was musing about a tweaked iso based on windows 7 pro/ultimate ... but I'm getting that graphic support is not optimal ?

[Thinkpad4by3]

Hey, In 2012 I ran both minecraft(proof of concept, don't actally play it) and Youtube on a T42 running NT4. If NT4 can do that, W2K can do anything a you could reasonably concieve a P3 doing.

[mazzinia]

yes, aside that I want a bit more usability at the browser level. And the only options for full support of current browsers are win7 or linux
If not for that, I would not even consider moving from the current xp. Moreover an X31 is not a p3... it's a pm like the t42 and 43 ...

This aside, linux related - seems peppermint and lite both behave badly for certain lid conditions :
hibernate
suspend

in both cases the laptop never wakes up. Hibernate flashes the half-moon a few times, but then turns off
Does hibernate and suspend require some specific tweak in general ?

[Thinkpad4by3]

XP on a 1.3Ghz BANIAS PM???

Get a 1.13Ghz X24, it will be faster. Any P4M that isn't a top config Dothan should burn in hell. darn those chips were awful. My P1 200Mhz loaded google faster on IE5 than my PM w/ XP (not even joking, I did it)

[mazzinia]

I don't agree. I got the laptop at the end of 2006 (one of the rare that can claim to have the Made in Japan tag) and as soon as back to Europe, I got hold of an original recovery set for XP made for the x31.
Has always worked without issues, including running virtualbox with different palm/hp webos images and the full sdk.

[dr_st]

XP on a 1.3Ghz BANIAS PM???

Get a 1.13Ghz X24, it will be faster. Any P4M that isn't a top config Dothan should burn in hell.

You sound like you really don't know the difference between a Pentium M and a Pentium 4-M.

[Thinkpad4by3]

I know the difference. I hate them both. I despise just about anything made by intel from 2001-2005 because it was all obnoxiously slow, capacitor busting, spacehogging, loud crap. I used a T42p for many years and it wasnt slow but my T40, T41 and T42 base units were pretty terrible even 6 years ago.

[dr_st]

You are wrong. A Pentium M is nothing like the Pentium 4-M. It's more like an improved version of the Pentium III you seem to adore.

[Thinkpad4by3]

I like the P3 because its systems run well on 98. The P-M systems were designed for XP and I dont like either on XP. Its not just the processor, its the boards they are on too.

I may have a slight grudge against anything 2001-2005 Intel. Oh well. Maybe Ill pull out a Ultrabay adapter, an SSD and a T42 and see how it goes.

EDIT: My primary P-M machine, a low spec T40, has no fan screws holding down the heatsink. That is probably why I remember the performance being so abysmal.

[mazzinia]

Well... while waiting for some more comments, seems I've hit a wall.
The 2 distros I've tried require ( as the thinkwiki suggests ) nomodeset , to have suspend and hibernate working. Pity that the radeon drivers don't load if nomodeset is used...

[mazzinia]

While waiting for more comments ( just in case ), it's time to detail the current situation.

I've tried various ( more than 12 ) linux distributions, and the results were a bit "funny".
10 lives were all working, but video playback ( youtube ) was not fluid at all, in different ways ( from meh to crap ). Booting with nomodeset worsened things, but suspend worked.

raspberry-x86 plays youtube videos like being on a quad core xeon ( lol ), and with nomodeset somehow the radeon driver is not being unloaded, but suspend / resume work. Still is too good to be true... wifi is not working at all, the interface is crappy ( doubt they spent a lot of time on this "release" ).

solydxk plays youtube acceptably ( forget fullscreen ), with nomodeset the radeon driver is not being unloaded BUT suspend/resume doesn't work ( it never resumes ).
I've ended installing this one as the "lesser evil" and i'm wasting time to fix things ( bluetooth headsets connect but don't the audio interface is not added, seems I may have to do some manual tweaks , etc etc etc ).

Honestly I think linux is just a big waste of time ( I know I'll be bashed now... ).

There's always plan B, anyway... but i wonder how usable would this thinkpad be with Win7 or Win8. I assume less than currently ( was able to handle virtualbox instances under xp, with emulators inside... with no real issues . Suppose will be the same with linux.. not sure about win7 or further )

[axur-delmeria]

There's always plan B, anyway... but i wonder how usable would this thinkpad be with Win7 or Win8.

1. I'm not sure if there's a Radeon 7000 driver for Windows 7.
2. How much RAM does your X31 have? Hope it's 2GB, you'll need every last bit of it.

[dr_st]

1. I'm not sure if there's a Radeon 7000 driver for Windows 7.
2. How much RAM does your X31 have? Hope it's 2GB, you'll need every last bit of it.

There isn't, but it is possible to get one that sorta works (it works on my X32), with reasonable limitations (no Aero, crappy support of multiple monitors and non-standard resolutions, etc). If the laptop is only used as a laptop with the built-in LCD, without external ones, it's not too crippling.

[thinkpadcollection]

Problem with everything is need for SSE2 and later and increasingly moving to 64bit software.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

[axur-delmeria]

Problem with everything is need for SSE2 and later and increasingly moving to 64bit software.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

The Pentium M supports SSE2, so it shouldn't be a problem.

[mazzinia]

Plan B is just a musing ( I've dumped so many off hours on this linux testing, that reformatting and losing it is not so attractive ), anyway I've tried a weird tweaked distribution called Windows 7 Tiny inside vmware, and out of the box without sp1 but with the patches required for sp1 applied... uses just 300mb of ram.
Dunno what was removed ( the installation iso is down to a cd... that's a lot of cutting things away ) and what kind of issues may have later ( like with sp1 and current patches ), but found out the copy gets deactivated once the requirements for sp1 are installed, and nothing I tried reactivated it.

Still made me wonder if there's a proper slimmed down "version" ...

This said, this solydxk is not too bad. A bit niche, I think, but otherwise is definitely the best xfce release on this kind of hardware. Now... if only I find a way to get at least suspend to work

[jaspen-meyer]

Well... while waiting for some more comments, seems I've hit a wall.
The 2 distros I've tried require ( as the thinkwiki suggests ) nomodeset , to have suspend and hibernate working. Pity that the radeon drivers don't load if nomodeset is used...

With Linux you sometimes need to think and solve to get your system working just the way you want. In your case, you are using nomodeset and do not know why the radeon driver is not loading. Read more about nomodeset and you will find a solution...

https://askubuntu.com/questions/207175/ ... modeset-do

Looks like nomodeset tells the kernel not to load the module during the boot process and it is expected that the module will be loaded by X. So, you need to figure out how to add the module to X...likely going to be a line or two added to a configuration file.

You are trying to load a driver for your VGA compatible controller. Use the exact model of your chip in your searches. The model is available via either of these commands:
lspci
lspci | grep VGA

On my x24 I would use RV100/M6 or RV100.

This page is perhaps too dense, but has useful information:
https://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/

[mazzinia]

Good point, thanks.
Anyway all those distros are handling the video subsystem too slowly "with" the radeon driver loaded. So in those cases, getting it enabled after the nomodeset would still not have lead me to pick any of them.
The issue now would be to have solydxk ( debian ) to act like raspberry x86 ( debian ), thus having nomodeset + radeon loaded & suspend working.

[PePeFR]

Problem with everything is need for SSE2 and later and increasingly moving to 64bit software.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

The Pentium M supports SSE2, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Hi,
I know nothing about SSE2, but this post lighted a light in my head as I saw some days ago that my kubuntu distribution on my X31 wasn’t updatable anymore due to the lack of SSE2 support from the CPU.

Isn’t Linux capable of self-detect the presence of such a function ?

[mazzinia]

Yes, it should detect.

You mean normal updates of 18.04 ?

[PePeFR]

Yes, it should detect.

You mean normal updates of 18.04 ?

Well... I just checked and I'm wrong : the message doesn't mention SSE2 but PAE !
I have 12.04 now (I left the X31 for several months/years and only recently restarted it), and the 14.04 is not possible as my system is not capable of PAE.

There is a workaround (adding a PAE flag in cpuinfo), but a pae kernel will not boot (saying that my CPU is not PAE compatible).

Is the X31's Pentium M PAE friendly ?

I followed the procedure below :
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PAE/PentiumM

I managed to add the PAE flag (and check it's added), but unable to load a PAE kernel (error at boot) and failed to upgrade to 14.04 (error asking for PAE).

[PePeFR]

I auto-answer my post, for those it may help.

It looks that the offer of Linux distributions that are compatible with non-PAE CPUs has dramatically decreased in the last few years, with all Ubuntu based distribution abandoning them. The lated to stop providing non-PAE kernels are kubuntu and lubuntu.

Some the last to continue to provide non-PAE kernels seem to be Debian and antiX. The first may be difficult to the beginner, but the latter looks to be a good pick !

[mazzinia]

Yes, the x31 cpu is not pae friendly. As you noted, there are less distributions that can be used... personally I would add Solydxy to the group, works quite well and it offers a better playback of multimedia files / youtube. (same goes for Raspbian)

[axur-delmeria]

Does adding "forcepae" to the kernel boot options still work?

[PePeFR]

I didn't tried but I dead read several times that it was not working anymore on newer kernels.

I reinstalled XP Pro to test my mSATA card

Kingston SUV500MS / 120 Gb
RENKFORCE adapter (https://www.amazon.fr/Convertisseur-din ... ics&sr=1-1)

The adapter is the only one I saw that I can really trust : metal frame, no fancy out of size plastic case, Made in Taiwan, looks solid and fits perfectly in the IBM caddy.

That being said, I don't really see anymore the point in going with Linux, as the distribs still allowing non-PAE CPUs are far too confidential except of course Debian (no Ubuntu ones). WinXP Pro is still a very good OS, allows a lot of good software... like Office for example... and is perfect if you want to keep the IBM suite utils.

I'm going to ask for the recovery CDs and go with XP. I'll add dual-boot later if I find any interrest in it.

That's fun because wiping XP was the first think I done when I bought this X31~12 years ago !

[mazzinia]

Well,

if you ever want to give it a try, check solydxk ... I've it on my x31 since a year or a bit more, and it's decently polished ( is based on Debian ). It's definitely quicker than XP ( that's what I had installed previously, and still have. I swapped out the hdd for a brand new 120gb ide I found for 9 euro )

everything works, but Bluetooth has to be turned on/off using command line

https://downloads.solydxk.com/ce/i386/ stable
https://downloads.solydxk.com/ce/testing/ I think practically stable based on the current Debian release, but not promoted to stable yet