how to use old laptops with via gfx

[Pallidus]

Hi,

so I can fix and setup a couple of old laptops with via gfx but I was wondering if they are able to run modern distros. I mean are they functional at all?


I had an old HP p4 3ghz that because of an old unsupported radeon was a nightmare to use, is via the same? if it is I won't even bother

[curaga]

They are just as functional as they ever were, ie crap.

[Pallidus]

what they won't even handle something like lubuntu? damn


wtf man I hate amd/via whatever

seems like if it's not 100% intel you have to pretty much stick with windows

[teroedni]

It would probably work.
I have installed Lubuntu12.10 on a Asrock pv530 via motherboard and got 3d working fine on the via chipset.

http://postimg.org/image/ca1g9k6vb

The driver was downloaded from
http://linux.via.com.tw/support/downloadFiles.action

If you still have acess to thoose machines what chipset does they run?

For Ubuntu12.10 vx800-900 works fine, but if you have older like the vx700 you have to run ubuntu9.04:/

[Pallidus]

tero is the proprietary driver better than the chrome community one?

[teroedni]

tero is the proprietary driver better than the chrome community one?

I havent really tried the latest oss driver to be honest.
But so far everything seems nice and stable on the propietary one
I have 3d screensaver working fine

You cant watch more than one flash video (using Firefox with adobe plug in)at a time with this but its apparently the same in windows so that probly more down to the hardware.(In order cpu at 1.8ghz single core :P)
http://8000.hillbillyhardware.com:80...ock_pv530.html <---windows review of pv530

A pentium 4 should have much more power

[curaga]

Well this is interesting, they've managed to make a gallium driver.

Michael, how about a news blurb?

[Luke]

Hi,

so I can fix and setup a couple of old laptops with via gfx but I was wondering if they are able to run modern distros. I mean are they functional at all?


I had an old HP p4 3ghz that because of an old unsupported radeon was a nightmare to use, is via the same? if it is I won't even bother

Shitcan the compositing DE and go oldschool DE over a modern distro. Some of those old chips would not run Unity/gnome-shell/cinnamon even if a perfect driver for them existed, due to not enough VRAM or too old/no OpenGL. Remember, WinXP, (much less Windows 98) never had compiz, much less gnome-shell or Unity, and Aero reached the Windows world with Vista in 2007. Remember how fat and slow that was considered?

That 3GHZ machine with the "old unsupported radeon" will be a fast, responsive machine with IceWM even if you have to use VESA, just no 3d stuff, no games, etc. It will handle DVD or smaller video just fine. If you can get a 2d accelerated driver working, expect video playback to 720p, do NOT expect 1080p playback on any single-core except by VDPAU.

A simple IceWM based desktop is exactly the kind of desktop these machines were designed to run. Ubuntu, its derivatives, and probably most other modern distros still have IceWM in their repos. You do have to know how to set it up. You need nm-applet and nautilus, nemo, or pcmanfm in your startup file, so you get a full desktop. You need to edit the menu files to reflect what you actually have installed.

That 3GHZ Pentium 4 was a very fast machine in it's time, Prescott as well as the Athlon 64 were never considered slow. They only seem so now because software has gotten so fat. DE's are among the worst offenders.