Old laptop given new life

[Iceweasel]

I paid $100 for an old Toshiba, just wanted to browse around while watching TV. It had W7 on it but I wanted Linux Mint. I tried to keep Windows but the install wouldn't go along with it. Never had that problem before so I think Windows prevented it. Regardless I put Mint 18 on it and everything works.

In fact it all worked so well I got greedy. I installed Kodi, then XFCE components so I can log into that instead of the full blown Mint, which cut memory use in half. I can stream movies via wifi so well I got greedy again. I ordered a SSD for it and it should be here tomorrow. I am going to put OpenElec on it and install Kodi. That should perk things up a bit. My only regret is it doesn't have a HDMI port, just VGA, I didn't care at the time, not realizing what the deal would be.

 

[Iceweasel]

Update to this cliffhanger, as I know many of you are awaiting breathlessly. I got my Sandisk SSD yesterday and am installing Mint 18 on it now. I intended to just install OpenElec then Kodi for a media player. BUT when I installed it all I had was Kodi, WTF? I don't get it. No access to anything else, it looks like it is just designed to run Kodi, keeping overhead to an absolute minimum.

That would be cool if you needed it but I discovered on the harddrive install that when I installed XFCE in Mint I could log in to XFCE and cut memory use in half. So once logged in I could run Kodi and have about the same free memory as Mint alone (almost a gig), leaving a gig free.

So thatsa what I am going to do now, that way I can surf the net in XFCE, watch movies or shows or log into Mint and have all the bells and whistles if I want. Stay tuned for another exciting episode of This Old Laptop.

 

[Ringel05]

Whew!! That was a close one!! By the thread title I thought you were trying to be a modern day Victor Frankenstein.

 

[Iceweasel]

Whew!! That was a close one!! By the thread title I thought you were trying to be a modern day Victor Frankenstein.

I am! So far all I can report is that I have Mint 18 on it now and all updated. It loads much faster with the SSD as I knew it would.

Single best thing you can do for speed regardless of OS or computer. The SSD have come way down in price. Uses less energy too.

 

[Ringel05]

Whew!! That was a close one!! By the thread title I thought you were trying to be a modern day Victor Frankenstein.

I am! So far all I can report is that I have Mint 18 on it now and all updated. It loads much faster with the SSD as I knew it would.

Single best thing you can do for speed regardless of OS or computer. The SSD have come way down in price. Uses less energy too.

So you're creating Frankencomputer?

 

[Iceweasel]

Whew!! That was a close one!! By the thread title I thought you were trying to be a modern day Victor Frankenstein.

I am! So far all I can report is that I have Mint 18 on it now and all updated. It loads much faster with the SSD as I knew it would.

Single best thing you can do for speed regardless of OS or computer. The SSD have come way down in price. Uses less energy too.

So you're creating Frankencomputer?

No, just the drive and battery. Mint installed fine but something went ape shit with XFCE this time. I logged in and got a black screen. I could manually log in to Cinnamon, the environment, but it won't do it automatically anymore and I just go back to the terminal when I quit so I think it's just running as a virtual machine.

So I'm reinstalling it, not geeky enough to wrestle with it.

 

[Ringel05]

Whew!! That was a close one!! By the thread title I thought you were trying to be a modern day Victor Frankenstein.

I am! So far all I can report is that I have Mint 18 on it now and all updated. It loads much faster with the SSD as I knew it would.

Single best thing you can do for speed regardless of OS or computer. The SSD have come way down in price. Uses less energy too.

So you're creating Frankencomputer?

No, just the drive and battery. Mint installed fine but something went ape shit with XFCE this time. I logged in and got a black screen. I could manually log in to Cinnamon, the environment, but it won't do it automatically anymore and I just go back to the terminal when I quit so I think it's just running as a virtual machine.

So I'm reinstalling it, not geeky enough to wrestle with it.

I know nothing about XFCE, tried it a couple of times and didn't really like it.

 

[Iceweasel]

Whew!! That was a close one!! By the thread title I thought you were trying to be a modern day Victor Frankenstein.

I am! So far all I can report is that I have Mint 18 on it now and all updated. It loads much faster with the SSD as I knew it would.

Single best thing you can do for speed regardless of OS or computer. The SSD have come way down in price. Uses less energy too.

So you're creating Frankencomputer?

No, just the drive and battery. Mint installed fine but something went ape shit with XFCE this time. I logged in and got a black screen. I could manually log in to Cinnamon, the environment, but it won't do it automatically anymore and I just go back to the terminal when I quit so I think it's just running as a virtual machine.

So I'm reinstalling it, not geeky enough to wrestle with it.

I know nothing about XFCE, tried it a couple of times and didn't really like it.

It's lightweight, nuttin fancy.

I went through everything again with the same results. Mint 18 worked fine until I installed XFCE. Odd that it worked out fine on a hard drive but not the SSD. I wouldn't need it but Kodi runs horribly from Mint, makes no sense.

I am giving up and going to replace it with Lubuntu, designed for laptops.

 

[Ringel05]

Whew!! That was a close one!! By the thread title I thought you were trying to be a modern day Victor Frankenstein.

I am! So far all I can report is that I have Mint 18 on it now and all updated. It loads much faster with the SSD as I knew it would.

Single best thing you can do for speed regardless of OS or computer. The SSD have come way down in price. Uses less energy too.

So you're creating Frankencomputer?

No, just the drive and battery. Mint installed fine but something went ape shit with XFCE this time. I logged in and got a black screen. I could manually log in to Cinnamon, the environment, but it won't do it automatically anymore and I just go back to the terminal when I quit so I think it's just running as a virtual machine.

So I'm reinstalling it, not geeky enough to wrestle with it.

I know nothing about XFCE, tried it a couple of times and didn't really like it.

It's lightweight, nuttin fancy.

I went through everything again with the same results. Mint 18 worked fine until I installed XFCE. Odd that it worked out fine on a hard drive but not the SSD. I wouldn't need it but Kodi runs horribly from Mint, makes no sense.

I am giving up and going to replace it with Lubuntu, designed for laptops.

That's why I didn't like XFCE, too basic and I could never get Lubuntu to work properly on any of my systems.
What's really funny is Unity which I hated when it first came out is now my favorite interface next to Gnome Shell then KDE Plasma.

 

[Iceweasel]

Alas, the saga is winding down for now, the SSD install mission has been aborted. Seems I can have Mint 18 and Kodi but not at the same time. I could do a dual boot, quit one and start the other but I like the setup I have on the hard drive better. I can log into XFCE or just Kodi from the Mint login window. It slower starting programs but I like being able to reduce Kodi and go browsing, which XFCE does just fine with Firefox. Or handle files and such.

I tried various ways but can't get the SSD to behave exactly like the HD. I don't know what different except speed and possibly the 10 year old cpu is a bit of a bottleneck the way it currently sits.

 

[Ringel05]

Alas, the saga is winding down for now, the SSD install mission has been aborted. Seems I can have Mint 18 and Kodi but not at the same time. I could do a dual boot, quit one and start the other but I like the setup I have on the hard drive better. I can log into XFCE or just Kodi from the Mint login window. It slower starting programs but I like being able to reduce Kodi and go browsing, which XFCE does just fine with Firefox. Or handle files and such.

I tried various ways but can't get the SSD to behave exactly like the HD. I don't know what different except speed and possibly the 10 year old cpu is a bit of a bottleneck the way it currently sits.

It's ten year old architecture (mobo and CPU) that's probably part of the issue the other (primary) being 32 vs 64 bit, which are you using? I'd recommend 32 bit and see if it works with that.

 

[Iceweasel]

It's ten year old architecture (mobo and CPU) that's probably part of the issue the other (primary) being 32 vs 64 bit, which are you using? I'd recommend 32 bit and see if it works with that.

Yeah, could be the architecture and new stuff not being designed for old slow stuff. I used amd64 but it works on the hard drive. Maybe the SSD was one step too far for the poor thing.

 

[Ringel05]

It's ten year old architecture (mobo and CPU) that's probably part of the issue the other (primary) being 32 vs 64 bit, which are you using? I'd recommend 32 bit and see if it works with that.

Yeah, could be the architecture and new stuff not being designed for old slow stuff. I used amd64 but it works on the hard drive. Maybe the SSD was one step too far for the poor thing.

Not the SSD but the old hardware. You may need a 32 bit OS to work properly with the older hardware with what you're trying to do. Here's the 32 bit download;
Linux Mint 18 "Sarah" - Cinnamon (32-bit) - Linux Mint

Download the ISO and burn it to disc or on a thumb drive.

Before you do that though you might try updating the BIOs and all the hardware drivers, Toshiba should have them on their support site for downloading.

 

[Iceweasel]

It's ten year old architecture (mobo and CPU) that's probably part of the issue the other (primary) being 32 vs 64 bit, which are you using? I'd recommend 32 bit and see if it works with that.

Yeah, could be the architecture and new stuff not being designed for old slow stuff. I used amd64 but it works on the hard drive. Maybe the SSD was one step too far for the poor thing.

Not the SSD but the old hardware. You may need a 32 bit OS to work properly with the older hardware with what you're trying to do. Here's the 32 bit download;
Linux Mint 18 "Sarah" - Cinnamon (32-bit) - Linux Mint

Download the ISO and burn it to disc or on a thumb drive.

Before you do that though you might try updating the BIOs and all the hardware drivers, Toshiba should have them on their support site for downloading.

The bios update may be worth doing, might not have ever been done. But the 64 bit versions are working great, tried 3 or 4 distros so far.

 

[Ringel05]

It's ten year old architecture (mobo and CPU) that's probably part of the issue the other (primary) being 32 vs 64 bit, which are you using? I'd recommend 32 bit and see if it works with that.

Yeah, could be the architecture and new stuff not being designed for old slow stuff. I used amd64 but it works on the hard drive. Maybe the SSD was one step too far for the poor thing.

Not the SSD but the old hardware. You may need a 32 bit OS to work properly with the older hardware with what you're trying to do. Here's the 32 bit download;
Linux Mint 18 "Sarah" - Cinnamon (32-bit) - Linux Mint

Download the ISO and burn it to disc or on a thumb drive.

Before you do that though you might try updating the BIOs and all the hardware drivers, Toshiba should have them on their support site for downloading.

The bios update may be worth doing, might not have ever been done. But the 64 bit versions are working great, tried 3 or 4 distros so far.

Yes but you're having issues with them working together, right? That may be the problem the other one may be the SSD partitioning setup that's causing the problem, don't know since I've never looked at how they deal with partitioning.

 

[Iceweasel]

It's ten year old architecture (mobo and CPU) that's probably part of the issue the other (primary) being 32 vs 64 bit, which are you using? I'd recommend 32 bit and see if it works with that.

Yeah, could be the architecture and new stuff not being designed for old slow stuff. I used amd64 but it works on the hard drive. Maybe the SSD was one step too far for the poor thing.

Not the SSD but the old hardware. You may need a 32 bit OS to work properly with the older hardware with what you're trying to do. Here's the 32 bit download;
Linux Mint 18 "Sarah" - Cinnamon (32-bit) - Linux Mint

Download the ISO and burn it to disc or on a thumb drive.

Before you do that though you might try updating the BIOs and all the hardware drivers, Toshiba should have them on their support site for downloading.

The bios update may be worth doing, might not have ever been done. But the 64 bit versions are working great, tried 3 or 4 distros so far.

Yes but you're having issues with them working together, right? That may be the problem the other one may be the SSD partitioning setup that's causing the problem, don't know since I've never looked at how they deal with partitioning.

It's fine now because I popped the hard drive back in it. I'm leary about messing with the bios because it may knock out what I have. Later on I may put the ssd in and try it. Or a distro that does what I want. I cannot understand why Kodi runs so poorly in Mint, some kind of hardware acceleration conflict I think and maybe why there's no issue under xfce.

 

[Ringel05]

It's ten year old architecture (mobo and CPU) that's probably part of the issue the other (primary) being 32 vs 64 bit, which are you using? I'd recommend 32 bit and see if it works with that.

Yeah, could be the architecture and new stuff not being designed for old slow stuff. I used amd64 but it works on the hard drive. Maybe the SSD was one step too far for the poor thing.

Not the SSD but the old hardware. You may need a 32 bit OS to work properly with the older hardware with what you're trying to do. Here's the 32 bit download;
Linux Mint 18 "Sarah" - Cinnamon (32-bit) - Linux Mint

Download the ISO and burn it to disc or on a thumb drive.

Before you do that though you might try updating the BIOs and all the hardware drivers, Toshiba should have them on their support site for downloading.

The bios update may be worth doing, might not have ever been done. But the 64 bit versions are working great, tried 3 or 4 distros so far.

Yes but you're having issues with them working together, right? That may be the problem the other one may be the SSD partitioning setup that's causing the problem, don't know since I've never looked at how they deal with partitioning.

It's fine now because I popped the hard drive back in it. I'm leary about messing with the bios because it may knock out what I have. Later on I may put the ssd in and try it. Or a distro that does what I want. I cannot understand why Kodi runs so poorly in Mint, some kind of hardware acceleration conflict I think and maybe why there's no issue under xfce.

Let me get this straight, are you're using Virtualbox or are you dual booting? Those are the only two ways you can run Kodi with Mint.

 

[Iceweasel]

Yeah, could be the architecture and new stuff not being designed for old slow stuff. I used amd64 but it works on the hard drive. Maybe the SSD was one step too far for the poor thing.

Not the SSD but the old hardware. You may need a 32 bit OS to work properly with the older hardware with what you're trying to do. Here's the 32 bit download;
Linux Mint 18 "Sarah" - Cinnamon (32-bit) - Linux Mint

Download the ISO and burn it to disc or on a thumb drive.

Before you do that though you might try updating the BIOs and all the hardware drivers, Toshiba should have them on their support site for downloading.

The bios update may be worth doing, might not have ever been done. But the 64 bit versions are working great, tried 3 or 4 distros so far.

Yes but you're having issues with them working together, right? That may be the problem the other one may be the SSD partitioning setup that's causing the problem, don't know since I've never looked at how they deal with partitioning.

It's fine now because I popped the hard drive back in it. I'm leary about messing with the bios because it may knock out what I have. Later on I may put the ssd in and try it. Or a distro that does what I want. I cannot understand why Kodi runs so poorly in Mint, some kind of hardware acceleration conflict I think and maybe why there's no issue under xfce.

Let me get this straight, are you're using Virtualbox or are you dual booting? Those are the only two ways you can run Kodi with Mint.

No virtual machine. I am running Mint with xfce addons, loggining into xfce and Kodi runs great.

On the ssd, not so much. If I install the xfce components in Mint, I get a black screen with cursor from then on. I can cntrl/alt/F2 it and get to the terminal then login to Mint with startx. So I'll stick with the spinning platters for now.

 

[Ringel05]

Not the SSD but the old hardware. You may need a 32 bit OS to work properly with the older hardware with what you're trying to do. Here's the 32 bit download;
Linux Mint 18 "Sarah" - Cinnamon (32-bit) - Linux Mint

Download the ISO and burn it to disc or on a thumb drive.

Before you do that though you might try updating the BIOs and all the hardware drivers, Toshiba should have them on their support site for downloading.

The bios update may be worth doing, might not have ever been done. But the 64 bit versions are working great, tried 3 or 4 distros so far.

Yes but you're having issues with them working together, right? That may be the problem the other one may be the SSD partitioning setup that's causing the problem, don't know since I've never looked at how they deal with partitioning.

It's fine now because I popped the hard drive back in it. I'm leary about messing with the bios because it may knock out what I have. Later on I may put the ssd in and try it. Or a distro that does what I want. I cannot understand why Kodi runs so poorly in Mint, some kind of hardware acceleration conflict I think and maybe why there's no issue under xfce.

Let me get this straight, are you're using Virtualbox or are you dual booting? Those are the only two ways you can run Kodi with Mint.

No virtual machine. I am running Mint with xfce addons, loggining into xfce and Kodi runs great.

On the ssd, not so much. If I install the xfce components in Mint, I get a black screen with cursor from then on. I can cntrl/alt/F2 it and get to the terminal then login to Mint with startx. So I'll stick with the spinning platters for now.

Think I might have figured it out, It is the SSD and how it handles data. HHDs work with file systems in sectors, SSDs work with blocks and pages, when data is written to the SSD the drive will optimize it and possibly move it to a different block/page if it sees it as necessary. While the primary OS works fine the add ons may not be able to handle the SSD data exchange properly so you end up with a black screen, it can't locate the start up files.

 

[Iceweasel]

The bios update may be worth doing, might not have ever been done. But the 64 bit versions are working great, tried 3 or 4 distros so far.

Yes but you're having issues with them working together, right? That may be the problem the other one may be the SSD partitioning setup that's causing the problem, don't know since I've never looked at how they deal with partitioning.

It's fine now because I popped the hard drive back in it. I'm leary about messing with the bios because it may knock out what I have. Later on I may put the ssd in and try it. Or a distro that does what I want. I cannot understand why Kodi runs so poorly in Mint, some kind of hardware acceleration conflict I think and maybe why there's no issue under xfce.

Let me get this straight, are you're using Virtualbox or are you dual booting? Those are the only two ways you can run Kodi with Mint.

No virtual machine. I am running Mint with xfce addons, loggining into xfce and Kodi runs great.

On the ssd, not so much. If I install the xfce components in Mint, I get a black screen with cursor from then on. I can cntrl/alt/F2 it and get to the terminal then login to Mint with startx. So I'll stick with the spinning platters for now.

Think I might have figured it out, It is the SSD and how it handles data. HHDs work with file systems in sectors, SSDs work with blocks and pages, when data is written to the SSD the drive will optimize it and possibly move it to a different block/page if it sees it as necessary. While the primary OS works fine the add ons may not be able to handle the SSD data exchange properly so you end up with a black screen, it can't locate the start up files.

Interesting. And thanks. It seems like it has to be something like that. I suppose they will figure that out and tweak things a bit. SSDs are definitely here to stay and I think the platters will be a thing of the past before too long.