Old laptop given new life

[Ringel05]

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.

It's like that with any new or relatively new hardware sometime it takes a little bit for Linux to catch up in some areas. You might want to try the Mint forum, maybe someone else has the same problem and has found a fix.

 

[Iceweasel]

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.

It's like that with any new or relatively new hardware sometime it takes a little bit for Linux to catch up in some areas. You might want to try the Mint forum, maybe someone else has the same problem and has found a fix.

I was snooping around and someone mention Mint XFCE on an unrelated issue but it made me think ...hmmmm. I just installed it and it works great on the SSD! Kodi runs smoothly, I can window it or maximize it to my heart's content. I guess ole Clem has a Mint version for everybody. It looks much better than logging into XFCE too, very much like Cinnamon.

 

[Iceweasel]

For anyone that may stumble across this in their search, Mint 18 XFCE is great and on the SSD is running Kodi like the proverbial raped ape. I have a movie going in a window right now, on wifi. I put a new bigger battery in this old machine and it has a LOT of battery life now.

My next project is to build a HTPC, maybe with a Intel NUC and it will definitely run Mint XFCE. Clem must be some kind of a damn genius, a big shoutout out to him.

 

[Ringel05]

For anyone that may stumble across this in their search, Mint 18 XFCE is great and on the SSD is running Kodi like the proverbial raped ape. I have a movie going in a window right now, on wifi. I put a new bigger battery in this old machine and it has a LOT of battery life now.

My next project is to build a HTPC, maybe with a Intel NUC and it will definitely run Mint XFCE. Clem must be some kind of a damn genius, a big shoutout out to him.

 

[EverCurious]

SSD's are awesome, I'm running three myself LOVE them - HIGHLY recommend the SanDisk Extreme Pro as they offer a 10 year warranty! https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_...&qid=1481098096&rnid=2941120011&tag=ff0d01-20

 

[Iceweasel]

I have two ssds, the laptop is doing great with it, uses less power and with the bigboy battery I can run it almost all day. I got an el cheapo SanDisk, $40.

 

[Bleipriester]

I got my first SSD in 2011. 40 GB for 80 €.

 

[EverCurious]

This is the HD of the future - SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 2280 256GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V5P256BW - Newegg.com

They're EPIC.

 

[Ringel05]

I got my first SSD in 2011. 40 GB for 80 €.

I got my first STD in Panama.

Oh, computer components.........


Wrong thread...... Never mind.........

 

[Bleipriester]

I got my first SSD in 2011. 40 GB for 80 €.

I got my first STD in Panama.

Oh, computer components.........


Wrong thread...... Never mind.........

It would be interesting what the bandwidth of that little ass was, tough. It was 40 GB for 80 €, as well I guess. But how fast has this STD been transmitted?

A Christmas tune for all my fellow USMBers

 

[Iceweasel]

This is the HD of the future - SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 2280 256GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V5P256BW - Newegg.com

They're EPIC.

Yep, amazing how small they are getting. I was looking into those because I have started my HTPC project. I was thinking seriously about a Intel NUC, which would have used such a card but decided to go mini-atx instead. A little more elbow room and flexibility. The ASRock mobo has a lot of options and a PCIe slot for whatever.

I just ordered everything (I hope) for just under $300, using the new low energy AMD Athlon 5350. The NUC would be about $200 more.