I’ve got an old IBM Thinkpad T20 (700MHz, 512MB) that I’m trying to set up for my kids. At first I set it up with Ubuntu 9.04, but the Flash performance was pretty terrible on Firefox. Just for kicks, I installed Windows XP, IE8, and Firefox 3.10. IE8 Flash performance was fairly good (important for sites like pbskids.org) but Firefox was terrible all around. I even tried installing the GreaseMonkey add-on and ran the low quality script for Flash, but Firefox was still a massive memory/processor hog.
Now I use Firefox pretty regularly for browsing on my own laptop, but I have 3GB on this one. Is Firefox really the disastrous memory hog that it seems? Is IE8 on Windows really my best option for this old laptop, or should I give another browser (Opera?) a whirl on Ubuntu? Maybe I should also test Chrome on both platforms?
First of all - properly set up, flash on Linux machines are comparable to Windows machines. There’s just a niggling bug that stops certain graphics cards from attaining their true potential. However, I have a working theory as to why your flash may be choppy and/or slow.
First up, run this command in the terminal:
lshw -C video > ~/Desktop/info.txt
Next, run:
cat /proc/mtrr >> ~/Desktop/info.txt
Then attach that file (info.txt, on your Desktop) to your reply
I have a Thinkpad T20 running XP too, and Firefox does run painfully slow. I have Chrome on there but since there’s no ad blocking, THAT runs slow too (since the ads all take so long to load). Plus I couldn’t get Flash installed properly on that.
I just realized that I skimmed too quickly and didn’t notice that you re-installed XP onto it… hrm.
In my experience, firefox isn’t particularly a memory hog. But it used to be (back in the Firefox 2 days, I believe). However, 512 MB isn’t an ideal amount of RAM, since Ubuntu isn’t a light system.
I’ve found great success with Arch Linux, which involves more technical knowledge to install than the average layman, and with Xubuntu and Crunchbang Linux. All three are designed to be lightweight and speedy. Arch, in fact, doesn’t even come installed with a graphical display manager, which might be problematic for your children
Definitely consider the latter two - Xubuntu uses XFCE (which is quite a bit lighter than GNOME), and Crunchbang, which uses Openbox.
RAM really isnt the issue here. If there’s a bottleneck its with that 700mhz processor. Flash is a CPU hog more than anything.
What you can do is install flashblock for firefox and run flash selectively. You dont need to run 5 different flash ads on the pages you visit. Just run the content.
Now, if you mean flash video when you refer to flash, there’s probably nothing you can do. A 700mhz processor is just not going to cut it.
Lastly, Microsoft isnt exactly fair when it comes to browsers. Their browsers run in some privileged mode and I wouldnt be surprised if plugins like flash were simply more efficient because of MS’s engineering and its knowledge of hidden APIs. IE may be your best bet here.
I put XP on a separate hard drive, so I can throw the Ubuntu one back in, no problem. I was half-wondering if there was any hope for Firefox on Windows, and half-wondering if something like Xubuntu would work. I’ll snag the hardware info you asked for, but I might also try Opera, then Xubuntu, or Puppy, or whatever else comes to mind.
I second HorseloverFat’s suggestion to use limited accounts on Windows. It’s fairly hard to mess up a computer even when you press “yes” to everything, and getting everything back to normal is as simple as deleting the account and re-creating it.
I’ve actually installed lightweight distributions on a similar computer (600 MHz CPU, 640 MB RAM), and both Xubuntu and Crunchbang worked quite well.
