Compiz Fusion running great on a Pentium 2/450!

[LordMMX66MHz]

sorry i never responded, i closed my davejoshmom1 account so flash itself is slow right?

[SeltsamerAttraktor]

Must be fake. Cannot be true.

[MrKsoft]

@SeltsamerAttraktor Thank you for your vote of confidence.

[SeltsamerAttraktor]

@MrKsoft No srsly. I gave the video a thumbs up for actually accomplishing that.

I have tried many different combinations of PII - PIII, Athlon XP class hardware with various distros and desktop environments, and the results were always quite .... disappointing to say the least ( aka ran like shit). You must have some pretty bad ass chipset in there. Could you be bothered to give me the exact model name of your mainboard?

[MrKsoft]

@SeltsamerAttraktor It's the venerable 440BX chipset. The board itself is a Gateway OEM deal. I believe the official name is the SE440BX-3 "Tabor" (might've been Tabor 2, I forget). Regarding distros, I imagine most today are simply too hefty (this probably wouldn't go so well with 11.10) however you might be able to make something work if you work from the ground up, for instance using Arch Linux. I bet XFCE with it would be a good performer. I might try it just to see!

[SeltsamerAttraktor]

@MrKsoft Oh I messed around with those kind of computers some years ago, back when Feisty was still fresh. I still have some of those systems, so could try it again,when I have some time to kill.

In fact, due to being broke at that time,I even tried Gentoo on a PIII machine. My main system broke,I pulled the HD out (G optim. for i686),and used the best spare hardware I could find on my shelves. KDE3.5,very slick, was shitty as hell still. Guess what? VIA. (800Mhz, 384Mb, Gf4Mx440).

[SeltsamerAttraktor]

@MrKsoft 2 How badly do Flash videos perform? Can you actually play at least 360p on that thing?

The fscking Flash plugin has always been my least favorite thing. On Windows, it still runs fine on such a system like yours. On Linux, it takes a beast to run well enough (1,5+Ghz I'd say). Ended up using mplayer on the cache files.

[MrKsoft]

@SeltsamerAttraktor I don't remember if I tried, but based on the Windows performance I'm going to say no. On the other hand, it way work given a video card with H264 decoding onboard. However these cards are relatively recent and so the AGP versions are relatively expensive due to the extremely low demand and nature of the card (a PCIe card bridged to work on AGP... quite the hack!)

[SeltsamerAttraktor]

@MrKsoft Given that the CPU is strong enough, the decoding itself is not the problem with Flash videos. Flash itself is. It made it ridiculously slow. Using mplayer on the flv file always worked, 480p @ 800Mhz pIII.

[MrKsoft]

@SeltsamerAttraktor Ah, whoops, I completely glazed over that factor. Gotta love the bloat of Flash! I can't even figure out how you write software that poorly.

[osreporter]

I don't even think that processor is MMX capable!

[MrKsoft]

@osreporter Yeah it is. All PIIs have MMX, and most later Pentiums also have it.

[Robloxian182]

i have the same graphics card in my laptop from 2002 (but unfortunatley, its only the 16mb model)

[rmellis]

:O amazing XD

[gfyhdhbyhgj]

My compiz fusion praticaly don't use any ram... (Runing it: 699Mb of 1.8Gb used. without: 634Mb of 1.8Gb.)

[julian19881988]

waht monitor is?

[pipegt45]

ese cuento no me lo trago!

[Furetgarcon]

the reason why the you can do that is because of the graphic card its amazing that you got ubuntu on it i had a pentium 2 laptop with 275 mhz and it wouldnt freaking install it nomatter how many times i swaped out the hard drives

[RichGilly]

I think "amazing" is pushing it a bit... =)

[ubuntututorials]

There's a limit to how far you can take Ubuntu, but Xubuntu and Fluxbox are much lighter.

[Furetgarcon]

i gave up along time ago and i destroyed the laptop....... i got the dvd drive out it though xD

[peanutboy13]

Compiz Fusion is a set of special effects that is pre-installed on some Linux distros such as Ubuntu, others you must install it seperately. Basically it's just special effects (wobbly windows, the famous cube) that don't do anything useful, just eyecandy.

[Robert08010]

Hi Guys,

Can someone tell me what is "Compiz Fusion"? Is it a whole OS or just a task launcher like Windows Explorer?

I have several older PC that I now only use for old dos and file server purposes.

[GreyAutumn]

It's an application used for the Linux OS distributions to produce special effects on the screen. It's quite nice, actually. Better than Vistas special effects, in my honest opinion.

[spammer02]

ponle xubuntu e ira mas rapido

[anothernicemess]

hi, I have a few questions... would ubuntu run on a pII 266 mhz (with a cpu bus clock at 66 mhz)? they told me xubuntu or dsl would run better on these old machines. also, do I need pc100 or pc66 ram?

[anothernicemess]

oh yeah, almost forgot. i've got an Ati, too. it was made in 2000 I think. It's an Ati Rage 128 Fury Pro, if I remember well

[cyborgtroy]

That's about what I'm posting from here. Puppy Linux runs great on it, but Adobe Flash for Firefox sucks a LOT, and the video is making it lag quite a bit.

In anything thing else, though, it's quite responsive since the entire OS fits inside the RAM.

Xubuntu is a bit much, but Puppy Linux and DSL do everything you're really ever going to do on such an old computer. Also, I have no hard drive, so you might have it a little easier installing it.

[afner03]

PS: the nvidia is a PCI card... bad luck for me.

[afner03]

oh boy, well that explains it I have a nvidia Riva TNT on a pentium 3 and I cannot make it work with compiz... I'll keep trying though...Thanks!

[afner03]

Hello, one question... is that video card (64MB ATI Radeon 7500) a PCI one or a AGP? In such old machine I'd say it's a PCI, if so, how did you made it work?

[MrKsoft]

Sorry, it's actually AGP. It pretty much just worked...

[dstefanescu]

MAke sure you have the right drivers for Ubuntu. Run the updates..see if there are any drivers waiting to be installed.

[Pentium3ddem]

that's a lot of ram, no surprises.

[Durthul]

is not a lot of ram, is a good graphic target... with compiz, the processor do not run the effects, this is work of the graphic target. i think that with a vodoo 3 or tnt 2 it is posible...

[TheGeek1028]

I did it with a 16 MB Riva before.

[ice9fetus81]

hi!i just have a few questions. did you have to overclock you pc to run this or not?and, don't you have any issues with your harware drivers when you installed linux?

[MrKsoft]

No overclock was involved, because I don't like taking the risk.

Because the hardware's so old, I didn't have any driver problems with the main hardware. The only thing that didn't work was the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connector (nothing more than a re-labeled Buffalo USB device) which I'm using with RT2570 drivers to connect to the internet, but that wasn't SUPPOSED to work.

[darthchaosofrspw]

Well no wonder Compiz Fusion runs great on there. You have a dedicated video card.

Seriously, awesome. Linux really is the green alternative to Windows and Mac. Linux rescues old obsolete computers from the landfills.

[quallarf]

I LOVE OYU MR.KSOFT SIR

[Igurvitz2]

Running great?

nice show us your next video : Crysis running great on a Pentium2/450 on very high setting and 16xAA

[DjMasde]

para que vean que funciona el compiz fusion en pcs vijos, otra prueba mas de que mocosoft sus s.o son bloatware o soft inflado, con linux revives un pc viejo y le das una 2 vida muy buena

Saludos!!!

[unto0thers1]

it looks great. smooth moving graphics. id love to have a linux box with the cube spinning desktop.

[unto0thers1]

cool video

[coolmaster7300]

Hello KSoft

[rovatune]

Where did you find a driver for the 64 MB ATI Radeon 7500. I'm building a 7.10 Ubuntu box with that card but I have to run it at 800x600 res because I can't find a Linux driver.

[MrKsoft]

The open-source ATI driver that comes with the OS did it for me. In fact, it's the only solution because the restricted driver doesn't support it any more. The 7500 should work right from the start.

[rovatune]

Thanks for the reply - the 7500 works fine but 800x600 is pretty bad on a big screen. Are you able to run at a res higher than that?

[MrKsoft]

Usually, I run at my monitor's maximum resolution, 1280x1024.

(I think for this video it might have been at 1024x768, though, in order to make it a bit more visible)

[AMDkicksass]

and just to think vista needs a dual core cpu to do that lol those p2 cpu last forever too you cant kill em there like cockroaches anything short of a sledge wont do :P

[lovetash22]

is that a gateway g6-450? i have a g6-350 running Ubuntu 7.04 and desktop effects work quite well too! :) in fact its dual-booting along side windows XP pro!!! i was told these machines had one of the best chip-sets\motherboards ever made!

[MrKsoft]

Indeed it is a G6-450! I also dualboot mine with XP (well, a really cut down version) in order to use it as a box for older games and emulators so I'm not distracted by my work on my main computer when I want to enjoy myself.

I never heard anything about it having a great chipset/motherboard, actually. It works fine, and I don't really know what exactly would make it shine.

[Niche79]

2001 for the P2 450? wow old back then? I bought mine in 98, was my first loan from a bank to build credit! lol a 2k dollar loan! haha That computer got hit by lightning, just board was ruined so i bought a P4 laptop to take its place in 2002.

[MrKsoft]

No, 2001 is when I upgraded the video card to what it has now in order to play a few more modern games (a 16MB STB Velocity wasn't cutting it any more due to lack of the DX8 support the games demanded).

The computer itself was bought in early 1999 and has served me well since then. Definitely worth the $2000+ it was bought for by now...

[Coolbri1191]

lol the dryer

[MrKsoft]

That's what I get for keeping all my old computers in the basement. >_>

[Coolbri1191]

still though, im very impressed a computer like that actually runs it haha

[2Ademar2]

man, didn't you have problems with your graphics card?, I'm interested in building a new pc but I don't know where to start at the moment, but for now I'm just gonna ask about your graphics card

[MrKsoft]

It's a near-ancient 64 MB ATI Radeon 7500. Bought it in 2001, I believe. Obviously, if you're building a new PC, I would _not_ recommend it because it's extremely old and useless in today's computing world. (Plus, AGP seems to be going the way of the dodo.)

However, because of its age, it's got decent open-source driver support in Ubuntu and most other distros I've tried.

[deathcloud33]

nice glare.