Thank you for your answer. Problem is, we kind of got to the point that this software should work with my hardware, has to be something wrong and not to heavy OS.

Crome. I like youtube, but try and avoid anything google. The're business practices, which many books have been written (one is that ANYTHING on your computer, regardless of who owns the rights, is ours, but our private things are none of your business and you can't have access to any of it) are something I don't support.

Debian. I've installed debian on many computers over the years, so it's not that hard. The installer is ridicules. It's so screwed up, that if Debian developers put me through that, I'll go on to another distro.
That thing is so out of touch.
Before you jump all over me, just remember if we where in a room, debating this issue, with Linus Torvalds in the room, he'd side with me.

I did use devuan about a month a go. Really liked it but was kind of unstable.

So you think if I install Debian (wouldn't mind trying it again), I should install the amd64bit on a 32bit intel with low specs?

Thank you for your help and replies,

Chris.

Mike, if I remember right, from before, one reason I didn't keep using Puppy was the "start" (puppy?) menu font is so small with no way to make it bigger. Is that true?

Chris.

Debian website says, (Most people will need images for "i386", i.e. Intel systems.)

Let me know what you think about installing a amd64 on a intel system.


Chris.

Umm...I'd guess that 98+% of people on this site install amd64 on Intel systems. That's how freaking common 64 bit Intel systems compatible with AMD64 are. If you go to a computer store and point at a random laptop or desktop computer, chances are it's using an AMD64 compatible processor, made by either Intel or AMD.

For reasons that made sense to Intel at the time, they tried to market a 64 bit CPU which was not backwards compatible with their extremely popular x86 line. It failed miserably, being popularly derided as the "Itanic".

For reasons that made sense to AMD, they marketed a 64 bit CPU which was backwards compatible with the de facto standard x86 processors. It was wildly successful, despite the fact that initially there was no OS or software support for the 64 bit capabilities. Intel was forced to play catch up, and by the time they got into the game AMD had too much momentum for Intel to try and split the market with an incompatible 64 bit CPU. Instead, Intel made their new 64 bit CPUs compatible with AMD's popular Athlon 64 line.

Debian and other linux distributions did not wait the years for all this to happen before naming the respective architectures. "ia64" was the natural name for the Itanic line, since that was Intel's 64 bit Architecture. "amd64" was the natural name for the Athlon 64 architecture, since that was AMD's offering.

Okay, but do you want it to work or do you want to fight whatever the heck is wrong with Linux Mint? The impression I get from various support issues here is that a lot of people have a lot of problems with getting Linux Mint to work right.
Then use Chromium. Firefox is a dog on these slower computers. Chromium is pretty efficient, but it doesn't have DRM. As such, it can't do Netflix.

On the 32 bit HTPC in our living room, we use Firefox for Netflix only and Chromium for everything else. It doesn't play Netflix very well, but it's good enough for the kids.
Well, okay if that's what you want. There are a lot of distributions out there, and you can choose whatever the heck reason you want to avoid any particular one. You could be sacrificing the desired performance you want, though.
Really? He once said the Debian installer was hard TEN YEARS AGO, in 2007. That's six versions ago, Debian Sarge! Sarge had the first Debian installer which was vaguely user friendly, but it was still somewhat obtuse and did things in a weird order.

Absolutely use AMD64 on any machine that isn't incompatible with it. There's just too much useful software which is increasingly no longer supported in 32 bit, and also the occasional bug which makes it through the cracks because hardly anyone is using 32 bit any more to notice them.

For example, there was this crazy libreoffice writer bug which caused the out-of-box install of libreoffice writer to fail to load (all other libreoffice applications would load okay). Turns out it was because of some bad interaction between java and libreoffice, which no one noticed because no one uses 32 bit. The solution was to go into libreoffice calc (or any other working application) and go into a setting to turn off java scripting.

You can save yourself these sorts of headaches by just going with amd64.

I still have a lot of 32 bit machines, so I have no choice with them. But anything I can put amd64 on, I do.

As far as debian:

i386 = 32 bit
amd64 = 64 bit

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep -i " lm "

If you have that, you are 64 bit. The half_lm (pretty sure it's not spelled like that) is NOT 64 bit, if you don't have "lm" with no extras, then you're not 64 bit. Also for even older machines you might need linux-image-486, like in the absence of "pae", which is NOT the default kernel for debian.

Hi, happydog.

Tahrpup 6.05 should run fine with that set-up. Intel gear is very Linux-friendly, so shouldn't pose any real problems. And, er. yes; you can increase the font size. There should be a setting in Menu->Desktop which will allow you to do just that. Or, if the JWM Desk Manager is installed, you can do so via that instead.

The reason Pup is so good with old hardware is because, unlike most distros (which constantly read from/write to the HDD, only pulling what they need off the hard drive as & when they need it), the entire Puppy OS loads into RAM, and runs from there for the duration of the session (and you've got loads of space there for Pup to run, and jump, and play in).

And that's why it runs so fast.

As a nod to Isaac's suggestion, Tahrpup is, of course, based on Ubuntu 'Trusty Tahr'.....which itself is based on Debian. Very stable.

You could try the 64-bit version, Tahr64 6.05, and see how that runs. If you're happy with the speed, you can install the most up-to-date .pet or SFS of Chrome; I maintain these for the community. You can find it at the link in my sig.

Isaac's quite right about the Itanium/Athlon64 thing. It's a well-documented piece of early 2000's computing history. I run a dual-core X2 Athlon 64 (having upgraded from a single-core variant), so I'll endorse that. Puppy ran quick before; she simply flies now, 'cos she can multi-task so much better.

----------------------------------------------------

As for getting NetFlix to work in Chromium, you only need the WideVine modules. Add 'em to the Chromium directory, and Chromium will pick them up. (Since Chrome is derived from the Chromium code-base, everything works the same). We've developed a method in Puppy for doing just that; it's pretty simple. You just 'borrow' the modules from a contemporary version of Chrome itself. Puppy, by its 'minimalist' nature, doesn't possess many of the standard terminal commands to be found in the mainstream distros (the Ash-based busybox implementation simply doesn't use 'em), so we've developed 'manual' methods for a lot of stuff like this.

BTW; I'm pretty certain the 'lahf_lm' (half_lm?) would refer to the x86 registers within the processor; all 64-bit CPUs possess these, since 64-bit architecture (x86-64) is based on the original 32-bit x86...


Mike.

I tried the debian xfce live disc. It skipped twice watching youtube video, but was smooth other then that. I know it's a live CD, so that doesn't tell you much. Just wanted to give the experience.

Love the way debian is laid out and works. I was surprised it had so much software out of the box with one dvd. The menu was clogged full of programs. Don't need that on my "TV" but I really liked how sooth it is.

I couldn't use debian because I had my TV hooked up to my main computer. I could not get it to work with both monitors. Now that I have septate computers and am only using one monitor, I could try using debian as my daily driver.

After years of Mint, ubuntu, I have to learn debian. I found it was more different then I thought when I used it last year.

May go to the store and get some cookies and maybe a movie, come back and install debian. I don't think the install process has improved much over the years. Still way out of touch. You see, there is a REASON WHY no other distro has an install process like debian.

Chris.

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.IS...-hardware.html


perhaps that can help u !

In the process of installing graphical debian. I have a 16x9 screen, while debian installer is 4:3, or maybe 3:3. Half the screen is gone, so I can't see what I'm doing.

Chris.

I tend to do debootstrap installs. And a lot of times not on the machine that will use it / boot it. It basically creates a chroot install which you can put anywhere and rsync to a destination later. It has a few steps, like setting a root password and install a kernel and bootloader. Which is nice in that you can expand the install base, use filesystems not available in the installer, plus get firmware needed for wifi devices BEFORE you ever boot it for the FIRST time. All in a chroot. Not for the meek, but one of many methods to get there from here.

Wow! OMG! I've installed about 30 different distros in the past few years. This debian installer is so cool!! I can't remember any of them being this good. This was so nice.

One problem is, when it was done, it booted up to a desktop, with nothing else. No menus, no icons, nothing. Just a desktop background.
If I put the cursor in any part of the borders, in case it was hiding, nothing but a desktop background.

Did I do something wrong? I installed Debian 9 Xfce from a Live CD.

Chris.

OK, ate a few more chocklot cookies and watched some huracane footage on TV, came back and it asked what choice of menus I wanted.
Going to take it for a test run.

Chris.

1080p video on youtube is not even close. 720p will work with a few glitches or sync problems. The video played good, just with those small problems.

Several distos that I tried worked right away, it had problems most of the time on day two or three, so I will hope this will work.

I know puppy will work, that's why I tried debian. If it doesn't, I can go try puppy.

Thank you,
Chris.

Been using it a little bit. Went through all the settings and got it set up how I like it. Man, this thing is snappy. Very responsive. Nothing like Mint or ubuntu-MATE.
I love Debian!

They say ubuntu is debian done right (Mint is ubuntu done right). I think Debian is debian done right.

Back in the late 90's I tried it out. Ended up using Red Hat 6. This is so nice. Smooth, fast. Can't believe how much Mint seems sluggish compared to debian.

I'll post back in a few days to see if it keeps being fast and responsive.

What makes it so much faster and responsive then mint?

Chris.