Linux Distro For YouTube (OLD LINUX USER)

Karnel · 03-02-2020, 12:12 AM

All i what is a linux Distro that can Run You Tube

I tried :

Android X86 - too slow and didnt find the WLAN card
Puppy Linux (The slacko variant) - i cant play YouTube
Slax - Kinda slow , Cant Open YouTube still
LibreELEC - its only 64 bit , i cant find a 32 bit
OpenELEC - Same Story Only 64 bit iso , no 32 bit

i tried SMPlayer whit the YouTube Addon , and MiniTube
(But they only come in Debian variants so i cant install them)
if you know how to install them on puppy or slackware tell me

Maybe Lubutu will work?Mayble a Old Ubuntu version that can run in such specs , Maybe i should just use Slackware as i do for my main PC and Back up PC

The problem is Finding a linux distro that can run YouTube whit 1GB of ram and that CPU ,

I recently bought a Acer Aspire 3690 for 10 dollars , it has 1GB of RAM and a Intel Celeron M 430 1.73 GHz its a 32 bit CPU , The HDD was a OLD IDE hard drive which i swapped for a USB drive

If the distro can boot live , that will be great , if not i will just install the distro on a USB drive and call it a day

JZL240I-U · 03-02-2020, 01:50 AM

Try MX. It is lightweight and comes also as 32-bit version AFAIR.

Karnel · 03-02-2020, 02:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JZL240I-U

Try MX. It is lightweight and comes also as 32-bit version AFAIR.

I will try it out now and tell you what happened

fatmac · 03-02-2020, 06:11 AM

With just 1GB ram, you are probably expecting too much, however, AntiX is lighter than MX, so would be a better choice, but you might find that SliTaz would work better.

Edit: Another option would be to download the video & run it on your machine, therefore not relying on the internet whilst viewing.

Karnel · 03-02-2020, 06:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatmac

With just 1GB ram, you are probably expecting too much, however, AntiX is lighter than MX, so would be a better choice, but you might find that SliTaz would work better.

Edit: Another option would be to download the video & run it on your machine, therefore not relying on the internet whilst viewing.

I was doing that for a while , downloading the videos , but its a pain , also antiX and Salitaz ... Hum ... Do you think the browsers on them will work for you tube , i will try them and tell you later

bazio101 · 03-02-2020, 07:33 AM

Sorry to say but with this hardware I don't think that you'll ever watch youtube videos on a browser. You may try a light distribution, with just a window manager (openbox, windowmaker), which may work fine - and as fast as possible, but when you will open a web browser - even a light one, everything will stuck on 100% and you'll find yourself listening to the video while watching just an image. That's my experience with a Celeron 2,4Ghz single core and 2Gb ram.
You better try cli tools, like youtube-dl, mps-youtube, livestreamer and mplayer. They'll work better than browsers or gui stuff. You may combine them with a really light browser like gui version of links, for copy / paste the url.
Another option would be to install a kodi based distro like libre-ELEC. Youtube videos may work fine on kodi.
I wish good luck...

BW-userx · 03-02-2020, 07:56 AM

the depth of data that youtube is now allowing into there videos is for today's systems as far as I know. even youtube-dl is now outdated to what data youtube is allowing to be added into there videos and the format they are using to play them on there sight.

Karnel · 03-02-2020, 08:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bazio101

Sorry to say but with this hardware I don't think that you'll ever watch youtube videos on a browser. You may try a light distribution, with just a window manager (openbox, windowmaker), which may work fine - and as fast as possible, but when you will open a web browser - even a light one, everything will stuck on 100% and you'll find yourself listening to the video while watching just an image. That's my experience with a Celeron 2,4Ghz single core and 2Gb ram.
You better try cli tools, like youtube-dl, mps-youtube, livestreamer and mplayer. They'll work better than browsers or gui stuff. You may combine them with a really light browser like gui version of links, for copy / paste the url.
Another option would be to install a kodi based distro like libre-ELEC. Youtube videos may work fine on kodi.
I wish good luck...

I did try libre-ELEC , openelec , they only come in 64 bit variants
My CPU is 32 bit , So there is that , but your idea for youtube-dl, mps-youtube, livestreamer and mplayer is good
I will try that

Basslord1124 · 03-02-2020, 10:17 AM

Have you checked on upgrading the RAM? From what I pulled up, that laptop can support up to 2GB of RAM. That's definitely worth investigating IMO and may help ya.

AntiX is one of the lightest distros I know and have experience with. AntiX is Debian based so you could possibly try the MiniTube app or some other youtube app on it. Haven't tried the command-line tools mentioned above, but a lot of times command line is faster. Depending on which distro you go with, search in their package list for lightweight web browsers. Turning your video quality down on youtube may help too (although that's going to be a sacrifice of what you can tolerate and what your PC can handle).

I would suggest upgrading the CPU too (I despise Celerons) but honestly upgrading your RAM would be a faster and less pain free method of boosting performance rather than trying to upgrade the CPU on it.

There's not a lot that can be done to help your situation, BUT maybe something will work with some experimentation.

JZL240I-U · 03-02-2020, 10:22 AM

VLC might also work for youtube.

teckk · 03-02-2020, 10:57 AM

Agree with @bazio101
Install any small 32 bit version of linux, that will work on that machine.
Do your youtube searching with dillo, or a real light browser.
Set the browser user agent to Mozill/5.0

Then make a little script to use with youtube-dl and a cli media player.
Make it as simple or complex as you wish. With that old machine you should probably stick to video format 18

Code:

#! /usr/bin/env bash

#Basic youtube video player
#Needs youtube-dl and mplayer

while :; do
    read -p "Enter/Paste Utube URL: " vid
    mplayer $(youtube-dl -f 18 -g "$vid")
done

You can then copy the url from the browser and paste in into your script, and watch utube all day long.

You can also do that without X or Wayland. In tty, if you wish. Yes you can watch youtube without a GUI.
Use a browser like w3m, or lynx. After you have the utube url.

Code:

#! /usr/bin/bash

#Framebuffer test.

url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGbsyM5Wu5Q"
vid=$(youtube-dl -f 18 -g "$url")
mplayer -vo fbdev2 -vf scale=640:480 "$vid"

I just tried that, it works.

bazio101 · 03-02-2020, 11:59 AM

Nice job @teckk!
Just correct the variable in the first script, it's "vid" in line 7 and "view" in line 8.

remmilou · 03-02-2020, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karnel

I will try it out now and tell you what happened

MX is my distro of choice. But I guess it is too heavy for the specs.
I would opt for Puppy Linux in your case.
I have this experience with an old ASUS netbook. Even then had to switch back to lower quality on YouTube...

anticapitalista · 03-02-2020, 04:04 PM

antiX ships with mps-youtube and smtube out of the box.
Give it a try - the base version might be better.

teckk · 03-02-2020, 04:10 PM

Not sure if I knew about that.

Code:

pacman -Si mps-youtube
...
Name            : mps-youtube
Version         : 0.2.8-3
Description     : Terminal based YouTube jukebox with playlist management
Architecture    : any
URL             : https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube
Licenses        : GPL3
...
Depends On      : python  python-setuptools  python-pafy
Optional Deps   : mpv: Alternative to mplayer for playback
                  mplayer: Alternative to mpv for playback
                  ffmpeg: for transcoding downloaded content
                  python-pyperclip: for copying content to the clipboard
...
Download Size   : 147.63 KiB
Installed Size  : 688.87 KiB
...

Edit:

Code:

pacman -Si python-pafy
...
Name            : python-pafy
Version         : 0.5.5-1
Description     : Python API for YouTube
Architecture    : any
URL             : https://github.com/mps-youtube/pafy
Licenses        : GPL3
...
Depends On      : python  youtube-dl
Optional Deps   : ffmpeg: fix issues with audio file downloads
...
Download Size   : 54.06 KiB
Installed Size  : 247.01 KiB
...