Old hardware and Linux
HP NC6220 Laptop
The 14-inch Hewlett-Packard NC6220 laptop [3] was the dinosaur in the test field at almost 13 years of age. Today it would cost between $50 and $100 dollars. The business series device has 2GB of RAM and an 80GB hard disk with an EIDE connector. In addition to Gigabit Ethernet, it has an Intel 2200BG WiFi card, which already supports modern encryption methods according to the WPA-2 standard and achieves a transfer rate of 54Mbps.
The laptop had the 32-bit version of Q4OS installed, which by default uses the KDE 3.x-based Trinity Desktop Environment [4] that impresses with its low resource requirements. Because Q4OS allows you to import other desktop environments at the click of a mouse, the test team also integrated the Mate environment [5], which is based on a similarly aged Gnome 2.x.
Amazingly Agile
After installation, the computer was amazingly agile despite its Stone Age single-core Pentium M series processor and technically outdated hard drive: Trinity was up and running after about 25 seconds. Starting the kernel took about 4 seconds and the userspace environment 20 seconds.
Analysis showed that preload and network services and hard disk mounting were slowing down the boot process. The slow mounting of the hard disk can be traced to the filesystem check the system performs for safety reasons each time it is started (Figure 1). The picture was not much different with the Mate desktop. The kernel took 4 seconds, and the userspace environment was ready for use after 20 seconds.
Small differences in RAM showed up between the desktops: Whereas Trinity used 384MB of RAM, or 392MB when including shared memory for the graphics card and the cache, the Mate environment was satisfied with 350 and 360MB, respectively. Thus, Mate proved to be even more economical in resource consumption.
To test the negative influence of slow EIDE mass storage on the performance of the system during many accesses, the Toshiba hard disk was replaced with an OWC SSD [6]. The boot time of the system with Trinity was reduced to about 15 seconds, of which the kernel took less than 4 seconds and the userspace environment a good 10 seconds.
Even the most time-consuming services changed and were processed in less than a second. Despite a filesystem check that was also preset in the SSD, the system mounted the disk significantly faster (Figure 2). A similar picture emerged with the retrofitted Mate desktop: The boot times until the system was fully operational were about 15 seconds.
Next, the system transcoded video to check processor performance. The free HandBrake software makes intensive use of special instruction set extensions in modern processors and is capable of multithreading, resulting in significant speed advantages on multicore processors. In this test, as expected, the aged Dothan processor had to admit defeat.
When transcoding the source medium into a Matroska container with PAL resolution using the H.264 video format and an audio track in AAC format, the CPU worked continuously at full load, averaging just 8 to 10 frames per second. One reason is that the processor only supports the MMX2 and SSE instruction set extensions, not modern technologies like SSE4 [7]. Machines with processors older than the Core 2 Penryn generation are generally not suitable for demanding multimedia tasks (Figure 3).
Esprimo Mobile D9510 Laptop
The D9510 [8] laptop produced in 2008 by Japanese-German joint venture Fujitsu Siemens is available for $80 to $140. It comes with a Core 2 generation dual-core processor and 4GB of RAM. The system can use the 64-bit variant of Q4OS to access the largest possible amount of RAM.
The D9510 has far more modern mass storage than the HP NC6220: Instead of the slow EIDE interface, the disk subsystem uses a SATA II bus [9], which promises significantly more agile system behavior. The system sported a conventional 2.5-inch hard disk.
The Q4OS operating system installed on the D9510 without any problems; as expected, it showed far better startup times than the NC6220. Here, too, network initialization, hard disk mounting, and the preload service applied the brakes at boot time (Figure 4).
Between two physical cores and the processing of individual system services in parallel, the overall latencies were lower on the D9510 than they would be on single-core processor devices. The Fujitsu notebook only takes around 21 seconds with the Mate desktop and a good 19 seconds with Trinity before it is ready for use. However, memory usage was significantly higher than with the HP Compaq notebook: Trinity and Mate grabbed between 520 and 530MB of RAM.
The Penryn processor was far better at transcoding a video DVD than the Dothan processor, thanks to the integrated instruction set extensions and the two processor cores. Although HandBrake used both processor cores almost to capacity and memory requirements increased significantly, the computer achieved rates of between 45 and 70 frames per second (Figure 5), which makes this setup suitable for applications that require a little more computing power.
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Gnome 47.1 Released with a Few Fixes
The latest release of the Gnome desktop is all about fixing a few nagging issues and not about bringing new features into the mix.
-
System76 Unveils an Ampere-Powered Thelio Desktop
If you're looking for a new desktop system for developing autonomous driving and software-defined vehicle solutions. System76 has you covered.
-
VirtualBox 7.1.4 Includes Initial Support for Linux kernel 6.12
The latest version of VirtualBox has arrived and it not only adds initial support for kernel 6.12 but another feature that will make using the virtual machine tool much easier.
-
New Slimbook EVO with Raw AMD Ryzen Power
If you're looking for serious power in a 14" ultrabook that is powered by Linux, Slimbook has just the thing for you.
-
The Gnome Foundation Struggling to Stay Afloat
The foundation behind the Gnome desktop environment is having to go through some serious belt-tightening due to continued financial problems.
-
Thousands of Linux Servers Infected with Stealth Malware Since 2021
Perfctl is capable of remaining undetected, which makes it dangerous and hard to mitigate.
-
Halcyon Creates Anti-Ransomware Protection for Linux
As more Linux systems are targeted by ransomware, Halcyon is stepping up its protection.
-
Valve and Arch Linux Announce Collaboration
Valve and Arch have come together for two projects that will have a serious impact on the Linux distribution.
-
Hacker Successfully Runs Linux on a CPU from the Early ‘70s
From the office of "Look what I can do," Dmitry Grinberg was able to get Linux running on a processor that was created in 1971.
-
OSI and LPI Form Strategic Alliance
With a goal of strengthening Linux and open source communities, this new alliance aims to nurture the growth of more highly skilled professionals.