matthew - retroedge.techJan 12
This is a customer's computer. He's been quite happy with a refurbished Dell Vostro 230 desktop for years with Ubuntu Mate.

He only got it to me because there was a power outage while he was applying updates and he wasn't sure how to fix the broken package state.

I fixed that, then upgraded from Ubuntu 22.04 to 24.04, as the Firefox snap was broken. The upgrade to 24.04 fixed that. Works fine now.

Intel Core 2 Duo still kicking and in active use.

#Linux #Ubuntu #MATE
Show threadThomas
@matthew It's amazing that an old Core 2 Duo is still sufficient to run a modern web browser. A Pentium M might also still work (at least one clocked at 2GHz).
Jan 12 at 9:26pmWeb
Show threadmatthew - retroedge.techJan 12
It may struggle on larger resource heavy websites, but customer has been fine with it, even uses to watch video websites.

The Core 2 Duo line can still do quite a lot. It was my focus when I first started doing "RetroEdge Tech".

#Intel #Core2Duo #RetroEdge
Show threadThomasJan 12
@matthew I tried browsing normal websites, e.g., a Mastodon instance, with an Atom N270 recently: it's perfect for cultivating patience.
Show threadRiver City Random ☑️Jan 12
@matthew @tg9541 I'm going to guess the video card is doing a lot of heavy lifting on the web video playback decoding. I've run modern Youtube on a Core 2 Duo laptop with Intel graphics and it struggles above 480p unless I rip the video with yt-dlp and play it in vlc.
Show threadRiver City Random ☑️Jan 12
@matthew @tg9541 I should reiterate that the integrated graphics in Intel chips of the Core 2 era were pretty crappy even for the time. Even throwing in a cheap AMD or Nvidia graphics card like the customer's HD 4670 will drastically improve both 2d and 3d graphics performance and make a difference in how snappy your OS and apps feel.
Show threadThomasJan 13

@rivercityrandom It's true, the following generations of Intel integrated graphics were much more performant.

The old graphics cores integrated in the Pentium M and Atom chips had one advantage over the dedicated graphics cards I had used before: it was much easier to get a good driver for them, especially under Linux.

@matthew