Using legacy Ubuntu Linux distribution with R51e

[lukee]

Hello all,
after some time I have took my R51e out of my cabinet to start to work on it again. It's like a charm to type on that keyboard; much better than my Macbook Pro M1 I am typing on right now. My R51e develops weird symptoms with modern Linux distributions and also with Windows XP - it freezes intermittently. I have been thinking this problem is related to graphics (Radeon Xpress 200M integrated in the chipset) but there are no indications of this issue at all - screen does not show any artifacts and gentle flexing of the laptop can't reproduce this issue. I have noticed this freezing sometimes occurs when plugging/unplugging power cord (e.g. 20% cases) or when running an intensive load, e.g. starting a program (also around 20%). Rest of the freezing is intermittent and may happen anytime. I gave the laptop last chance (it's really nice & clean unit with 9-cell Panasonic battery manufactured in 2006, with ca. 350 cycles that still holds about 2.5 hrs!!) and installed legacy Linux distro on it - Ubuntu 8.04.4. What a surprise!! This Linux flies like a hell on this machine, despite the fact it only has a 5400rpm hard drive AAAANNDD - no freezing at all. I am running this laptop through Saturday, now Sunday and really - no freezing at all. It can't be compared with newer distros with kernels v5 - v6 which are toooo slow, even with Mate or Xfce environments. Windows XP is - performance-wise - also usable, but - the freezing I really love GNOME2 in Hardy Heron - it's much more cleaner than modern MATE which takes some graphics and libraries out of GNOME3.

Therefore I have decided to keep running my R51e with its completely new life spirit with Ubuntu 8.04, but facing some problems of course:

- Old Firefox doesn't accept SSL certificates of modern websites - in fact, I won't open any website using that OS and browser.
- I can't update the system, especially some drivers and packages can't be installed because Canonical deprecated all repos and those are not reachable anymore, even the update program correctly estimates packages which need to be downloaded and also their sizes. Weird.

So I need to solve above problems to have a decent workstation for the type of work I intend to do on it: browsing non-extensive websites (mainly for programmers), do some C and C++ programming, writing in OpenOffice, do the email stuff and IRC communication. That's it.
I would be really happy to have working Firefox there and ability to access all those historical packages if possible. Please don't ask me why I am spending so much time on this few-dollars ThinkPad - it's my lovely computer which has a sentimental value for me

HW specs of my R51e is as following, I have maxed-out some components myself: machine 1844DTG, Pentium M 780 2.26GHz, 2GiB of RAM, 80GiB HDD, DVD-RAM unit, ATI Xpress 200M graphics integrated in northbridge chip.

Thanks in advance. Lukas.

[RealBlackStuff]

Have a look here: https://web.archive.org/web/*/Ubuntu%208.04
Or here: https://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/hardy/
Don't know any browser that still works today on such an old OS.

[ZaZ]

Perhaps a lightweight version of Linux, as opposed to an old one, is worth considering.

[lukee]

Thanks for your replies. So I have a partial success of reviving this setup

* Automatic updates (at least to the point of 8.04 fully updated since its support ended - CHECK. Based on the hints I have DuckDuckGo'ed, it was enough to change Ubuntu servers to include

Code: Select all

old-releases.ubuntu.com

instead of standard mirrors. After that I was able to update the system over internet.

* Full potential of GPU - CHECK. I am running the system with proprietary ATI driver (fglrx) nicely, everything works including suspend and wake-up. OpenArena just flies.

* Internet - partial success. Webs are working but it's annoying to see the SSL warning every time the page downloads some elements. It has certainly something to do with expired certificates which were packed with Firefox 3.x series. I somehow need to update certificates in Firefox's repository and this is going to need some deep dive.

* No freezing - CHECK. I am running this system fourth day and no freezing, the system also runs very cool and the bottom of the laptop is not getting hot even under load.

* File transfers between R51e and my Mac - CHECK. I have used FTP Mounter Lite which is in the App Store and which allows my Mac to connect to SFTP connections. Before that I have installed OpenSSH server on R51e to allow such incoming connections.

I still can't believe how these old Linxes were darn fast. It literally flies. To further support that, I have purchased brand new Samsung HM160HC drive from feebay. Should arrive in few days. I am going to replace original HDD with this Samsung. Also it's great to be back in a normal distro with RC scripts, without systemd and other garbage we can see in today's distributions.
So far I am very satisfied with this setup, guys. I also to plan to deep dive into Linux programming and will try to maintain at least some software within this setup with the recent patches. Not sure to which extent I will have a luck, but this is I am going to do.

Updating:


Edit of sources to include old released:


Expired SSL certificates in Firefox'es certificate repository. It seems I can import new ones but dunno where to start:


I was able to create exceptions for some servers but it's not convenient workaround:

[lukee]

Perhaps a lightweight version of Linux, as opposed to an old one, is worth considering.

Thanks, ZaZ. I tried this way actually. The problem is that today's so called lightweight distributions are not lightweight enough for such a hardware. And if there are very tiny distros like Slax, they don't have that huge knowledge and user base where to get the resources and help from. I don't know why but also Debian packed with Mate desktop or with Xfce is slow when compared to this combination of GNOME2 and Linux 2.6.24 - mainly because Mate relies on lot of GNOME3 libraries too. I can't use fglrx ATI driver on new Kernels too so all the graphics is rendered by CPU. As I have stated above, I am becoming more and more pleased with this setup despite it has certain limitations.

[ZaZ]

I am becoming more and more pleased with this setup despite it has certain limitations.

That's what matters. It seems your're more learned than I am. I do recalling running Heron on my HTPC hooked to my Toshiba DLP TV back in '08 and it running fairly well, though I wasn't asking much of it. Hard to believe that was 16 years ago.

[lukee]

So the last Firefox I made to run on my machine is 17 ESR I am still having issues to make some websites work. Well - they all seem to be working and most of them are rendering correctly, the issue is that some websites don't establish secured connection with my Firefox and won't open at all (e.g. duckduckgo.com). I tried to play a bit with built-in certificates, made them trusted etc. and I also tried to import root certificate of Mozilla Foundation which went OK, but websites like DuckDuckGo still have issues to get opened at all, providing error message: ssl_error_no_cypher_overlap - Cannot communicate securely with peer: no common encryption algorithms. I have both SSL 3.0 and also TLS enabled in Firefox.