32bit Vs. 64bit

[Germ]

In 2008 I bought an Acer Aspire 5315-2153 laptop. Bought it from Computer Geeks. It had Windows Vista on it. I set up a dual boot with Mandriva. It had 1GB RAM and I upgraded it to 2GB which was all the mobo would support. The optical drive went bad so I got a external DVD/CD RW. Added a usb bluetooth adapter.

When Mageia 1 was released, I backed up, wiped the drive, and installed Mageia. Then I either upgraded or did clean installs over the years. Here are the specs:

Code: Select all

[germ@localhost ~]$ inxi -F
System:
  Host: localhost Kernel: 6.2.10-desktop-1.mga9 arch: x86_64 bits: 64
    Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 5.27.3 Distro: Mageia 9
Machine:
  Type: Other-vm? System: Acer product: Aspire 5315 v: V1.45
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: Acer model: Acadia v: V1.45 serial: <superuser required> BIOS: Acer
    v: 1.45 date: 11/10/2008
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 34.6 Wh (100.0%) condition: 34.6/48.8 Wh (70.7%)
CPU:
  Info: single core model: Intel Celeron 530 bits: 64 cache: L2: 1024 KiB
  Speed (MHz): 1730 min/max: N/A core: 1: 1730
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics driver: i915
    v: kernel
  Display: x11 server: X.org v: 1.21.1.7 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.8 driver: X:
    loaded: intel unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa dri: i965 gpu: i915
    resolution: 1280x800
  API: OpenGL v: 2.1 Mesa 23.0.2 renderer: Mesa Intel 965GM (CL)
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel 82801H HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
  Sound API: ALSA v: k6.2.10-desktop-1.mga9 running: yes
  Sound Server-1: PulseAudio v: 16.1 running: yes
Network:
  Device-1: Broadcom NetLink BCM5906M Fast Ethernet PCI Express driver: tg3
  IF: enp5s0 state: down mac: 00:1b:38:62:98:4d
  Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros AR242x / AR542x Wireless Network Adapter
    driver: ath5k
  IF: wlp6s0 state: up mac: 00:1d:d9:53:d6:0c
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Broadcom BCM20702A0 Bluetooth 4.0 type: USB driver: btusb
  Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 state: up address: 5C:F3:70:A8:04:59 bt-v: 2.1
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 298.09 GiB used: 12.95 GiB (4.3%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Toshiba model: MK3276GSX -63 size: 298.09 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 49.2 GiB used: 8.3 GiB (16.9%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
  ID-2: /home size: 238.91 GiB used: 3.5 GiB (1.5%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda6
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 4 GiB used: 1.16 GiB (28.9%)
    dev: /dev/sda5
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 60.0 C mobo: N/A
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
  Processes: 217 Uptime: 2h 7m Memory: 1.93 GiB used: 798.8 MiB (40.5%)
  Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.25
[germ@localhost ~]$

Then I upgraded to cauldron a few months ago. It ran pretty good. But, I had some annoying problems, the biggest being slow boot and Falkon not working. I assumed the Acer was 32bit since it had 32bit Vista installed when I purchased it. I finally did some research and discovered it was actually 64bit several months ago. So, I did a clean install of 64bit Cauldron. All seemed to be good. It booted faster, ran about 50% faster, and best of all Falkon worked.

Then a couple of weeks ago, I started having erratic boots. The BIOS would change the hard drive controller setting from ACHI to IDE. I would change it back to ACHI but after a couple of boots/reboots it would lose the setting and go back to extremely slow booting. Wasn't a lot I could do in the BIOS so I played around with ACPI, APIC, etc. but nothing helped. CMOS battery seemed to be good.

Then, I checked the BIOS version. It was v1.40, the original. I went looking for a BIOS update and found v1.45 which seemed to be the latest/final version. I downloaded it and flashed the BIOS. That finally solved my problem. It keeps the BIOS settings and boots extrermely fast considering it is an ancient laptop.

Since the BIOS flash program needed to be done from within Windows, I downloaded a copy of XP, swapped hard drives, installed XP, and did the flash.

All is good and Cauldron is great.

[isadora]

Great to see how a modern distribution still runs like magic on a fifteen years old machine.

[Germ]

Yes, it is great!

[morgano]

Running nicely with XFCE on Thinkpad T40 (year 2003), stuffed with 2GB RAM.
(needed one workaround because of old GPU: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_8_Err ... rol_Center)
Dual booing with MS XP which is the important item, needed to run old programs, and the machine also have a real LPT port.
For security reasons wifi is not configured in XP and I use Mageia to transfer files.

[artenox]

For security reasons wifi is not configured in XP

Some users use Internet on XP and Chinese browser 360 EE (based on Chromium 86). Or Serpent/New Moon.

[morgano]

Heh, the 360 "Secure Browser" do not have a very good reputation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360_Secur ... troversies

[artenox]

That's right. The browser has many connections to Chinese servers. But only the Chinese release updated browsers for XP.
Serpent/New Moon is much better (they are forks of classic Firefox). I would even say they are less trojan than modern Firefox. But the web support is pretty bad (under development).
I'd rather put XP on the Internet than Win8+. Well, it's offtopic.

[sturmvogel]

Omg
Calling firefox „trojan“ where alle connections which firefox establishes are documented (http://kb.mozillazine.org/Connections_e ... _-_Firefox), but trusting an undocumented chinese browser (based on an heavily outdated and insecure chromium version) which is known to be unsafe….

Yeah, sure…

[artenox]

The Chinese browser is definitely a bad choice. Although there are people who make cleaned repacks.
Serpent 52 is a good browser. It is built by a man in Hong Kong based on Basilisk, which is developed by the Pale Moon team. Pale Moon is one of the cleanest browsers these days. The developers are against Google. I will not give you the links.

[Germ]

OK. You guys have hijacked my topic.

Start a new topic if you want to discuss web browsers.

[zxr250cc]

Hi Germ,

I saw the old downtown bank building is finally getting cleaned up. I was out shooting b&w film in the area.

As regards your Acer, I have used an old Netbook of theirs that is 32 bit with 1.5 gb of RAM and an atom cpu. I am not sure which is slower in use, an atom or a celeron. Both are memory challanged! I was thinking you should update the bios and saw you had further down the post. The real question is this, does it make a good secondary movie player now with the external DVD drive?

It could be a good repurpose for the laptop if not used otherwise.

Cheers

[Germ]

I just use it for testing stuff. It is not my daily driver.

I rarely go to Chelsea. It's my mailing address. Everything overlaps where I am. Chelsea address, water from RWD 3, electricity from Vinita, trash service from Foyil, if I had a land line it would be Claremore.