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I have a Dell inspiron 600m I bought in 2003 with a 40M drive and 1G of memory. I have a dual boot system wherein I gave windows 30G and ubuntu 10G (3G free space remaining).

When I watch DVDs in windows it works okay, but it takes forever to get there (boot, load windows explorer, etc). It's thrashing something awful.

I also run ubuntu 12.04. It asks to upgrade to 14.04, but then gives this warning saying the unity3d desktop performance of 14.04 can't be hardware accelerated. Here's the video card:

$ lspci | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
 [AMD/ATI] RV250/M9 GL [Mobility FireGL 9000/Radeon 9000] (rev 02)

Should I try upgrading to 14.04 in hopes of getting to 16.04 or 18.04? Should I install some other lighter-weight linux? Which one?

My goal would be to watch DVDs and videos online with maximum frame rate and minimal thrashing. I can do it now, but DVDs sometimes won't decode. I wonder if newer versions of linux have better graphics performance or DVD-playing abilities. Or maybe they just use more memory, and would be worse.

What should I do?

EDIT: I can't watch netflix ("libavcodec may be vulnerable or is not supported, and should be updated to play video"). So, I should probably just upgrade.

dfrankow
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  • I would not recommend Ubuntu for an old system with 1GB of RAM. You should just reinstall one of the lighter weight versions. Light weight flavors Lubuntu, xubuntu, Ubuntu mate, Budgie https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFlavors Choice is more what type of gui you prefer. – oldfred Jan 28 '19 at 15:26
  • "40M drive" what is that? – Vijay Jan 28 '19 at 15:45

1 Answers1

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First of all, you should probably not upgrade to 14.04. 14.04 will only be supported until april 2019. After that it's end of life with no new security updates.

At the moment, reinstalling with 18.04 makes most sense. You should probably not choose Ubuntu, as 1GB of RAM is very low by todays standards. A lighter flavor would probably work better, such as Lubuntu or Xubuntu.

Note that you will probably not be able to watch netflix anyway, as your hardware probably does not support modern video codecs in hardware, and is not fast enough to to video decoding in software.

My gut feeling would be to get a new computer. It's 15 years old...

vidarlo
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  • Thanks! I'm getting a new computer, too. This is the only one I currently have with a CD drive, it may as well work. I'll look into Xubuntu. – dfrankow Jan 28 '19 at 20:34
  • In that case, you may consider copying the DVD using that computer, and transferring to a different one for later use. Or buy a SATA-USB adapter, and salvage the DVD-ROM. A SATA-USB adapter costs <$5 on ebay typically. Make sure to get one for optical drives of laptops. – vidarlo Jan 28 '19 at 20:37