Dell D420 with LXPuP

Not sure why I bid, but it was pristine looking and still running XP so in good shape.  These were a bulletproof little laptop from end of XP era, has Core Duo processor (not core2duo) and 2GB RAM maxxed out.  Meaning it can only run 32bit operating system.  Even found a youtube showing somebody had gotten 32bit version win10 running on one.  That person said win10 actually ran better on it than win7.  Officially it didnt support anything newer than Vista.

But even though I bid minimum set in bid, nobody bid against me and this seems to be a time on Ebay where people are bidding up laptops I wouldnt have on a bet.  I havent received the laptop obviously, but with linux dont have to install on actual final computer, just something in same ballpark.   So got that SSD, nuked the win10 install on it.  Odd usually sellers reformat hard drives and SSDs before sending them out.  Downloaded LXPup (an unofficial Puppy Linux with LXDE desktop).  Been playing with that.  Has linux 4.9 kernel and 32bit.  First thing had to download 32bit of latest linux Iron browser (Chromium by any other name), then thought be nice to move portable WINE with Kindle install over from my computer.  Should be easy since to use it on regular 64bit computer had to install 32bit compatibility.  This is already 32bit.  Well it sort of worked, Kindle would work albeit slowly, so would Calibre (windows Calibre is easier to install via WINE than the linux version natively), but nothing else would, not my little games, nothing, not even notepad or wordpad that are built into WINE.

So I downloaded newer version of the portable WINE (the media fire link on Puppy forum times out at 17% download) so found mirror of the package on SourceForge.  It came right up but the mono and gecko files that WINE wants to download failed.  I went ahead and downloaded a fresh 1.17.xxxxx version of Kindle for PC.  Thats the last one that works well in WINE.  It installed and when I went to register it, Amazon wanted to send me some email verification code since it didnt recognize the computer.  Didnt have Thunderbird installed, so installed that along with settings file.  This time got the code and entered it and it registered and good to go.  Refused the offer to upgrade to version 1.25.   I know that would be waste of time.   Need to burn all these programs to a dvd, save downloading in future, though suppose other than Kindle for PC, the others will be outdated by then.  I really hope Kindle for PC 1.17 continues to be accepted for a while.  Havent heard of anybody getting a newer version to run properly in WINE.  Seems stupid to me, no idea why even if Amazon doesnt want to make a linux version, that they dont insist their software developers make it WINE friendly.

I got the D420 today. It is an amazingly pristine little laptop for its age. Yep, XP is slow as molasses in January, but then somebody had done a restore I think it had all the bloatware that comes on new Dell computer at the time. Even had a "hello kitty" cursor! Didnt even know such a thing existed. And only 512MB RAM. I wasted some time uninstalling McAfee and bunch other garbage. That speeded it up.

Then booted LXpup from SSD. This is faster, probably cause its SSD instead of the 1.8inch mini hard drive. It was responsive until I clicked on Iron (Chromium by any other name) Browser. It crashed. With only 512MB RAM it couldnt run. Browsers in modern world are RAM hungry. Oh the "Light" browser that came with LXpup ran fine but no way to make it ditch the ads and tracking scripts, etc.

Thought about it and found an old 1GB stick RAM and put that in for total of 1.5GB RAM. After Dell bios bitched about change in RAM, it loaded. Now Iron Browser had no problem loading and running. Its actually a decent mini computer if you dont expect miracles. Pretty much one thing at a time and if browsing, dont try to keep twenty tabs open. Just saying I'd as soon have this as one of the cloudbooks/chromebooks with 2GB RAM and 32GB eMMC.

D420 battery charge seems to last about an hour.  Thats booted from usb SSD and with phone tethered.  Kindle for PC via WINE works fine.  I am learning how to deal with putting an application link on desktop.  Seems you have to first create an desktop application file in /usr/share and link that to desktop.  Ok seems unnecessarily cumbersome but it works.  May even be an easier way, I am not used to LXDE desktop.  It tends to have these ultra simple desktop wallpapers.  Didnt know it could use a photo wallpaper until I tried and found I could.  There are some other minimalist desktops that cant do photos.  In some ways LXDE seems little tidier than JWM but not enough difference to make any difference to me.  I mostly tried LXpup as it was small with LXDE rather than downloading Lubuntu. Given a choice, what I really dont understand is running some top heavy desktop like Gnome or KDE, just apparently for bit extra eye candy.