This is an account of using old things lying around in the house. The aging desktop is a Pentium 4 with a high clock rate. The old TV still has a bigger screen than a 17 inch laptop screen.
(For proof readers, here is an exercise: count how many times old is used in this post.)
The plan is to connect the old PC to the old TV to occasionally play some movies and games for family fun times on a budget, the old desktop will be switched off when not in use.
The old video card attached to the PC has an S-video output, which coincides nicely with the fact that the TV has an S-video input. Looking up some numbers on the video card shows that it might be an old Nvidia 7xxx that an OEM distributes with their desktops.
In its last OS installation, the old PC had an old version of Lubuntu (a light version of Ubuntu, a linux distro) installed on it, which ran responsively, but no longer receives program updates.
Upon connecting an old s-video cable to the video card and then to the old TV, it seems that the connection is not detected. The decision is then made to install Ubuntu 14.04, to have a much more recent version of the OS on the PC (which can be used for something else if connecting to the old TV does not work).
The questions for the installation are these:
Well here goes:
An installation USB is created for the specified OS and plugged in the old PC. Boot settings are changed in the BIOS. Installer runs and INSTALL UBUNTU is selected.
Installation is then completed. The old PC is restarted. There is a blank screen with a mouse pointer that moves and that's it. Pressing CTRL+ALT+F1 showed some messages. Nouveau. GPU lockup, switching to software fbcon.
After a bit of a wait, it's still the same. Switching to second terminal. Running update and upgrade. Still didn't work properly. Installed nvidia-current. Booted but unity desktop environment is laggy.
To answer questions #1 & #2. No it doesn't work with Unity. Better stick with lxde / lubuntu.
(For proof readers, here is an exercise: count how many times old is used in this post.)
The plan is to connect the old PC to the old TV to occasionally play some movies and games for family fun times on a budget, the old desktop will be switched off when not in use.
The old video card attached to the PC has an S-video output, which coincides nicely with the fact that the TV has an S-video input. Looking up some numbers on the video card shows that it might be an old Nvidia 7xxx that an OEM distributes with their desktops.
In its last OS installation, the old PC had an old version of Lubuntu (a light version of Ubuntu, a linux distro) installed on it, which ran responsively, but no longer receives program updates.
Upon connecting an old s-video cable to the video card and then to the old TV, it seems that the connection is not detected. The decision is then made to install Ubuntu 14.04, to have a much more recent version of the OS on the PC (which can be used for something else if connecting to the old TV does not work).
The questions for the installation are these:
- Can the old PC run Ubuntu 14.04?
- Will the S-video connection work out of the box once the OS is installed and updated?
- If yes to #1, will the system be able to play movies and run old emulators or low minimum-spec games?
- If no to #1, will an installation of the video card driver fix it?
Well here goes:
An installation USB is created for the specified OS and plugged in the old PC. Boot settings are changed in the BIOS. Installer runs and INSTALL UBUNTU is selected.
Installation is then completed. The old PC is restarted. There is a blank screen with a mouse pointer that moves and that's it. Pressing CTRL+ALT+F1 showed some messages. Nouveau. GPU lockup, switching to software fbcon.
After a bit of a wait, it's still the same. Switching to second terminal. Running update and upgrade. Still didn't work properly. Installed nvidia-current. Booted but unity desktop environment is laggy.
To answer questions #1 & #2. No it doesn't work with Unity. Better stick with lxde / lubuntu.
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