Kat

@AnEvilHerbivore

Noted chaos imp

She/Her

32
Southern refugee in Seattle.
Gray ace, bi, monogamous, and single.
My cat's name is Artemis.
Avatar by: @rixsig-writes

Bluesky

bsky.app/profile/anevilherbivore.bsky.social

Mastodon

kind.social/@AnEvilHerbivore

Kat @AnEvilHerbivore9/12/2023, 1:49 PM

Kat @AnEvilHerbivore

Kat @AnEvilHerbivore9/12/2023, 12:16 AM

Alright, question for the nerds who are smarter than me

So if someone wanted to use an old crappy laptop as a media box, what would the best linux distro be?

All I need it to do is read an external hard drive, run VLC to play DVDs and video files, and connect to TV via HDMI.

Note: This laptop is absolute trash. It runs like shit and even with Ubuntu it struggles. It loads slowly and while playing stuff on VLC it has lots of screen tearing and stuttering while it tries to load from the USB drive. So I need the most barebones stuff possible.

#linux #tech

Kat @AnEvilHerbivore9/12/2023, 1:49 PM

I have been deep in the Linux mines all morning

I worked so hard to get one distro working that was ALMOST perfect. It ran perfectly, booted quickly, and there were no problems playing my test file...but then it couldn't do the 2 things I actually needed it to do (couldn't mirror the display to my TV, couldn't read from my external hard drive for video files).

I am disheartened, but pressing on with the next distro.

You must log in to comment.

in reply to @AnEvilHerbivore's post:

NeckSpike @neckspike9/12/2023, 12:26 AM

my ancient old laptop I used for exactly that was running xubuntu, which is a lighter spin than regular ubuntu. AntiX is also a good option.

Kat @AnEvilHerbivore9/12/2023, 12:27 AM

Oooh. I'll check that out. Thanks!

Neral @neral9/12/2023, 12:59 AM

not entirely sure what you want to do with it, but if nothing else works, libreelec might be functional; special-purpose os that's just kodi, so all you get is a media center, about as lightweight as it gets

nortti OH1CAU @nortti9/12/2023, 12:59 PM

if you want something that's built on the same fundamental base as ubuntu, debian can be made quite lightweight – select xfce or lxqt as desktop environment during install. if you want the absolute most barebone, something like alpine would probably be good

EDIT: actually, what are the specs of the machine?

Kat @AnEvilHerbivore9/12/2023, 1:23 PM

It's an ASUS piece of junk that I took off my mom when she upgraded. All I want to be able to do is hook it up to a TV and play video files from an external USB drive on the big screen with it.