This one's mostly going to focus on more niche uses for my laptop, like trying out modern Linux distributions. But first, a recap:
- Part 1 and Part 2 by @nortti, setting up Windows XP and getting it online, prior to them sending the laptop over to me
- Part 3 by me, which explains the laptop's specs, my original goal, and brief explanations of the operating systems I've tested
- Part 4 where I use my Pi 4 as a file server for the laptop and settle onto Slackware 13.37
This time I'm going to try harder.
Short version
I tried a bunch of operating systems on Omoikane, a computer with 256 MB of RAM and no SSE2, and put in more of an effort this time. NetBSD 10.0 and Slackware 13.37 are the only two non-Windows operating systems that worked out, so I'm triple-booting them.
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Windows 2000 and Windows XP work fine, but the latter has a bigger library of software to use. I keep XP for testing games or using newer software.
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NetBSD 10.0 (2024) has a lot of modern software to choose from, but using a desktop is uncomfortably slow (bearable if using i3 or setting X drivers to vesa, both of which are kinda buggy). It's currently my fallback for accessing the internet or using software that I can't compile on Slackware 13.37.
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Slackware 13.37 (2011) is the only Unix-like I tested with 3D acceleration.
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Alpine Linux 3.16.9 (2022-2024) booted, but I haven't installed it.
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NixOS 23.11 (2023) surprisingly booted, but I couldn't install it (it gave a kernel panic error).
Long version
I probably talked about this like 200 times already, but I wanted to try something thorough this time. Less on "out-of-the-box" experience and more on how much work is needed to get it set up. Doubly so for dual-booting.
Laptop specifications
I've gave the specs before, but I'll give them again:
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CPU:
mobile AMD Athlon(tm) XP-M 2600+ -
GPU:
S3 Inc. VT8375 [ProSavage8 KM266/KL266] -
RAM: 256 MB (theoretically); 224 MB to 248 MB depending on the amount of shared GPU RAM
Obstacles to using modern software
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On February 9th, 2012, Mesa 8.0 released, which dropped support for the "savage" DRI driver used by my laptop's S3 ProSavage8 GPU. I haven't found a Unix after 2012 that can take advantage of the GPU, so they all hog the CPU, slowing down the desktop.
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If picking an older distribution, the bundled GCC may be too old to compile some programs I'd want to use. Its 224 MB of RAM, which makes it, ironically, hard to compile a newer build of GCC.
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If picking a newer distribution, some of the packages available won't be available (e.g. a 2011 distro may have a 32-bit build of old Blender, while a 2024 distro only has 64-bit builds of new, heavier Blender).
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Internet support. The laptop's currently tethered to my Raspberry Pi 4 via a local-only connection, but I have a Ralink adapter around that may or may not be picked up by different OSes.
Windows 2000 (2000)

I was using Windows 2000 Professional with Service Pack 4. Well, I didn't dual-boot this one, but it might've been the first operating system I've tested on Omoikane (not counting its preinstalled Windows XP). It felt like a lighter Windows XP, but suffers from a smaller software library and earlier versions of software compared to those supported by XP. It's also harder to find information on the web about software that supports Windows 2000, so some of them working (like Everything) was just out of pure luck.
I haven't tried any games other than ClassiCube and an emulator (probably SNES9x?) and iirc both reported that a new enough DirectX wasn't installed or something.
Windows XP (2001)

The laptop has a sticker that says "designed for Microsoft Windows XP", so this is obviously a period-accurate option. My install of choice is Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 VL.
After getting the drivers (VIA S3 ProSavage 8 DDR Video Driver and Realtek AC97 audio driver), it has GPU acceleration and audio playback. It's a little slow at times, taking about 2 minutes to start to a desktop after installing several programs (maybe I needed to defrag it?), but it has the widest library and it's easy to pick an old or new version of a program for a task. If it wasn't for my bias towards Unix-like operating systems, I'd probably daily drive it.
I've tested many games on it, which I documented in my notes:
| Game | Status |
|---|---|
| Cave Story | Perfect |
| ClassiCube | I can't go a blog post without mentioning ClassiCube. Did you know they made an N64 port and recently added 4-player splitscreen?! Well, anyway, it runs okay, about ~15fps at a 64-block draw distance? |
| Diner Dash | Great. A bit choppy, but that could just be the game |
| Dwarf Fortress | 40d starts and runs. I haven't gotten very far, but it works |
| ePSXe | Works best with Pete's D3D Driver 1.76 (OpenGL2 crashes, OpenGL has graphical bugs) |
| Grand Theft Auto III (v1.1, cracked) | After letting the game optimize textures for the video card, the game had black textures for many characters, scenery, and HUD elements (minimap) excluding Claude, pedestrians and vehicles. 8-Ball and the Old Oriental Gentleman had their eyeballs bulging out, like googly eyes. Driver issue, maybe? Gameplay runs around ~8-15fps, sometimes worse, depending on what's on screen. |
| Far Cry | GPU blacklisted |
| Half-Life | Runs great in software mode (around ~40-55 fps at 640x480 at the opening cutscene, around ~25fps at 1024x768 in-game give or take). OpenGL mode has rendering issues. Direct3D has bad input lag |
| Halo Custom Edition | GPU blacklisted |
| Minecraft | Beta 1.7.3 via the BetaCraft launcher. I recall downloading the important libraries on my Linux system then transferring it to the same location BetaCraft expects it on Windows XP. The game took a while to start, was able to generate a world, but seconds after spawning in the world, it ended up freezing the whole laptop. |
| OpenArena | 14.2 fps at Fastest, 640x480 |
| Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst | ~15fps at the worst, normal settings. Works best with frameskip, low settings, and 640x480. Has some z-buffer issues where some scenery objects are rendered in front of the player. |
| Quake 3 Arena | 65.0 fps at min, 640x480 / 31.7 fps at min, 1024x768 / 24.9 fps at max, 640x480 / 4.8 fps at max, 1024x768 |
Slackware 13.37 (2011)

Everything I tested works right out of the box: GPU acceleration, audio, video playback, power management, and dual-booting/triple-booting (after installing NetBSD last and installing Slack's bootloader to the superblock instead of MBR). As I mentioned in a previous blog post, it's the last version that has hardware acceleration for my S3 ProSavage8 GPU, and I can use some packages from 14.1's SlackBuilds (like Anki 2.0.33) if needed. However, my Wi-Fi USB isn't picked up, and both GCC and the kernel are pretty old.
Its age may be a good thing since it's straightforward to download and install period-accurate software from SlackBuilds that'll run just fine, but many programs I've found were older than its equivalents on Windows XP, and sometimes the original source code for a SlackBuild isn't available so I had to search the web for the file and make sure its checksum matches. I've found a whole directory of them on SourceForge, but there's a malware warning so here be dragons.
(Fortunately, I've managed to compile GCC 4.8.2, which I'll detail in my next post.)
Debian 9.13.0 Stretch (2017-2020)

Graphical installer fails to boot, but text-only installer boots just fine. My Wi-Fi USB is also picked up if I use the CD image incl. firmware.
It picks up on my Windows XP install during the boot loader step, but ultimately fails to install GRUB to the MBR. I can install GRUB to /dev/sda anyways after skipping the step, but it refuses to boot to the OS. After attempting to install Alpine and installing NetBSD, I figured this may've been because I had TWO active partitions.
My original plans were that, after installing and skipping the mirror step, I would point /etc/apt/sources.list to the distribution archives to download packages.
Alpine Linux 3.16.9 (2022-2024)
I tried the latest version of Alpine Linux that doesn't require SSE2. As always the installer works, Wi-Fi works, etc... but I never got it to boot up.
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I created two extra partitions (swap and sys) via
cfdiskbut I needed to reboot to be able to write to them. I need to get to the disk setup step, pick "sys" and I think it downloads a ton of filesystem tools, then I say no to it wiping the whole drive, which kicks me back into the terminal. -
From there I format the partitions as swap and ext4, then mount the latter under /mnt via
mount -t ext4 /dev/sda3 /mnt -
The installer tells me that "I might need to fix the MBR to be able to boot". On startup, the computer complains that it "failed to load ldlinux.c32".
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By this point, I realized a mistake I made when I tried to dual boot NetBSD with Windows XP: I had two active partitions. There should only be one. Again, my mistake.
I feel like aside from NetBSD, this is the most likely candidate I could have for a "modern" operating system on Omoikane, complete with support for btrfs filesystems, zram, and earlyoom. Oh, that'd be so interesting...
NixOS 23.11 (2023)

What the shit? NixOS 23.11 (I think the last version with an x86 ISO) boots up. The live environment works well, but it kernel panics during the install, even after being given 256 MB of swap. Of all the distros I expected to boot on here, NixOS was not one of them.
NetBSD 10.0 (2024)

Pretty easy to set up, surprisingly. The installer reported that my laptop lacks strong entropy generation. It picks up on my Wi-Fi USB during the install (via run driver), so it has internet access.
Its repository contains many modern programs, so I can browse the modern web (incl. HTTPS) with, say, NetSurf.
Audio works fine, so I can play music (whether MP3 or Opus) via mpv. I can watch videos through mpv with some choppiness, tested with a libx264 480p Nichijou intro.
Dual booting works. I had to set the NetBSD partition to active, and gave each partition (Windows XP and NetBSD's) a name via the bootmenu option. Don't make the same mistake as me and make both Windows XP and NetBSD active partitions, or your computer will fail to boot.
There's no hardware acceleration (neofetch reports the GPU as "llvmpipe"), so the desktop is noticeably delayed and choppy when moving windows (a tiling window manager may hide this effect). In my experience, changing Xorg's driver to "vesa" makes the desktop smoother, but I feel like it also makes performance for video playback worse and gives me a black screen with no cursor after closing the desktop. (Huh?)
IceWM has been my primary GUI. i3wm worked at first, but after restarting it, the i3bar didn't appear a second time.
My shared sshfs directory (from the Pi 4 to the laptop) also disconnected several times, in which I had to mount it again (I had to use sudo to mount it). I never had this problem on Slackware.
But anyway, I think it's best used in the command-line because Xorg is just too slow due to the lack of hardware acceleration.
Other operating systems
- Alpine Linux 3.20.3: Requires SSE2 since 3.17, so this is a no-go. Trying to boot it results in an "illegal instruction" error

(AntiX.)
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AntiX 23.1: I recall antiX-core giving me an out-of-memory error during the install. I felt uneasy, so I didn't continue
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Debian: 10 gives a low memory warning during install. 11 gives an insufficient memory error
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Gentoo: The install media doesn't boot for me, so I considered using another live environment to set it up. Not a big fan of compiling every package on this computer nor do I feel like setting up distcc
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Haiku: I love it but it doesn't love me back

(OpenBSD.)
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OpenBSD 7.5: My first attempt led to a garbled possibly X display on boot. My second attempt led to me accidentally wiping my hard drive (incl. Windows XP) after selecting "(w)hole disk", not expecting it to make the changes immediately. I love OpenBSD, but damn.
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Void Linux: Requires SSE2. Bummer. I would've loved to try it