Using an Old System

So I've been messing with Arch on my old Compaq Deskpro EN with a Pentium 3 733MHz, 256 SDRAM, Voodoo3 2000 PCI 16Mb, and a 40GB hard drive. I must say it is a very responsive and usable system. It runs firefox with out any problems and even youtube with flash, as long as I keep flash videos their default size it runs them smoothly like any modern computer even most high definition content on youtube runs perfect.

Here is htop, very little ram is being used. Despite the fact that I have synergy, nitrogen, openbox, lxpanel, conky, terminal & X running.

Here is a video from youtube in HD, running perfectly fine. Ofcourse fullscreen is beyond what this system can do with flash. But it can play regular divx and xvid videos with no problem, fullscreen or not.

29 seconds. The default boot on Arch, no optimization.

25 seconds. I saved 4 seconds, by simply loading all the modules in the background. The system was completely functional by the time X started anyways, 2 seconds later.

20 seconds. I recompiled the kernel, by using this kernel. Basically removing everything not needed and setting the kernel specifically for a Pentium 3. I did not spend too much time going over each option, so there is A LOT more optimization I can with the kernel configuration.

Here is the .config file I used for the custom kernel in case anyone wants to reference it.

DarkFiber Openbox Theme

Sorry for the lack of updates I have been a bit lazy and busy with work and school. I've been messing with an old Pentium 3 (730Mhz, 256 SDRAM, 40GB Hard Drive) system and decided to create another openbox theme.

I call it DarkFiber, I used the popular Onyx theme as the bases.

I'm using a slightly edited Clearlooks Colors (Clearlooks Brave) theme. I also have lxpanel at the bottom which is being started with a separate edited SlicknesS-black theme. This is how you do it:

GTK2_RC_FILES=/home/username/.themes/SlicknesS-black/gtk-2.0/gtkrc lxpanel

or

bash -c 'GTK2_RC_FILES=/home/username/.themes/SlicknesS-black/gtk-2.0/gtkrc lxpanel'

If you want to start it from gmrun or openbox menu.

Icons are my favorite Eikon theme, conky is similar to my regular setup which can be found further down on this blog with edited colors. Wallpaper is Aerostream. Sorry to lazy to find links for each one but you should be able to find everything quite easily.