I have a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo L7310GW laptop which I bought many years ago. It came with Windows XP installed. I tried installing many different Linux distros without any success. All sorts of problems. Nothing would run properly including puppy linux. I did some googling and found something which said that the “operating system is bios dependent”. So basically this machine will only work with windoze xp. Cannot be upgraded to any other windoze version or anything thing else. Has anyone come across this before? I only use Linux and it would be great if I could install any Linux distro as it is a very good laptop.
This is a very-very old machine. Maybe you can find some hint in my adventure:
The trick was to find a kernel that fits that machine, and that was the non-PAE 32bit kernel of Debian 8.11.
Maybe you can get something working onto it, but don’t expect this computer to be usable today, especially not for browsing the net.
Thanks for the response. That was quick! Maybe I should just scrap it. It is really old. Still looks good though!
Spec as follows:
Processor: Intel Celeron M, 1.4 GHz Motherboard: -Chipset: VIA PN800 -Bus Speed: 400 MHz Memory -Installed RAM: 256 MB -RAM Technology: DDR SDRAM -Max Supported RAM: 1 GB -RAM Speed: 333 MHz -Installed Cache Memory: 1024 KB Hard Drive: -Hard Drive Rotation Speed 4,200 RPM -Storage Controller Type : IDE CD / DVD Type: Dual Layer DVD±RW Display Size: 14.1 in. Networking: -Networking Type: Integrated 10/100 Network Card • Integrated Wireless LAN -Data Link Protocol: Ethernet • Fast Ethernet • IEEE 802.11b • IEEE 802.11g
1 Like
Running such pre-historic laptop is literally a waste of power. Don’t increase your power bill for such a dumpster!
If you only need such low specs, I would recommend you get a Raspberry Pi, instead. It’s smaller, more powerful and draws way less power.
With this amount of RAM, you can’t do anything. Not to mention the CPU.
And even if you theoretically could do something, it does not even support IEEE 802.11n. So, the internet would be extremely slow, anyway.
I would recommend you to either put it in a museum, or if you want to scrap the last penny out of it, you could take it apart and sell parts separately. Some collectors and computer history freaks perhaps could use a couple of parts.
2 Likes
Hello Mohamed, I still have an old Fujitsu Amilo Pi3625 laptop that runs very well on Linux!! Yes, one could throw away old computers and buy newer and faster ones. What a waste of valuable goods if you still like them. My advice would be to find Xubuntu 16.04 and upgrade later to 18.04 and further. Of course you must not expect too much of computer speed! And don’t listen to Akito who is always very negative and sarcastic. Success!
While you have quite an old laptop, @moki has a really ancient prehistoric one.
Your old laptop is 64 bit capable, perfectly able to run a distro from today, having a very (s)low performance though… …still easily outperforms the ancient prehistoric…
See the CPU comparison
The ancient one has problems even booting a not-so-recent Linux.
I went through this experiment (see above), just for fun.
That’s apparently false. While I remember more times I had to disagree with @Akito, this time I do highly agree. Such a very old device has its place under a lace cover. In a longer run (maybe within a year) you (and @moki) will pay the price of a SBC for the electricity.
1 Like
pls check my topic i need help plssss
Thank you kovacsit, I was a bit early with my reply to @moki, because I saw the patronizing words of Akito again. I take back my words on Akito this time, because he is right about the age of @moki’s laptop. But that does not mean that someone who likes his laptop has to throw it away even when it is old.
1 Like
If you can track down some more ram and upgrade it from the 256 to 1 g as the max it will hold
Then get an older version of Linux you may get it working but it will be painfully slow.
Learning experience I am all for and recycling especially if it costs next to nothing
Just done a similar one for our kids activity club so they can play CD and draw images… who cares if it breaks
I have had some non boot Linux issues, on some older 32bit PC’s, lately because of the onboard graphics especially nvidia.
Time to raid old machines for bits to use on better ones to create one working
Issues with 32 bit systems and the future for browsing web sites
1 Like
You’ve probably got maybe two easy (easier anyway) choices :
- Puppy Linux (an older build from maybe 5+ years ago?)
- DSL (Damn Small Linux - can run on a 486 with 64 MB of RAM)
or - more tricky
a 32 bit build of Gentoo - or - roll your own from LFS (Linux from Scratch - sounds hard, but probably more chance of success than Gentoo)…
Does that laptop even support boot from CDROM or USB??? I doubt it…
Or hunt down the internet archive and grab a copy of Debian 3.x or Slackware 3, 4 or 5? There’s not much you’d be able to do with it, most browsers that would run, probably wouldn’t do HTML5…
2 Likes
Though, it’d be theoretically better to use a new DSL or Puppy distribution. Because just grabbing an ancient version of a “normal” OS means also importing all the security vulnerabilities, that have been fixed in newer versions in the past 2 decades.
1 Like
Thanks to all for your valuable comments. I honestly didn’t expect such a response! This is just a laptop which I had lying around and thought I’d do something with it. Not desperate to use it though. I have 2 other laptops (Lenovo core i5 7th gen and an hp core i5 8th gen) and a desktop as well all running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. The only time I ever use windoze is on my work laptop. I’ve been using Linux for around 20 years and simply love it. I’ve tried many distros but always revert back to Ubuntu!
Once again thanks to all you good people for all your responses!
1 Like
I have been meaning to try out DSL for ages, just for “sh!t’s in giggles”.
Got a “nice” (for it’s day) Intel Panther ELP486 “Workstation” that started life as a 486 DX33 with 4 MB RAM, that I’ve bumped up to DX2-66 (maybe even DX100? - these things have clock speeds that run in multiples of 33 I think) with 64 MB of RAM (Wow! 64!). These have hybrid ISA and EISA slots and early PCI, and SCSI onbard… In their day they were almost workstation class machines, apparently Reuters had networks of them processing “newsfeeds” across Europe (may even have run SCO Unix ?)… Ran Windows NT 3.1 quite well, but not so much NT 3.51 so well (SCSI drivers - but they also had stock IDE). I’ve run Linux on it from time to time over the last 25 years… For about 5 years I had it sitting headless in my hallway running Smoothwall and/or IPCop Linux firewall - didn’t skip a beat - I think I replaced it with a Netgear “appliance” that could do WiFi as well (and slowly replaced the hybrid twisted pair and coaxial network throughout my house)…
Anyway some dude in the Netherlands had a few ELP486 and he wrote some Linux drivers for the ethernet chipset - and - he even got them into the Linux kernel!!! He didn’t need SCSI so never bothered with that…
Anyway - it’s sitting in my carport (fully enclosed and weatherproof) - I keep meaning to bring it inside and install DSL on there…