by Roody_Yogurt » Tue May 10, 2022 4:32 pm
Roody_Yogurt wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 5:32 pm
I've actually been loading up an old laptop with IF and graphic adventures for a nephew that I think is old and open-minded enough to get into them, so thanks, I'll swap in this version.
So, the laptop is a COMPAQ Evo N610c, which, according to wikipedia, came out in 2003 or something. I originally had Puppy Arcade on it, but the distribution was so old that the update servers it tried to connect to no longer existed and all I could really get running on it was DOSBox, as far as IF interpreters go. Finding a distribution that works fine on old hardware is often hit-or-miss as loaders often don't work with old BIOS's. I tried Batocera since I recently heard about that one, but it didn't work for me. I did not give Lakka a try because I thought its menus look more confusing than anything else.
What
did work was
Q4OS, which uses Synaptic Software Manager so installing and updating things is easy, familiar, and nice.
The distribution does have its quirks, though. It doesn't come with a GUI file decompression program so one has to do it all in a terminal (or download one, I guess, but I was too lazy). I ended up just decompressing everything I needed on another computer before I transferred it over. Also, the file manager is Konquerer, a web browser, so sometimes when you click on certain file types, instead of opening them in whatever program you have associated with the file type, it just is displayed in the file window since Konquerer thinks, I'M A BROWSER I CAN HANDLE THIS. I ended up making a bunch of shortcuts to certain files just to force the system to use the programs I wanted.
So, of course, I would not recommend this to anyone to use as their main operating system, but if anyone finds themselves trying to give some new life to a 20 year old computer, hey, it's not bad!
[quote=Roody_Yogurt post_id=128395 time=1651019524 user_id=9]
I've actually been loading up an old laptop with IF and graphic adventures for a nephew that I think is old and open-minded enough to get into them, so thanks, I'll swap in this version.
[/quote]
So, the laptop is a COMPAQ Evo N610c, which, according to wikipedia, came out in 2003 or something. I originally had Puppy Arcade on it, but the distribution was so old that the update servers it tried to connect to no longer existed and all I could really get running on it was DOSBox, as far as IF interpreters go. Finding a distribution that works fine on old hardware is often hit-or-miss as loaders often don't work with old BIOS's. I tried Batocera since I recently heard about that one, but it didn't work for me. I did not give Lakka a try because I thought its menus look more confusing than anything else.
What [i]did[/i] work was [url=https://q4os.org/]Q4OS[/url], which uses Synaptic Software Manager so installing and updating things is easy, familiar, and nice.
The distribution does have its quirks, though. It doesn't come with a GUI file decompression program so one has to do it all in a terminal (or download one, I guess, but I was too lazy). I ended up just decompressing everything I needed on another computer before I transferred it over. Also, the file manager is Konquerer, a web browser, so sometimes when you click on certain file types, instead of opening them in whatever program you have associated with the file type, it just is displayed in the file window since Konquerer thinks, I'M A BROWSER I CAN HANDLE THIS. I ended up making a bunch of shortcuts to certain files just to force the system to use the programs I wanted.
So, of course, I would not recommend this to anyone to use as their main operating system, but if anyone finds themselves trying to give some new life to a 20 year old computer, hey, it's not bad!
[img]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/GUOcF_WH2WGrL_nhsgSLTTwALoPIyUgB_xrh_JUURnwel6Ph5iMpBNme-F3ioZ_UVUfIUso7H7_ltY18NEr-jA4j4Jv3Z2nTNJVQJ_Abyt8WDBxoIwWdvdhCdJY8hEQCDlA4G4UyXg=w2400[/img]