Can this old laptop still be any good?

[shnapy]

To begin with i am a windows user and have been for nearly 10 years now and i almost never ask for help with software related issues. I even feel a little insulted when i realise that i can't get anything done in linux at all.
So the reason i am here is my old laptop that i haven't used for years. My mum would like to have her own computer mainly for browsing which includes some video streaming like youtube.
The laptop is a DELL CPX h450gt with ~450mhz pentium 3 and 256mb ram. It should still be good for something as simple as browsing, but video playback and ads that contain flash animations keep the cpu at 100% usage which results in awful stuttering in videos and and scrolling of the webpage nearly impossible. I tried different versions of firefox and chrome and flash player but the improvements were miniscule.
The question then is can linux solve this? I can watch higher than 360p quality videos with vlc on this laptop without stuttering so the culprit is the flash player.
Will a lightweight linux distro tweaked for this laptop make it play youtube videos better?

[Irithori]

Short answer: No.
Long answer: While a light weight distro does have less demands on the hardware than e.g a recent ubuntu or w7, this just lowers the "baseline" load.
There are not so many and less resource intensive programs running.
Hence cpu, ram and IO have less to do.

But from experience: The flash player will need more than this rather old machine can handle, even if flash would be the only program running.

[shnapy]

I understand this however what i was hoping for was that you linux people have your own alternative to adobe flash player. I don't understand why poorly written software should render still usable hardware useless...
Also i recall watching youtube videos on this very laptop some years ago with win 2k and firefox i am not sure if they were 360p or 240p tho. The website has over the years become worse for old machines.
Anyway what linux should i choose for this old Dell? I tried slitaz and damn small but i can't even get them to recognize my wlan usb dongle. Is there any idiot proof distro out there or am i stuck learning a new OS the hard way?

[Irithori]

Flash happens to be a mixture of multiple codecs and technologys, some of them proprietary and spiked with patents.
It also is known to have performance issues and crashes, as you probably experienced yourself from time to time.

But unfortunately, it is -still- the de-facto standard for sites like youtube, etc.

So, as a young inspired open source developer, you would not only have to develop an alternative to flash -which is a mine field due to patents-,
but also mimik its behaviour, including bugs. Because the current sites target the "original".
I could now rant about open standards vs proprietaty ones, but I spare you that

Still, there is effort for a flash replacement: Gnash User Manual
Which due to the issues described above will probably always be behind the "original"


About "The laptop used to be fast enough":
In the meantime there are newer codecs, that demand more horsepower.
And also the video quality -and therefore resource hunger- has risen.
So the comparison doesnt apply anymore.

[Eino]

I have used Puppy with computers with low resources, without a problem. They work good enough to surf the web, and word processing. When it comes to movies, the frame rates needs to be slow to work. When it comes to online movies they will be choppy.

[rokytnji]

The question then is can linux solve this? I can watch higher than 360p quality videos with vlc on this laptop without stuttering so the culprit is the flash player.
Will a lightweight linux distro tweaked for this laptop make it play youtube videos better? recognize my wlan usb dongle

One word for the distro AntiX

For the videos. Debian Testing repos in AntiX have enough players ,(whether cli or gui), to handle it. On my P3 IBM A22M. I download the flash video from youtube via any addon of your choice in browser, or using youtube-dl command in terminal , (It is in synaptic package manager), to save in video folder in /home. Then open it in the movie player of choice (mplayer for cli ,or gxine, or vlc ,or gnome-mplayer for gui).

You will have better quality playing the videos from a downloaded file in your folder than trying to play video in a browser with your specs in any distro you choose to use. Whether Puppy, (yeah I run it to), AntiX, Slitaz, or even Tiny Core.

For keeping cpu usage down in browser for flash ads. Install FlashBlock addon in browser.

[jonyo]

~450mhz pentium 3 and 256mb ram

lotsa linux stuff out there will hum with that

[jayd512]

That computer will run nicely.
Just go minimal.
Slackware, Debian.
Maybe Arch, CRUX or Gentoo.

[elija]

I'll add Crunchbang into the mix, which like Antix is based of Debian.

[cynwulf]

TMy mum would like to have her own computer mainly for browsing

Yes.

which includes some video streaming like youtube.

No.

The laptop is a DELL CPX h450gt with ~450mhz pentium 3 and 256mb ram. It should still be good for something as simple as browsing, but video playback and ads that contain flash animations keep the cpu at 100% usage which results in awful stuttering in videos and and scrolling of the webpage nearly impossible. I tried different versions of firefox and chrome and flash player but the improvements were miniscule.

Even with a minimal system with openbox, video playback is going to be poor, streaming video, using flash, is going to be worse still. If the above is what you want this laptop to do, then I would advise you not to waste your time.

I have an old spare Dell laptop with a 800MHz CPU and 256MB of RAM. Flash uses 100% of the CPU, video playback is awful. It runs openbox because Xfce was just too slow. The integrated intel i8xx graphics also give poor performance. Firefox is sluggish as hell on low spec machines, scrolling is especially horrible, Opera is much faster in my experience.