Debian: The only Linux distro for your really old hardware

I first used Unix in the late 80’s, that was my first interaction with a programmable system that did not need punch cards. Then MINIX came along, on the PC, something that seemed fun at the time as it gave the illusion of shrinking a computer monolith down to desktop size.

Linux was released almost 23 years ago, and since the early 90’s my love affair with every new release and flavor has been consistent; sometimes, even rewarding.

As I build my own PC rigs, most hardware these days is several times capable of working with the OS of the day, such as Windows and including Linux.

With old hardware, the challenge is to make it work well enough, if at all.

I’ve a 10 year old Compaq laptop – affectionately called, ‘the brick’ – that lost its Windows XP during a crash four years ago, just in time to buy a new one. It worked well being a dual boot system with Ubuntu, until the latter’s releases reached version 9 and above.

To be fair, hardware depends on driver support in order not to become obsolete, and that’s exactly what happened: the video card, an Nvidia Go 440, received fewer support over the years, and now it has become the thorn of my interaction with Linux.

Since I work with Linux daily, on my servers or via the Oracle VM, not being able to conquer that final frontier became a challenge.

Ubuntu 14.04 was released recently, and no matter how hard I tried, it refused to surrender my aged laptop’s video card full control and OpenGL support. Without hardware acceleration for video, your Linux experience is like drinking beer with a straw.

I tried OpenSUSE and other Linux flavors and there were fewer problems, but the final destination was unattainable – until Debian 7.4 aka ‘Wheezy’ came to my rescue. I installed the AMD64 variant and kept my fingers crossed for the graphics part.

This time around I did not rely on the proprietary Nvidia binaries that failed to compile for a myriad of reasons on my previous attempts; the Debian distribution provides ample support for my 10+ year old video card and hardware, including the Broadcom wireless card that was a bitch to enable on other distros. Once I updated these, I was on a fully functioning machine that performs flawlessly.

So if you’re a Linux fan and want to utilize an old piece of hardware that has not reached ‘dinosaur’ status yet, I’d wholeheartedly recommend giving Debian Linux a try.