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Post by maxheadroom on Oct 2, 2023 14:51:32 GMT
Hello everyone, I teach Technology at Junior High and, as someone donated some very old computers to the lab, I'm trying to figure out how to make some use of them. I probably should have said "ancient", because we are talking about IBM Lenovo ThinkCentre A60 (P/N 41v9706) with Athlon 64 X2 3800+, 1GB RAM, 40GB HDD. Probably as old as 2006. I installed Bodhi and, to my surprise, they are somewhat usable. However, there is no sound, as there's only a Dummy output. I also tried Linux Lite, which had worse issues and kept crashing (I suspect something about the video drivers, as the image showed some glitches), but the audio worked fine. As this is also an Ubuntu distribution, I guess there's hope I can make sound work with Bodhi. Audio Codec is probably ADI AD1986A and the motherboard looks just like this. Any help would be very much appreciated; I'm completely new to Linux and, as such, completely clueless...
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Post by tenplus1 on Oct 2, 2023 18:10:54 GMT
In terminal type: sudo apt install pipewire-pulse then reboot once done, should help.
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enigma9o7
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Post by enigma9o7 on Oct 2, 2023 22:44:15 GMT
It's more than one machine with sound issues under Bodhi? If so I'm assuming they're the same model? Are they perhaps a desktop machine with no speaker and you need to plug one in?
If not, are they desktop machine with internal speaker? If so install alsa utils and play with alsamixer, unmute the master mono output. (run speaker-test in another terminal to generate sound).
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Post by maxheadroom on Oct 3, 2023 9:14:10 GMT
In terminal type: sudo apt install pipewire-pulse then reboot once done, should help. I used Terminology to enter the command, it reported it can't locate the pipewire-pulse package.
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Post by maxheadroom on Oct 3, 2023 9:16:11 GMT
It's more than one machine with sound issues under Bodhi? If so I'm assuming they're the same model? Are they perhaps a desktop machine with no speaker and you need to plug one in? If not, are they desktop machine with internal speaker? If so install alsa utils and play with alsamixer, unmute the master mono output. (run speaker-test in another terminal to generate sound). There are six identical desktop machines with internal speaker, which worked with Linux Lite. Looking around I found something called Synaptic package manager. Inside I found Alsa utils and Alsa GUI mixer, which (I think :-P) I installed. However, I did not notice any changes and the GUI mixer doesn't have much to play with (it has Pulse audio set as Card and Chip). Could you please elaborate?
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Post by maxheadroom on Oct 3, 2023 9:31:49 GMT
The exact motherboard version is MS-7283 (ver 1.0)
Audio CODEC is indeed ADI AD1986A and integrated graphics is NVIDIA GeForce 6100. Having used the machines a little bit more, I noticed some image glitches too (not so many as in Linux Lite, though) and that the mouse pointer may disappear occasionally, although the system doesn't freeze completely. I'm certain all these are drivers issues, because I also have a seventh IBM Lenovo ThinkCenter which looks identical from the outside but has a different motherboard inside. The CPU is a 4450B, which is only a little faster, and RAM is 1Gb as well. This system runs smootly on both Bodhi and Lite.
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enigma9o7
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Post by enigma9o7 on Oct 3, 2023 19:18:27 GMT
I was thinking that perhaps it is using the wrong output by default; I have one machine that way myself. This is just a guess tho, something to try to see what happens.... Okay so what I would do first is open a terminal and run speaker-test; it generates white noise. Then I would open another terminal and run alsamixer Then I would unmute (m) and turn up (arrows) every single thing, to see if sound comes out. If you get sound coming out, report back! And if so we can do some stuff to make it keep working after reboot.
Note for example in this one, it starts out with master mono muted and volume all the way down.
Then after unmuting, and turning up master mono:
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enigma9o7
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Post by enigma9o7 on Oct 3, 2023 19:52:20 GMT
As to the graphics, the problem there is that nvidia stopped supporting those old GPUs on modern linux. The last proprietary driver that worked with it is nvidia-304 which does not work with modern xorg. So you are stuck using the open source nouveau driver, which is not quite as good, and sometimes causes issues.
The mouse cusrsor going invisible, does that happen when you resume from sleep/blank/screensaver? I have an athlon64 with similar vintage gpu on the motherboard, but I put a slightly better video card in, so don't have to deal with that old driver anymore, but I seem to recall I had that mouse cursor disappearing issue too, and found a solution for it.... required enabing the software cursor in xorg config file (if I recall correctly), I could look up the details if that's the issue you're having. You can also reduce tearing by using a compositor (picom) if it's an issue. (sudo apt install picom, then run it from menu, see if it gets rid of tearing - if you want it permanently add it to startup apps). I can elaborate if needed.
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Post by maxheadroom on Oct 4, 2023 6:48:02 GMT
I was thinking that perhaps it is using the wrong output by default; I have one machine that way myself. This is just a guess tho, something to try to see what happens.... Okay so what I would do first is open a terminal and run speaker-test; it generates white noise. Then I would open another terminal and run alsa-mixer Then I would unmute (m) and turn up (arrows) every single thing, to see if sound comes out. If you get sound coming out, report back! And if so we can do some stuff to make it keep working after reboot. Note for example in this one, it starts out with master mono muted and volume all the way down. Then after unmuting, and turning up master mono: The Alsa mixer doesn't have an option for Master mono. There's a Master (was at 34 but I maxed it, just in case), Headphone etc. None of them was muted, so no easy fix unfortunately... The card is reported as HDA Nvidia (?) and chip correctly as AD1986A
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Post by maxheadroom on Oct 4, 2023 6:52:24 GMT
As to the graphics, the problem there is that nvidia stopped supporting those old GPUs on modern linux. The last proprietary driver that worked with it is nvidia-304 which does not work with modern xorg. So you are stuck using the open source nouveau driver, which is not quite as good, and sometimes causes issues. The mouse cusrsor going invisible, does that happen when you resume from sleep/blank/screensaver? I have an athlon64 with similar vintage gpu on the motherboard, but I put a slightly better video card in, so don't have to deal with that old driver anymore, but I seem to recall I had that mouse cursor disappearing issue too, and found a solution for it.... required enabing the software cursor in xorg config file (if I recall correctly), I could look up the details if that's the issue you're having. You can also reduce tearing by using a compositor (picom) if it's an issue. (sudo apt install picom, then run it from menu, see if it gets rid of tearing - if you want it permanently add it to startup apps). I can elaborate if needed. Yes, I think you are correct: I believe the cursor disapears after resuming from screensaver. I will try these fixes.
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Post by escuelaslinux on Oct 4, 2023 14:54:11 GMT
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Post by maxheadroom on Oct 4, 2023 17:25:59 GMT
Thank you for the suggestion. LowMem looks very suitable, because the machines use some of the system's RAM as video RAM, so the actual available memory is 700+ MB and they all have a 40GB HDD. Is it possible to clone one disk to another, to make the process a bit easier? If yes, is there any free cloning software you would suggest for creating a USB cloning tool?
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Post by Hippytaff on Oct 5, 2023 10:43:26 GMT
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Post by maxheadroom on Oct 12, 2023 7:39:36 GMT
I installed Escuelas Linux lowmem 8.4 and I found it to be very well equipped and thought-out. It also works relatively well, considering how old the machines are. There are no graphical glitches and I found that the front audio-out works but not the internal speaker which is a shame (this happened will standard Bodhi as well). The issue with the mouse pointer disappearing after the screensaver is present. One thing that puzzles me, is that the system doesn't keep any of the settings changes I do: for example, I disable the screen blanking (or set the clock to digital) and apply the changes but when I reboot, everything reverts to its initial status. What is wrong here? I then tried to install the English pack. However, I got the message "this pack is only for V.8.3"; this, despite the fact that the english compressed pack is V.8.4. I had chosen the Greek language in the original installation, so now there's a mix-up of Greek and Spanish throughout the system. I'm setting Greek wherever I can, so things kind of work. For some reason I can't find a keyboard option to switch form greek to english and vice versa; for the moment I'm stuck with greek keyboard everywhere, including the terminal. Is there a way to fix this, so that I have a language setting on the task bar and with a keyboard shortcut (eg Alt+Shift)?
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Post by escuelaslinux on Oct 12, 2023 22:13:48 GMT
Thank you!!! Glad you liked it. Did you try all the variations suggested on the linuxquestions thread? Nothing wrong. It does that by design ;-) Indeed, when you restart the machine, you lose any customization you make to the Moksha desktop. But it's not an error; it is actually a feature. :-D By default, Escuelas Linux is delivered for use in publicly accessible school environments, so we preserve the desktop at every reboot to ensure the interface remains consistent. If you want your changes to stay, you can open Applications → System → Unlock Desktop. If you change your mind and wish to return to the default Escuelas Linux desktop, open Applications → System → Lock Desktop. If you set up your own desktop, with your own dock icons, your own language, your own background image, etc., and you want yours to be the new default desktop -but in a locked state for public use- you can open Applications → System → Commit Desktop Changes. Please be aware that these apps are shown in Spanish or English desktops. We are aware that they do not appear in other languages. We plan to fix this for the next release, but if you would like, we can release a Fix Pack to solve that issue now. You found an ugly bug! We overlooked to set the new version in the InstallEscuelasLinux file. Please download the English Pack again and apply it. By doing so, it gets rid of all Spanish language stuff, too. Yes! Check page 113 of our Installation Manual: sourceforge.net/projects/escuelaslinux/files/installationManualEscuelasLinux-sourceforge-8.4-english.pdf/download
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