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Need help saving an old laptop (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I have an old Laptop (MSI MS1721) that I want to repurpose as a media player on my TV. I have installed an old SSD on with Linux Mint XFCE.

Almost everything works well, with only one exception. The laptop's graphics card (ATI HD3850) requires proprietary drivers that haven't been supported since Kernel 3.4. The replacement open-source drivers cause stuttering while playing videos, which makes it useless for my purposes.

Are there Linux distribution options out there that would fit my needs?

Edit After trying a wide array of distros including Ubuntu 14.04, Linux Lite, Linux MX, Bohdi, Linux Mint Debian Edition, Nobara, Debian XFCE and CachyOS, I was pleasantly surprised to see that CachyOS performed very well and still feels like a modern OS and runs surprisingly smoothly with KDE. It looks like the open source drivers do work decently after all depending on the distro you're running and how well optimized they are for your CPU.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

You might want to try AntiX - it's specifically designed for older hardware and has good compatibility with legacy graphics drivers. it supports older kernels that might work with your ATI card, and it's super lightweight which helps with video playback. I've rescued a few ancient laptops with it.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

Maybe related: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=197703

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I am not a pro with Linux, so people are welcome to correct me, but these would seem to be the viable options.

  1. Try and find a Linux distro release that can run on the last Kernel 3.4 LTS release.
  2. Search for a workaround/fix for the stuttering and/or reach out to the developers of the open source driver for the 3850.
[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Thanks. I'm currently giving Ubuntu 14.04 LTS a try. Looks like it should work. We'll know once it's installed.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Look up MX Linux. I don't know if it'll specifically meet your needs, but it'll run on a toaster and I haven't been able to break it.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

off to recycling with that thing, that SSD is worth more than the whole machine. get a skylake or newer laptop with busted screen or malfunctioning keyboard or whatever that's not a hindrance for your use case and it'll have full hardware acceleration and consume WAY less power and be future proof.

if you're adamant about running it, try mpv without DE/WM by way of framebuffer. I think Arch has some mpv build that enables that.

this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2025
22 points (100.0% liked)

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