Dad's Toshiba Equium M40X-149

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richmond62
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Dad's Toshiba Equium M40X-149

Post by richmond62 » Sat Apr 08, 2023 6:12 pm

Has a Windows XP licence stuck to its back saying 2004,
which is funny because I thought the laptop was slightly older:

https://ie.dynabook.com/discontinued-pr ... -m40x-149/

"Intel® Celeron® M Processor 370
15.4 ", Toshiba TruBrite WXGA TFT display
Hard disk 40 GB
512 MB, DDR RAM
maximum life : 3:25 (Mobile Mark™) hours
weight : 3.00 kg
W x D x H : 365 x 275 x 29.5 (front) / 37.5 (back) mm"

As you can see, 'absolutely state of the . . .' in 2023.

After 3 years of Dad running up and down the street about once every 5-6 weeks because Windows XP was playing
'silly b*ggers' I installed Xubuntu on it, tweaked the GUI so it looked XP-like, and he continued using it until a week
before he died.

anyway, father died 5 years ago, and it sat on a shelf at home until about a year ago when Mum suggested giving it
to a charity shop if I didn't want it. So, when I was visiting I took it to bed with me and discovered it contained
all sorts of jolly bank account numbers, passwords and so on that were still active (found that Mum had several reasonably large
wodges of cash in accounts that Dad, swept up in the drama of dying, had forgotten to tell her about) . . .

. . .so, obviously sorted that all out so that the money ended up where Mum could get at it . . .

Then I blanked the machine (it had been running Xubuntu 16.10) and brought it back to Bulgaria, and, after
a less than happy go with Kali Linux, I reformatted it with Xubuntu 18.04 (the last version of the Ubuntu family
that will run on a 32-bit machine).

Now I can develop apps and stacks on it with LC 9.6.3 that I cannot do on my 2006 iMac running macOS 10.7.5:
I can also run LC 4.0 (and, come to think of things, MetaCard and RunRev 1.0 should I feel really kinky) on the machine.

This is, of course, marvellous, BUT it also says somethings unfortunate about Apple computers . . .

1. Expensive.

2. Every new recension of the Operating System means that a lot of software that one might depend on
no longer works, so, in addition to buying a new Mac one has to shell out more for new versions of
software.

I have, at home, a ludicrous collection of Macs (a PPC Mac Mini running 10.4.12 'Shuriken', a PPC iMac running 10.5.something 'Sorbet Leopard',
an Intel iMAc running 10.6.8, an iMac running 10.7.8, and a 2018 Mac Mini running 13.3) so that I can use a variety of software packages,
some of which have NO upgrades (c.f. AppleWorks, Bryce 3D) . . .

While I have 2 laptops (one 32-bit, one 64-bit) for Linux that run nearly everything.
Last edited by richmond62 on Mon Oct 09, 2023 11:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

richmond62
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Posts: 9286
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Location: Bulgaria

Re: Dad's Toshiba Equium M40X-149

Post by richmond62 » Fri Jun 16, 2023 10:55 am

After falling foul of the fact that Xubuntu for 32-bit Intel machines stopped about version 18.04, and support for that
finished in April, and some more recent packages would not install: I blanked the machine again and installed Debian 11
with XFCE [the only slight snag being the fiddle of getting my user account into the list for doing 'sudo' things], which made me
feel slightly foolish putting Xubuntu 32-bit on the thing in the first place.

Have just upgraded the machine to Debian 12 . . .

https://www.debian.org/

Fantastically grateful that, owing to Debian, my Dad's laptop is not just a heap of junk, but a properly usable machine.

Dad really 'twigged' the Open Source Initiative and was a regular donor to various projects, not least the Thunderbird mail client.

Oh: and LC Linux 32-bit [7.1.4. and 9.6.3. Community] run like 2 charms. 8)

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