I can't get any browser to run without crashing and VLC won't play DVDs
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Hello. I'm a first time Trisquel Mini user. Thought I'd give it a try to help my goal of finding the best lightweight Linux, as in the "One Linux to run them all" The system requirements look good, about the same as Bodhi Linux. The software library is much, much better too. I was stuck at a dead end on Bodhi linux and my laptop is too old to run the latest firefox (It lacks SSE2 on the CPU) and Midori kept crashing on me. Also I don't understand why being 100% free software is so important. Theres lots of good paid software that could be ported to linux, just saying. Anyhow, as stated before, it's an old laptop i'm fixing up. A Toshiba Satellite 1105 from 2002. Specs are: Mobile Celeron Tualatin 1.1GHz CPU, 768MB ram, 80GB HDD, 8MB Intel Graphics, Intel 830 chipset, and AC97 audio. I could later upgrade the CPU to a 1.3GHz Pentium III-M and 1GB ram if needed, though Trisquel seems to run fine on my PC. Back to the software library: I liked all the options to choose from. So I then downloaded every web browser I could find, like Dooble and Dillo. I tried them all out. Unfortunately, each one of them would randomly crash and Youtube was not working, no videos would play. On Dooble, I saw I could enable Javascript and cookies. But doing so made no difference in stability. I wish I could possibly run the (open source) Firefox 48 on my Trisquel. That is the last version that runs on pre-SSE2 CPUS. Im typing this on that same Firefox version right now on the same laptop with my second hard drive running Windows XP. I used to be able to watch Youtube videos on Firefox with the earlier versions, but now the PC too slow to load videos, so now i'm trying out Linux. I have tried other software in the Trisquel software library. One of them I downloaded was VLC media player, but DVD's won't load, although It worked well on other Distros I had on my other computers. Trisquel looks like one of the best lightweight Linux i've seen in a while but I wish I could know why my programs aren't running right. Is it all down to the lack of SSE2 support, or do I need to enable something in the OS, perhaps from the command line?
Thanks for making Trisquel and the forum, and best of luck that we can work this out.
I'm not quite sure I can be of any help here, but here we go...
>One of them I downloaded was VLC media player, but DVD's won't load,
For this, you need some extra software called libdvdcss: https://www.videolan.org/developers/libdvdcss.html. Unfortunately, it's not possible to install it as easily as most programs on Trisquel (it's a legal liability to distribute it in most jurisdictions- you're quite safe using it though). If you come across any difficulties, feel free to post or have a look in a previous thread on the issue at https://trisquel.info/en/forum/problems-playing-dvd.
>I wish I could possibly run the (open source) Firefox 48 on my Trisquel.
Firefox is offered on Trisquel, but under the name "abrowser" (the logos, homepage and add-ons store are changed, but nothing too significant- just to make it 100% free). It seems to be based on Firefox 33, so you should be OK.
>Also I don't understand why being 100% free software is so important. Theres lots of good paid software that could be ported to linux, just saying.
When we say "free software," the term isn't intended to mean "zero cost" so much as "open source, but stronger." The term is admittedly confusing, and the alternatives "libre" and "free-as-in-freedom/FAIF" often get used instead, but all variants are based around the principle often absent in "open source" (at least as many use the word) that people cannot be free if they do not have the right to vet and- if necessary- fork the software projects they use.
Also, it's generally preferred here to call the operating system often called "Linux" "GNU/Linux. The GNU project, which started the movement for free software, also produced most of the core tools used in desktop GNU/Linux before Linus Torvalds made his contribution to the system, so it seems fair to give GNU some credit. Also, it helps to make things clearer sometimes- calling the part Linus wrote, the kernel, "Linux" makes it less clumsy to discuss when it isn't used with GNU components (e.g. in Android).
>the "One Linux to run them all"
Good luck- people have been trying for years, and we still haven't made any progress.
Hopefully that helps, and sorry for the wall of text :).
It is actually easy to install libdvdcss. Open a terminal and execute this command:
$ sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh
The other problems may be unsolvable without new hardware. Fifteen-year-old processors do not have specific circuits to decode modern video formats (such as WebM and MP4) and cannot do it in a generic way because it is too demanding (especially with high resolutions). Some Web pages (not all though!) have grown in size a lot. The crashes (whatever the Web browser, it downloads the page in RAM) may be due to your system running out of RAM (and to not having swap, otherwise the system would be slow like hell before having the kernel killing a process to free RAM). Take a look at a system monitor to see RAM occupation right before a crash.
Please read https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html (or other material) to understand what the free software movement is about. It has nothing to do with price. We reject proprietary software because it denies the users the control of the work they achieve with their computers (giving that power to whoever controls the development of the software).
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