On Sun, 5/10/2026 11:18 AM, UFO wrote:
Wound up with one of these in working order with Win11 on it:
https://ibb.co/0ybHT8qV
I see one stick of RAM in there, I guess its an 8GB stick?
HDD is the stock 500mB drive.
I noticed the CPU has copper pipes going to it for cooling....
I am wondering if its worth the time to take the fan off and inspect the thermal
paste and replace it?
Apparently W11 is not well suited for this hardware, but I am no fan of 10 either.
Considering a Linux flavor such as Mint or Cinnamon, or are there any other interesting OS's
that would kick butt on this one?
Not really looking for gaming on it, but the video chips seem to be half way decent for that.
It will be mostly a small business desktop use, making webpages, office documents, does not have to be a screamer
but I guess there is another memory slot if need be and this is probably the fastest CPU that it can have?
For CPU substitutes, check the table of subs near the bottom of the page. (Scroll to the bottom and work your way up.)
https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_i5/Intel-Core i5-2400 CM8062300834106.html
Core i5-2400 4 / 4 3.1 GHz 3.4 GHz 6 MB 95W <=== yours
Core i5-3570K 4 / 4 3.4 GHz 3.8 GHz 6 MB 77W <=== next gen isn't that much faster
Graphics might be HD2000 (iGPU). Better than a GMA3500.
You would want to Google whether a 3570K needs a BIOS update, before you attempted to install it. I've had the odd thing that needed some BIOS
work, to get things looking sorta normal. I put a Tualatin in my
first computer, that required replacing a pin compatible voltage
regulator chip, plus installing a microcode patch into the BIOS.
Worked just fine. The machine started life at 300MHz and it is
1.4GHz capable today.
******
hansel@hansel-OptiPlex-990:~$ inxi -Fxz
System:
Kernel: 6.8.0-38-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 13.2.0
Desktop: GNOME v: 46.0 Distro: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat)
Machine:
Type: Desktop System: Dell product: OptiPlex 990 v: 01
serial: <superuser required>
Mobo: Dell model: 0D6H9T v: A03 serial: <superuser required> BIOS: Dell
v: A13 date: 04/02/2012
CPU:
Info: quad core model: Intel Core i5-2400 bits: 64 type: MCP
arch: Sandy Bridge rev: 7 cache: L1: 256 KiB L2: 1024 KiB L3: 6 MiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 1635 high: 1742 min/max: 1600/3400 cores: 1: 1600
2: 1600 3: 1742 4: 1600 bogomips: 24744
Flags: avx ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx <=== sse4_2 gives POPCNT for W11 25H2 to "not crash" :-)
My Optiplex 780 with E8400 is missing POPCNT.
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics vendor: Dell driver: i915 v: kernel arch: Gen-6 bus-ID: 00:02.0
Display: wayland server: X.Org v: 23.2.6 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.6
compositor: gnome-shell driver: dri: crocus gpu: i915
resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: crocus,swrast platforms:
active: wayland,x11,surfaceless,device inactive: gbm
API: OpenGL v: 4.5 compat-v: 3.3 vendor: intel mesa v: 24.0.9-0ubuntu0.1
glx-v: 1.4 direct-render: yes renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 2000 (SNB
GT1)
Audio:
Device-1: Intel 6 Series/C200 Series Family High Definition Audio <=== Most likely to be a Q65, at a guess.
vendor: Dell 6 driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
API: ALSA v: k6.8.0-38-generic status: kernel-api
Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.5 status: active
Network:
Device-1: Intel 82579LM Gigabit Network vendor: Dell driver: e1000e
v: kernel port: 3080 bus-ID: 00:19.0
IF: eno1 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
RAID:
Hardware-1: Intel SATA Controller [RAID mode] driver: ahci v: 3.0
bus-ID: 00:1f.2
Drives:
Local Storage:
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 38.0 C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (rpm): N/A
Info:
Memory: total: 8 GiB available: <=== enough for basic computing and installing OSes
I guarantee you, modern OSes will make a nuisance of themselves, but you can fix them up, after a fashion.
*******
Setting up Linux Mint is slightly broken at the moment. The Ubuntu server was under a DDOS attack recently, and for security reasons, Canonical reviewed the status of the individual servers to make sure they were not compromised. Things like
security.ubuntu.com and archive.ubuntu.com , may not be in perfect shape, and the Mint Repository is "half-Mint" (working) and "half-Ubuntu" (a bit broken).
If you managed to get Linux Mint 223 installed, you could use
/usr/bin/software-properties-gtx # A part of synaptic, one of the interfaces
and set the two mirror links for the Repositories, to local mirrors. There is a picture
of the interface on this page.
https://github.com/linuxmint/mintsources
When you click on the second link, you can substitute one of
the mirrors from the mirror list. This is a choice for a Canadian.
https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu/
The Linux Mint packages link, can be replaced with one like this.
https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/linuxmint-packages/
At the bottom, it says to click the green at the bottom, to update the apt caches.
That's the same as
sudo apt update
Now when I do
sudo apt install synaptic
sudo synaptic
I can enter the package manager.
I can look for gparted in there.
Or do it this way.
sudo apt install gparted
sudo gparted /dev/sda
[Picture] LM223-disk-setup.gif
https://imgur.com/a/3RlLtGq
https://postimg.cc/p94mbxMd
*******
So the first question in the picture, is what is with the complexity ?
Well, we've fallen on hard times...
*******
The "powers that be", want us to UEFI boot on GPT partitioned disks.
And especially with Ubuntu/Canonical, they want us to be messing
with the BIOS UEFI certificates and so on (for Secure Boot).
Not every machine is that ready for these things.
At one time, the hybrid DVDs supported everything. You could
shove in a DVD, use the popup boot, if you UEFI booted,
the installer would do a UEFI install on a GPT partitioned disk.
If you Legacy booted the DVD, the installer would do a Legacy BIOS
install on an MSDOS partitioned disk. People "hardly learned anything"
back then, because it all worked.
The combinations are actually
A) UEFI Boot on GPT partitioned disk (Secure Boot or Secure Boot disabled)
B) Legacy Boot on GPT partitioned disk (requires a BIOS_GRUB partition be added).
Materials for this are included in my picture.
C) Legacy Boot on MSDOS partitioned disk.
If you plug in a DVD today, maybe it only UEFI boots.
Maybe the legacy boot doesn't work. Maybe the legacy boot
might work on a legacy machine (my Optiplex 780). The Optiplex 780
is where I was testing the "unfortunate user" test case.
So what I was testing, is an A) install on a capable machine,
and "then what would happen if the disk was moved to Optiplex 780 legacy". Well, it didn't boot. Normally, you like to be able to move Linux
disks around, and I have some 256GB SSD devices that are intended
to be "portable" like that.
Notice /dev/sda1,sda3,sda4
Those are ESP (EFI System Partition), / partition (like C: in Windows), and SWAP partition (like a pagefile in Windows)
That would have been enough for a UEFI on GPT installation, which is
what Ubuntu (and Linux Mint by extension) might want to use.
To cover the case of "hey, what if we use the YannBuntu Boot Repair DVD later", I included a BIOS_GRUB partition. That might be intended to be a 1MB partition, with no file system. I just made mine 10MB, because I wasn't sure what size it needed
to be. It's sorta like a boot-track. But it would be *empty* after the (A) type install. I like to place such (weird) partitions towards the left, because GParted
does not like to move such partitions later. That's why I made my setup like this,
before starting the install. I did this with gparted.
ESP BIOS_GRUB / partition swap
(Not used)
I took the disk over to the Optiplex 780, and of course it would not
boot (because the Optiplex doesn't have a UEFI BIOS, it seems to be legacy).
I tried the Boot Repair DVD, it claimed to not have the file(s) necessary
to fill the BIOS_GRUB partition.
The next thing I did, is booted the LM223 DVD and created the "SECOND" slash partition.
The idea here, is that even though the DVD has limited ways it can boot, when GRUB sniffs out the situation, it can figure out this is a Legacy boot on GPT disk (B).
and since it has the files for BIOS_GRUB, it can install the .img needed there. After it has (apparently) done this, I could boot that disk on the Optiplex 780,
using either the first OS or the "SECOND" OS. The second OS can use the existing swap partition.
Now, if I moved the disk back to the UEFI machine, it would probably UEFI boot again.
If there's any issue at that point, we can fix it.
The thing about situation (C), is we can "ambush" the modern OSes, and set up materials in advance that they do not like. I could use MSDOS partitioning and make the right partitions for an MSDOS installation, and there would be some whining and a no-boot, but a Boot Repair DVD would fix that.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
That's a bit of Linux trivia for you.
Paul
--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)