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I was using a Core2 Duo with 4GB as my main home computer until about a year ago, and while some sites made it run slowly (mostly recipe sites and others with a

I was using a Core2 Duo with 4GB as my main home computer until about a year ago, and while some sites made it run slowly (mostly recipe sites and others with a lot of video ads) it was certainly still usable. The trick was to keep the browser down below 10 or so tabs and close it when I needed to use some other heavy piece of software.

iforgotpassword 3y ago
Interesting, maybe it actually is Firefox being slower than chromium, but incidentally a few days ago I was trying to make an old core 2 duo laptop a browser-only machine for a friend's kid, and with debian 12 and Firefox, the start page of YouTube with no video playing had both cores hover at around 70%. The page worked but was notably slow. Videos played smoothly. So I guess if you don't mind the fans spinning constantly it's usable, but eh...
- creshal 3y ago
  Google regularly tries to break Firefox, Chromium probably works a lot better, if you can convince it to use GPU acceleration on Linux.
  - leeoniya 3y ago
    > if you can convince it to use GPU acceleration on Linux. which isnt all that difficult, btw :) good to point out that it's not enabled by default.
    - creshal 3y ago
      Yes, it's not difficult, but if you compare default settings it'll skew the results.
- pantalaimon 3y ago
  You probably didn’t have Hardware Video Decoding enabled in the browser, that’s still not the default on Linux.
  - iforgotpassword 3y ago
    But as said, that was on the landing page with no video playing. What is it even doing there that can load up the CPU like that? I was rather surprised then that playback was actually smooth at least at 480p. Otoh I doubt core2duo had any sort of hardware acceleration for video decoding, but don't quote me on that...
    - pantalaimon 3y ago
      > I doubt core2duo had any sort of hardware acceleration for video decoding That would be the job of the GPU anyway, but H.264 decoding was pretty much standard back then. That's why plugins like h264ify[0] exist for old hardware. [0] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/h264ify/aleakchihdccplidncghkekgioiakgal https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/h264ify/aleakchihdc...
      - joecool1029 3y ago
        > That's why plugins like h264ify[0] exist for old hardware. Which the intel GMA GPU's did not support in core2duo era. Those features were added by their gen5 (ironlake) GPU, the first intel HD gpu.
        pantalaimon 3y ago
        X4500HD introduced H.264 decoding on the last Core 2 generation https://web.archive.org/web/20120620155937/http://intellinuxgraphics.org/h264.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120620155937/http://intellinux... edit: turns out this was never merged and attempts to get the old code running on a modern stack were not successful https://github.com/intel/intel-vaapi-driver/issues/544 https://github.com/intel/intel-vaapi-driver/issues/544
        iforgotpassword 3y ago
        Hah nice digging, that issue was an interesting read. I will definitely check the IGD version of that laptop.

iforgotpassword 3y ago

Interesting, maybe it actually is Firefox being slower than chromium, but incidentally a few days ago I was trying to make an old core 2 duo laptop a browser-only machine for a friend's kid, and with debian 12 and Firefox, the start page of YouTube with no video playing had both cores hover at around 70%. The page worked but was notably slow. Videos played smoothly. So I guess if you don't mind the fans spinning constantly it's usable, but eh...

creshal 3y ago
Google regularly tries to break Firefox, Chromium probably works a lot better, if you can convince it to use GPU acceleration on Linux.
- leeoniya 3y ago
  > if you can convince it to use GPU acceleration on Linux. which isnt all that difficult, btw :) good to point out that it's not enabled by default.
  - creshal 3y ago
    Yes, it's not difficult, but if you compare default settings it'll skew the results.
pantalaimon 3y ago
You probably didn’t have Hardware Video Decoding enabled in the browser, that’s still not the default on Linux.
- iforgotpassword 3y ago
  But as said, that was on the landing page with no video playing. What is it even doing there that can load up the CPU like that? I was rather surprised then that playback was actually smooth at least at 480p. Otoh I doubt core2duo had any sort of hardware acceleration for video decoding, but don't quote me on that...
  - pantalaimon 3y ago
    > I doubt core2duo had any sort of hardware acceleration for video decoding That would be the job of the GPU anyway, but H.264 decoding was pretty much standard back then. That's why plugins like h264ify[0] exist for old hardware. [0] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/h264ify/aleakchihdccplidncghkekgioiakgal https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/h264ify/aleakchihdc...
    - joecool1029 3y ago
      > That's why plugins like h264ify[0] exist for old hardware. Which the intel GMA GPU's did not support in core2duo era. Those features were added by their gen5 (ironlake) GPU, the first intel HD gpu.
      - pantalaimon 3y ago
        X4500HD introduced H.264 decoding on the last Core 2 generation https://web.archive.org/web/20120620155937/http://intellinuxgraphics.org/h264.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120620155937/http://intellinux... edit: turns out this was never merged and attempts to get the old code running on a modern stack were not successful https://github.com/intel/intel-vaapi-driver/issues/544 https://github.com/intel/intel-vaapi-driver/issues/544
        iforgotpassword 3y ago
        Hah nice digging, that issue was an interesting read. I will definitely check the IGD version of that laptop.